The Story of The Songs of Peter Grey

  What's the deal with this book?  Is it a kid's story book?  Not really.  Why did I write it?  Because of stuff that happens to so many of us.  I wrote about what happened to and around me, because that's a sort of story that's really never told, in my experience, unless I do.  Because you're supposed to be quiet about and take it.  And I know that far worse things happened to far better people.  Perhaps some explanation is in order:
  First, obviously, I lived it.  I was raised in a particularly paranoid, strict, isolationist, fundamentalist branch of a Christian group called the Plymouth Brethren, which was almost like being Quaker or Mennonite.
  I went to school with regular kids, not able to connect with them or discuss pop music or television or movies with them in a normal way, because I wasn't allowed those things.  (I was enjoying these things vicariously through the other kids, and asking a lot of stupid questions.)
  I went to church five times each week, and our homelife was mostly about my Dad's anxiety about church gossip, our fragile church reputations, the direction teaching in our church was taking (it concerned him if it got sloppy, if it got modern, and especially, if it got pretend, and people weren't teaching the bible at all, but just burbling on to fill the time).
  I dreamed a number of vivid nightmares.
  I lived through my father getting ostracized and socially punished ("silenced") by the church for rocking the boat, and through his ensuing depression and social anxiety.  I lived through high school, with the usual bullying and so on, and with my own depression.  I lived through sleepwalking through university without really making any human connections there at all.
  I lived to meet other Plymouth Brethren people who questioned, who doubted, who read the bible and didn't merely rebel, but actually test-drove, recalibrated, rethought and reworked the teaching we'd been given.  I lived to see the dire predictions that they'd leave the church and make a mess of their lives become self-fulfilling, and in many cases, be made to happen.
  Like every one of my friends, I was kicked out of my church rather than helped by it.  I lived my twenties and thirties, on into middle age, picking up the pieces left by a Plymouth Brethren culture which was cutting its kids and its problems loose, rather than helping.  I lived to see the Internet start reconnecting some of us together, and to see people like me, long reckoned dead/bitter, able to share our stories.

  One thing that happened throughout all of this is I wrote songs.  And in my early twenties, I assembled some representative songs together in an order that told a story (this story isn't told anywhere, to my knowledge, at all), and made bridging narrative and songs which filled in some of the gaps, and felt I'd written a concept album.  I wrote any number of silly, comedy, satire things, but didn't include them.  It was all influenced by Pink Floyd's The Wall, and would be about as easy to make.
  I worked away at versions of these songs over the years, first with cassette tape four-track machines, then in a recording studio, and then with computer-based gear.  I hung out in music clubs, meeting other musicians and recording them and getting them to do bits and pieces of stuff on my music.
  And the album was never getting finished.  I was never satisfied with it no matter what I did.  And I found increasingly that I had far too much to say to use song to do it.  Song is a great way to briefly pull people into a moment or a mood, to showcase a thought or two, a situation.  But I kept feeling like I had more to say than that and would have to explain it out, at length, in order for people to get it.  Also, connecting to people with plain words is one thing, but music is such a matter of style that it means possibly making your points unpalatable to anyone who simply doesn't like the sound or style of your music, or even your voice.

  So last December, I just broke down and wrote it as a memoir.  A fictionalized memoir, in the sense that I compressed time, or simplified people or situations (to a surprisingly little degree), and changed the names and places around a bit to make it a story that could be understood and felt, without needing to a trilogy or something.  As I wrote it, the ending involved things that were actually currently happening, and people I was still currently dealing with.  This made it hard to end it.  Some negotiation was necessary.  Eventually, I got it together, and published it online.  It can be purchased here.

Some selected bits from the book:

Peter’s grandfather sometimes said words like “damn” and “hell” and “piss.” Peter’s father did not so indulge. Normally Peter’s father said fake swear words instead, the whole time, whenever he was working.

  “Lovely Ginger!” he would say in amazement.

  “Son of a FACE!” he would shout in a high, anguished voice when he blackened his thumbnail with a hammer.

  “Puke! This thing is as useless as you-know-whats on a bull! (And it looks like heck),” he would declare to another man.

  “Heck! This is as useless as tits on a salmonloaf! (And it looks like puke),” he would say when he didn’t think anyone was listening.

  “For crying out loud! What the Sam Hill are you doing?” he would demand of Peter.

  “Oh my soul!” he would moan.

  “Oh my stars!” he would gasp.

  “Wait just one cottonpickin’ minute!” he would call after Peter. “What in the name of heck are you doing? For pete’s sake!” (He didn’t mean St. Peter. That would have been irreverent.) “For the love of Mike!” he’d say. (Ditto Michael the archangel.)

  Instead of “mistake,” he said “boner.” This always made Peter snicker. “Oh look! I made a real boner here! I forgot to tighten this nut!”

  He used to call people “dingleberries” until Peter told him what those were. This made Peter’s father angry, because now he had to stop saying the word entirely. He also angrily shot down Peter’s suggestion that perhaps “cottonpickin’” wasn’t terribly appropriate for use if there were black folks around. When he got really mad, sometimes Peter’s father would very quietly mutter truly obscene things like “prickdamnfart” to himself.

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  As he approaches the church, he starts to be overcome by a growing sense of dread.  Wonderful.  He doesn't want to see what the church looks like or what is happening there so late at night, but he is lost and badly needs to get home.  There is school the next day. 

   Also, the child slowly becomes aware that he is dreaming, and as the terror he is feeling at approaching the church at night grows, he resolves to try to wake himself.    He tries to thrash around in the bed but this only makes his dream avatar thrash around a bit, while still wending its way closer and closer to the church building with him trapped inside.  It is hilarious.  He is along for this ride and he can't turn his head or close the eyes of his dreaming self, but he can twitch a bit as he walks inexorably forward.  Such a treat to witness.

  They round the corner and see the church.  It is lit up like there's a service going on.  He doesn't want to go in, but they do go in.  They open the door, start up the familiar carpeted stairs and stop.  Dead. 

The room is full of Things, which are having their own dark service.  He sees their pretty faces as they turn to stare.  The flesh of their faces and hands, if it can be called that, has melted partly off them, like dark, moldering candle wax.  Their eyes glint metallic and red, deep in their musty sockets.  Their teeth gnash at him in confusion.  The room is full of them, and when he stops at the top of the stairs, every single Dead Thing That Moves, clearly interrupted in its long accustomed worship activities, stops, sitting and staring directly at him. He realizes if he wants to fit in, he has to be dead and rotting inside too.  Otherwise, they will eat him. It is what they are gathered together to do.  To devour life and make everything dead. 

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Peter’s father said he’d seen Boy to Man (1962) at a staff meeting in case he ever taught health class. He said that so long as boys and girls weren’t taught in the same room, and so long as Peter remembered that despite what the film had said, masturbation was NOT normal, and so long as Peter referred to the class as “Family Health,” and not You-know-what Ed., that Peter could remain in the room while it was taught.

  Peter hadn’t really understood the film properly. For one thing, he’d confused “masturbation” with “menstruation” and had asked his father awkward questions about exactly how boys could even indulge in this unnatural body function at all. It sure didn’t sound very normal for boys to menstruate, Peter was forced to agree. But how did they even do it? Could it happen to him by accident if he “wasn’t careful?” Did Mr. Periwinkle menstruate?

  After that, Peter’s father, mortified to have to explain any of this, had asked Peter to just go sit in the library while his class took Family Health. Peter did this and got many books read. And all the kids in his class believed he had no idea exactly what happened when a man liked a lady very much and lumpy things happened in his pants. But Peter read books, so of course he did.

 

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Of course some of us have been privileged to witness the new nature active and able to stalemate for a time that pervasive, wicked old nature, in the lives of those older ones who have now gone on to be forever with the Lord and sing his praises eternally.  Many of them could have been great men or women, gifted as they were, in the flesh, by birth.  But how wonderful that they were instead, through the leading of the scriptures, able to give all of that up to humbly, uncomplainingly follow the precious Word of GOD!

Let us, in any difficulty or misunderstanding that may arise among us, never seek to mold the minds of other Christians through our own personality or presence among them.  Self must not be allowed to act.  At the first sign of Self raising its wicked head, it must be judged immediately.

  And so we see that the Christian’s lot is to be divided.  To war daily against Self.  To seek to repress the unceasingly self-pleasuring efforts of that old nature, always remembering how active, deceitful, and above all things ALIVE that old nature is. 

The scripture teaches us that we were crucified with Christ, and this is true, in a sense at least.  But surely none of us can claim that our old nature is DEAD?  Ridiculous!  Far be the thought from us!  We fight that old nature every waking moment of every waking day.  What is the only thing that can rob a true Christian of his happiness?  Thoughts of Self.  Seeking to please and follow and be one’s Self.  This is something we must give up, if we are to ever please our Heavenly Father above.  How solemn if we try to, like Jonah of old, run off into this World, with its leeks and garlics, its apes and peacocks, to follow a path of self will!  There must always be cleavage.  We must needs cleave to Him lest we walk unworthy of the vocation in which we were called.

God has boundless wrath toward our Self, and so we MUST NOT be our Selves.  The personality we were born with, which came to us with our mother’s milk, clearly must go.   Can anyone ponder what has been laid out faithfully here in this little booklet, and these clear directives from the precious Word of God and still complain of “depression”?  How sad, when the Word of...See More

 -from George Shovel’s “Sin, Self, This World and The Old Nature” (1923) Wasp Tent Publishers.  Print.

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People would often ask Mr. Shovel questions like “Why can’t Christians go to movies?” Or “Why can’t Christians dance?”

  Mr. Shovel always said something like:

 H ow could you (how could I, the very children of God) go into such a place as that, and take our entertainment, and feel comfortable there, in the very sinful world itself, the world that crucified my (in the dark, sad world that crucified your) precious saviour, the bless-éd, perfect, sinless Son of God? How could we do that? I could not do that. Could you do that? Surely we could not do that. Could you do that and feel right before the Lord who shed His precious blood for us? I think not. I think not.

  Mr. Shovel answered all questions with rhetorical questions and a great number of italics. His high, carrying voice would go up and down and pause dramatically. It sounded half Captain Kirk and half Kermit the Frog. And then he would smile sadly and pat the person on the shoulder. Didn’t they get it? Movies and dancing were fun. What else needed to be said? We were here to say no to fun. The Lord Jesus had died to set us free from sin, and we wanted to go around having fun? Really?

 

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On Star Trek, everyone would be standing around laughing about something, and Mr. Spock would not understand because he was from a different culture and would miss the references. Everyone would enjoy something, but Mr. Spock would not be allowed by his culture to enjoy it. Or Mr. Spock would make a joke, but it would be so subtle that no one would laugh. (Maybe Captain Kirk would say “Spock, I…SEE what you…didthere,” but that was about it. Of course Peter didn’t know that Captain Kirk TALKED…likethaaaat because Peter had only read the books and had never heard the voices of any of the actors.)

  Everyone else on the show could do whatever they wanted, but not Mr. Spock, because he was a Vulcan, and they didn’t believe in fun and emotions and were very religious. So Mr. Spock just watched and knew everything, or annoyed people by mentioning things that were terribly obvious but which you weren’t supposed to talk about for social reasons. Or he went to his quarters and prayed.  Like Peter was supposed to do. Vulcans did not swear, sing, dance or drink alcohol. They meditated in silence. Being a church kid was a lot like being a Vulcan.

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Other people called Peter’s church “Plymouth Brethren,” due to its history. This didn’t remove the confusion much, because each generation every “Plymouth Brethren” worldwide group was likely to have some kind of acrimonious spat, inevitably involving learned Christian men on two sides fighting and having what George Carlin would have called “a great big dickwaving prickfight” over which group was demonstrating Christian unity correctly. After generations of these “divisions,” there were so many different unaffiliated branches of Plymouth Brethren groups which wouldn’t speak to each other that no Brethren person could even keep track of them all. Attempts to diagram the history of it looked like the root system of an enormous tree.

 

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He could spell things, and didn’t generally make grammar mistakes when he spoke. He liked to draw. He laughed at things that his father didn’t think were funny. Things with words. He also liked superheroes. It got worse and worse.

  “Peter, you have to be very careful,” his father told him, getting out pen and paper. “There’s a line. See? On the one end of it are people who are very male. On the other end of it are people who are very female. Here’s the middle. You’re kind of in the middle…maybe a little to the feminine side. You know how Mr. Black’s wife at church is kinda like a man and how the Blacks have never had any children? You know how Mr. Periwinkle at church is actually a whole lot more like a woman than a man and he still lives with his mother and has never married? He’s not sure which washroom to go into, I swear. Be careful. Now I don’t want you to play with Jonathan Lerose after church, ok? Do you understand?”

  Peter did. He really did.

 

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The enemy uses diversity. We remove it. The enemy needs his creatures to pour themselves out as an offering to him, to throw themselves without reservation into reality itself, holding nothing back. We convince them to bottle themselves up inside themselves, letting nothing of themselves out whatsoever. He requires them to commit. We foster an inability to fully commit themselves, in any way, to anything. He puts the spark of excellence into them. He lights inspiration deep within them. We teach them to shamefully, dutifully bury all that in a hole in the ground. For him.

 -from Thrallinggnaw Rendtorso’s On The Supplantation and Theoreticization of the Life Which Infests All Organic Creatures. Infernal Press (1948) Human Skin. 

   

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Meeting Room

1102 Cliff Avenue

Matawacka

October 16, 1991

To the saints gathered together unto the precious Name of the Lord Jesus Christ elsewhere.

Beloved brethren,

Loving greetings in the precious Name of the Lord Jesus.

Those gathered to the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ here in Matawacka feel it necessary to write, to those gathered in like manner, in order to clarify facts regarding a letter dated Oct. 6, 1991 and an attached letter, dated Sept. 16, 1991.  Your assembly may have received this correspondence from a group of persons, who have separated themselves from this assembly and are now meeting at another location in Matawacka (Leo Smith Centre, 100 Bonvern Drive, Matawacka).

It may be known to you that on May 26 of this year the church had the solemn duty to silence Joe Edgar, who is known by many for his work in the “Silver Birch” and “Ichthys” Bible camps.

We had hoped and prayed that this milder form of discipline would only have been a temporary measure until his restoration of soul to the Lord and to his brethren.  We are grieved that this discipline was not accepted by him as from the Lord.  Instead he rebelled against it, by stopping attendance at all meetings locally, and going elsewhere, inciting the brethren.

During this time of rebelling Joe Edgar, together with his sympathizers, would worship at other assemblies (sometimes with those from his home assembly being present) while refusing to do so in their home assembly at 1102 Cliff Avenue, Matawacka.  This placed brethren in confusion and in an unscriptural position, similar to “Open Brethren”.  The allowance of evil will affect all those who are gathered on the ground of the One Body in separation from evil.  “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” I Cor. 5:6.

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  If you start early, you get a creature who will, when it is about to like something, wince, expect shame (and even, in some homes, pain).  It will then panic when it is tempted to feel joy, and that tide of guilt will start flooding wonderfully in.  It will then turn that knob right down to zero with a sharp twist.  Get the creature turning that knob down to zero for almost everything until the natural joy reactions, appreciation and “like” responses cease functioning normally altogether.  Have that knob snap right off in an attempt to nullify joy, all as an attempt to avoid unspecified bad things.

  If this traditionally behaviouristic negative reinforcement strategy is implemented consistently enough, from a tender, delectable age, the subject will simply never develop a normal “like” response, and will mature into that kind of human that is lacking one and will see such a response as troubling, threatening and dangerous when seen in others.  It’s really quite something. 

If it isn’t safe to “like” things, the mature human simply won’t.  And it will “warn” others about liking things, which will further perpetuate our system.

  The third method, though perhaps not as...See More

-from Archdemon Clottmucous Throbsphinctre III’s “Upon the Care, Maintenance and Modification of Human Creatures (1953)” Shrieking Anguish Clearing House.  Entrails.

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TRANSCRIPTION OF HOUR-LONG BIBLE STUDY ON 1 CORINTHIANS 4

JUNE 14, 1983

[MR. PLANCK reads aloud the second half of 1 Corinthians 4]

MR. WHITE: How thrilling that we can enjoy the blessed privilege of being here this evening, going over God’s Word together! The young folks in particular are getting a sound outline of the blessed Word of God! Isn’t it wonderful?  How it should energize us!  And not just this evening, but all week long, as we go forth into this world, rubbing shoulders with those who do not love our Lord and need to bow the knee to him!

MR. BROWN: The story is told of old Mr. McDowell meeting a young brother who’d been reading the Word of God one Lord’s Day.  “What have you been enjoying in God’s Word?” Mr. McDowell asked the young man.  (Mr. McDowell was, as those who had the privilege to meet him may remember, very fond of being an encouragement to young people) “I just found something new in Romans!” the young man said.  (He’d not long been a child of God.)  “Well,” Mr. McDowell told him, “If it’s new, it isn’t true, and if it’s true, it isn’t new.”  Surely this should be an exercise for all of us!  There is much that is new, coming in among us, and we need to fight to hold fast to those old landmarks lest we end up, every one, wracked upon the dark rocks that threaten us.

Mr. Churchill: And so much more as we see the day approaching...

MR. GREY: I think we all have a lot to learn about the Word of God, though.  There are always things we can learn that we didn’t know before. Things that would be new. To us, anyway.

[THERE IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE]

MR. ROBERTS: This chapter reminds me of how, when you raise your own children, you have to forgive them when they do things they shouldn’t.  Otherwise, they never learn about their Heavenly Father who forgives us everything we do!

MR. WHITE: So wonderful! He is a forgiving God, isn’t He?

MR. BROWN: Those who met Mr. McMurdy may remember how he always used to tell us that Satan never stops trying to fool us, though. We have to be always on our guard and seek to do the Lord’s will, rather than following our own sinful path.  Self is the enemy.  That wicked old nature.  So active in the tables of men around us.  “Go to the church of your choice.”  How against scripture!  We do not choose or build our own churches.  We simply obey the leading of the Holy Spirit and, blessedly, it has brought us here, where it would have us be! Over the
Word of God, this evening!

MR. WHITE: So true. How exciting to read about worshiping God with others of like precious faith!  Thrilling!

MR. GREY: Well, I think this part of the chapter is about praise rather than worship, though.  Worship isn’t really mentioned... Not in the chapter we’re looking at tonight.

MR. WHITE’S BROTHER MR. WHITE: We serve a God who loves us, don’t we?  “Abba father,” as that lovely little hymn puts it!  A small Hebrew child can say “abba” before it even has teeth!  The manifold wisdom of God!  Like all the colours of the rainbow.  Red, blue, green, indigo and violet!  Lovely...

MR. WHITE: Uh...what was that, Brother Barry?

MR. GREY: I was just saying that this part of the chapter seems to be about praise rather than worship.  We worship the Father for who He is, but we praise the Son for what he has done for us.  Worship and praise are different.  Paul seems to make a distinction between them.

MR. WHITE: Such a joyous privilege, though, to worship with other Christians, I’m sure you’d agree.

MR. WHITE’S BROTHER MR. WHITE: We are all sheep in his flock, who know his voice and are known by him, aren’t we? I just love that...

MR. GREY: Yes.  But this chapter doesn’t really address worship at all.  That’s coming up in chapter 6.  It isn’t really touched on here, though, at all really.  This chapter is more about the Son’s relationship to his Father, rather than our own relationship with the Father.

MR. ROBERTS: When Christians worship together, it is SO attractive for the lost to see, isn’t it?  Us, poor, wretched sinners, eternally forgiven everything we’ve ever done, and allowed to worship Him! Amazing!

MR. CHURCHILL: And so much more as we see the day approaching.  It could be tonight, He will call His dear ones home! Those of us gathered to His precious name, and also some of those who are sadly still involved in System.  Because even in those groups, there are some true believers.  And we will be with them in the air one day.  No more sadness, no more toil, no more suffering!  No more dealing with these bodies of humiliation and shame.  No more wrestling with Self and the old nature. That deceitful, wicked old nature which loves to sin!

MR. BROWN: Amen, brother J.R.  And we will know as we are known.  Mr. Dicing always used to remind us of that, didn’t he?

MR. GREY: So important to walk worthy, too. To be doers of the Word, and not hearers only. To keep separate from this world so our own tow truck doesn’t get stuck in the same ditch they’re in.  If we don’t maintain Separation from this world, we will soon become part of it.

[THERE IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE SILENCE]

MR. ROBERTS: This reminds me of how when a robin is building its nest, it uses straw.  Straw is something you might find in a field.  Surely we are to be out in the mission fields, spreading the good news to others, about the love of God, and how He forgives!  And then worship the Son, as Brother Barry was saying, for who he is, and the Father as well, because of what He has done for us, His children, who are so unworthy, but have had our slates wiped clean in the blood of the lamb!

MR. BROWN: And we need to speak to our Heavenly Father in a way befitting Who He is.  Not like in so many of the churches out there.  Much is said nowadays about “You” or “Your.”  Who are we to talk to the Almighty, Righteous God of Heaven with that kind of familiar, irreverent language?  We are addressing the Lord Almighty, not calling a dog.  We can see in the Word of God, as Mr. McMurdy always used to read, the blessed Son of God praying to God his Father, and saying “thee” and “thou.” In John 17, for example.  Who are we to think we know better?

MR. WHITE: Armed with our Spirit-imparted understanding of the blessed contents of God’s precious Word, and what we’ve been enjoying discussing in this little portion tonight, we can go out into this world and be shining testimonies for Him!

MR. BROWN: We trust that some of the younger ones here tonight will just really listen, and truly value this wonderful, God-given opportunity to grow up where the Lord would have them be, under the sound of solid teaching, so that when they are older, they may be kept.  Growing up under the sound of the Word is a rare privilege.  Let us not forget it!

MR. WHITE’S BROTHER MR. WHITE: Oh yes!  SUCH a privilege!

MR. BROWN: Our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ plucks us from the road to eternal damnation, but it is sound doctrine which will keep us on the road to blessing...

CONT. ON NEXT PAGE

Peter Grey Book Online

  I finally got this book edited and formatted, uploaded and published online.  It can be purchased here in paperback  and here in hardcover for a dollar more (unless you're ordering it outside the U.S. apparently, in which case they're almost the same price.) For some reason they won't let me charge less for the paperback, but as it's cheaper to make, I make a tiny profit on each one sold.  The hardcover, not so much. Not unless I want to charge, like, $30 for it, which I don't.  What I want is people to read the book.  That's my focus.  And the odd part is that when people order the book, I don't get to see who has ordered.  I just see that a book has sold and all the payment and shipping address stuff isn't my business.
  It is a fictionalized memoir.  It's my life, told in a number of different ways, with a focus on me working through my religious upbringing.  It's sad, it's nostalgic, it's intense, it's funny, it's dark, it's challenging, it's thought-provoking.
  Or so I believe.  And just in case it wasn't obvious at first glance:

  A couple of entries from this blog show up in the book, fictionalized.  (You read them here first, folks!)
  This story was originally going to be a concept album called The Story of Peter Grey, but that venture has been something I can't stop messing with and tweaking and never quite being able to tell the story properly with.  So it has become a lengthy, ficitonalized memoir instead.
  I can still work on the songs, but now the story has been told in a way that I think works.  It is the whole story about being born into the Plymouth Brethren church, growing up and wrestling through all of it, finding my way in the world, discovering friends, music, story and freedom.  And in all of that losing my faith in church, rather than in God.  (That's backwards, I realize)  It deals with things like the church divisions (with the actual letters showing up, with names changed to protect the guilty.)  It also deals with being a kid who loved Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and any amount of 80s crap.

Getting Together

  When I grew up, the start to our week, its lynchpin, its setup, was church Sunday morning.  When people (eventually me) developed spotty Sunday morning attendance, serious bible verses about losing your love for Christ, or "getting cold in your soul," and worst of all "forsaking the assembling of yourselves together" were inevitably quoted in our absence.  If you didn't go to church every week, you wouldn't "be kept."  You would "go off into the world," which was the opposite of church. 
  An atheist I once spoke to felt this way too.  He knew that I didn't go to church regularly and his world view was deeply troubled by the evident fact that my brainwashing wasn't simply wearing off, wasn't leaving me a normal atheist like him, once that church indoctrination was removed.  It doesn't work like that for me. I know it has for many.  I don't 'go to church' Sunday morning.  This is not to say I don't have a Sunday routine, nor won't be talking to any Christians.  But Christians give a lot of lip service to what they think of as "Christian community."

  Because the bible actually tells about how Jesus spent his last evening together with his friends.  The actual Christ and the actual Christian community that had gathered around him.  When Christian was a kind of Jewish.  It was Friday night.  There was food.  There was conversation.  There was wine.   I'm imagining they could see to eat that evening through the use of candlelight or by oil lamps.  I don't think history bears out our idea that it was much like what we're used to seeing in paintings (everyone posing on the same side of the table, like on TV, so no one's blocking the camera or showing the back of their head).  I'm told that two thousand years ago, they didn't use tables and chairs as thoughtlessly and invariably as we tend to do today.  I don't know if they lay or sat crosslegged or lounged around the room on couches and cushions or futon-like mats on the floor, or what exactly, when they hung out together that night.  The bible says that the apostle John and Jesus were physically very close that evening, either leaning on one another or otherwise sprawled together in what certainly does not have to be read as a romantic way.

  And that night Jesus said how much he'd been looking forward to having this supper with them. 

  But then I think of "church."  It's not like that at all. 

What I'm Missing

  What I am missing in my life?  That exact same kind of connection.  With Christians.  Time spent hanging out. Where someone might well be sitting on the floor. 
  I am a bachelor.  I look for people and things to fill up my hours with, and it's not easy because so many have done the whole "See ya in twenty years!  Procreation to attend to!" sudden exit from my life during my twenties.  For some it is likely permanent. For most it is total, at least for now.  I know people who send me pictures, at Christmas, of their kids, who I have never met and likely never will, with not a single picture of themselves, who I have met, but haven't laid eyes on for ten or twenty years.  Even in the cases of the ones who don't want kids, they can have husbands or wives who don't enjoy having me around, and that's "it" for us hanging out then too.

  Wednesday evening, I often meet at a pub with a few other people who like to talk about stuff.  We have a beer and maybe fries or deep-fried zuccini or whatever.  And it's very nice.  They don't profess any particular religious belief.  But we enjoy each other.   And we know each other pretty well and we respect each other's differences. We certainly do talk about religion and stuff sometimes.

  Saturday evening, I often go to band practice.  What that's like is I drive to Tyler and Danielle's in the evening, and I come in and there is almost always something cooking.  Something's just been eaten or is about to be eaten.  And we hang out and we sing songs and enjoy one another.  They don't profess any particular religious belief.  But we know each other pretty well and we respect each other's differences.  We certainly do talk about religion and stuff.  There is food, music and conversation. It's "warm." It reminds me of the "last supper" in the bible.

"Church"

  But "church" isn't like that either, in my experience.  For one thing it's far too brightly lit for intimacy and warmth. And the music's bad.  (The smiles are worse.)  That formal "assembling together" has never had the same level of candour, of honesty, of compassion, empathy, understanding, tolerance or insight as the informal getting together with people who aren't Christians.  The worst are the ones where everyone is falling over themselves to seem informal and "just relaxed" that they're afraid to do or say anything approaching the wrong thing.  Where every act of informality is carefully applauded.
  At church, far as I know no one's "keeping up on on you" and seeing if you're okay, and noticing when you aren't, in my own experience.  (I hear mythic tales of superchurches where everyone's psychic, but I've never experienced that).  I have never had anything like the open conversations about God and the bible and what it means to be human and what's hard, and what might be worth trying, and what our hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares are.

What I Want

  What I want, what I demand, I am afraid, is that Christians simply be able to keep up with my interactions with their atheist counterparts.  They they be willing to befriend each other.  And they aren't even trying, near as I can see.  I don't see Christians, generally, except by accident.  You know why not?  They have "church" for that.  And they're "busy."

  When I was a kid, I'd go to bible conferences. In Montreal, Ottawa, Toledo, New Jersey, Chicago. Wherever.  And men would drone on and on about how wonderful it was to be us, being here, being told by them how wonderful it was to be us, being there.  And I'd wait quite impatiently for them to shut up.  Because I wanted to meet the other people who were there.  That's why I'd gone.  We'd have like forty minutes to try to connect with each other before the next windbag would start up talking about unity and togetherness, while we all had to sit silently again, not connecting until he was done.  There were people there who I spoke to only once a year, and I wanted to hear what was up with them.  I'd see if anyone would "really talk" despite there being Christians nearby.  Sometimes I'd find they were almost completely different from before when I spoke to them this time.  Sometimes I'd remember stuff I'd forgotten.  And there were people I'd not met yet that I wanted to meet.  I wanted to meet new friends. Girls, even.  And this was before the Internet, so being friends took work. And we did that work.

  As I got older, it became ever more easy and thoughtless and instant to keep in touch with people, no matter where they lived.  And so we didn't.  This has continued until Facebook statuses and the occasional comment typed under them are by far the most intimate connections most of us have to each other.

  Time and time again, some stupid, plastic little text-only Facebook conversation has amazed and astounded churchgoing people, who say "I wish I could be this honest at my church!" or "We never have REAL talks like this at any church I've been to!" or "These conversations keep me honest."  And always this makes someone angry that they'd impugned church in this way.  The angry people then post something like "Ten years ago, I attended a church that WAS sincere and honest and real!  We sometimes had real talks there!  So stop your generalizing, and don't say anything bad about churches at all, until you've attended Stony Brook Bible Chapel Fellowship.  Well, you can't go there anymore, because it doesn't exist anymore.  The building's being used for Narcotics Anonymous, but...I'm sure somewhere there's some church, that at least for a decade or two, might have levels of sincerity and honesty that can approach a Facebook discussion!"
  I'm angry too.  I want people to stop being amazed and commenting whenever Christians are sincere, honest and open.  Because there is only one reason I can think of why people are so amazed when a Christian conversation is honest, open and sincere.

Where I Live

 I live in a small town. It has only 4 000 people.  And all around it are other towns of the same size, or slightly larger.  And there is also the city of Ottawa, which is a pretty tiny city, as far as cities go.  And I grew up here.  I teach a hundred or so high school students each year.  I know many of those who are Christians, and there are more still that I don't know.  I know parents who send their kids to the Catholic high school so they can have "Silent Night" at Christmas.  I know the Christian academy for elementary age kids.  If I were to go into any church you could send me to around here, in all likelihood I'd find I had taught, I had once gone to church with, or am outright related, by blood and/or marriage to, some person there, or someone they knew well.  It's that small around here.

  And those empty evenings when I haven't contrived something to do with people who don't believe in God, I am at home, well aware that the other Christians are out there too, not hanging out.  They live just up the block.  They work in the stores. They have sometimes two or three churches on one block.  And they do not assemble together.  Instead they go to that one church and shut out the Christians next door.

   They are segregated like the American South.   It's like there're Baptist fountains, restaurants and bus stations, and Anglican ones, as far as our church community goes.  We really are segregated, with only a few, showy exceptions which seem to prove the rule.  Because we like it like that.  Because we'd far rather deal with people of no real religious affiliation, than with someone who chose a different church to owns them and their time, than with someone who might disagree on points of doctrine.  So we just stay segregated.  We live as if those brothers and sisters of ours at other churches didn't exist, or weren't Christians at all.  Not really.  Not the same kind as us, surely.

  And so, obviously, I am anti-"church."  Increasingly.  Because I believe it's something I am not to do.  If others want to mess around with all that, I will try not to judge them.  Yet "church" is all the few Christians who are willing to talk to me ever seem willing to discuss.  It's the sacred cow in the room.  We all know what the first question is that any Christian asks when they find out you also are a Christian:
"What church do you go to?" 
It's an "us" or "them" test.  How different are you?  You don't go to our church, certainly, which probably means we won't be hanging out, but if you go to a church that's not terribly different, you might come to ours?  Or maybe we don't like ours much, and maybe we'll switch to yours and then we'll hang out?
  I swear we're like little kids who need our churches to set us up with playdates and sleepovers.  Because we can't/don't/won't socialize like grownups.

What I'm Trying To Do

  For years I have had a simple test to try to meet people who have grown out of this: when I meet a Christian, and confess to them that I don't go to a church, I try to arrange meeting up outside of a church setting. The big question is, "If I won't go to your church, will you talk to me anyway?"  Will that person meet me at a restaurant or movie or pub or coffee shop or any of those kinds of places where normal people meet up?
  The experiment drags on.  In twenty years, it approaches 2% of Christians who will meet up at all, even once, if it's not at their church, and about 0% of them who will do it more than once.  And they live up the street from me.  I buy things in their stores.  They creep my Internet rantings.  They talk about me to others, but do not contact me on purpose.  They tell me this when I meet them randomly.  And I/we always say "We should meet up sometime."  And then they try to get me to come to their church.  And if I won't go, I am not forgiven it.  And I am not part of their life, apart from perhaps a guilty pleasure to creep online.

  Last fall I went to the Montreal bible conference.  I was asked not to go, and told that if I did, I was not allowed to have supper (or any other meal) with the people there.  But I went anyway.
  Because the fact that I wasn't allowed to eat there was fairly common knowledge, someone decided to go out and eat with me anyway.  And she tried to bring people, so the gossip mill couldn't suggest that a torrid affair had occurred (in those terribly "special" circles, whenever a man and woman leave the sight of the mob for anything over about ten minutes, a torrid affair is presumed to have, of course, occurred).  And not a single person came with us.  But she didn't back out, and stood behind the idea that refusing to eat with a Christian for no good reason whatsoever, was just stupid.  Because she's a hero like that.  So she now bears the accusations that what she did, rather than being a standing up for Christian community, for treating other Christians like Christians, for assembling together, even over a sandwich, was actually something romantic.  Among other things, this simply points up how unprecedented what she did truly was.  And no one interpreted it correctly, as far as she knows.  Or if they did, they said nothing, certainly to her, and let the "special rest" be the only ones who spoke up.  To think their special thoughts, uncontradicted.
  If you know who she is, and you can see the good in what she did for the body of Christ, shame on you if you don't let her know.  There sure are enough people out there who instantly judge anyone who advertently or inadvertenty, rocks the boat even a smidge.

  Last month I went to a funeral.  (note: I am NOT trying to diss people at a funeral.  I'm trying to illustrate how we do things, unthinkingy and habitually, as Christians, and to express my unrequited desire to be able to connect to them informally, outside their church settings)  It was the funeral of a man I used to go to church with, before church separated us all, never to reconnect.  I used to be invited to his house for lunch very frequently.  He and they were very nice.  In the 90s, me being invited to his house for lunch got curtailed by the fact that my church kicked me out.  And I never ate with him again and never will.  His mother either, though we were fond of each other.  And his kids grew up and I have never eaten with any of them since either.
  The odd thing is that that man, his mother, his wife and all of his kids got kicked out of "our church" too, just like me and everyone in my family.  This meant that, really, there was no reason for us to not be able to spend time together over food.  But though the reason I couldn't eat with them had been removed, upon reflection I realize that the reason I was invited to begin with is also not in effect nowadays.  You see, I'm not going to be going to their church with them.  I was always invited over for dinner before evening church, or lunch after Sunday morning church and before Sunday school.  And I never went to that family's church again, so I never ate with them again.  Because we Christians don't do that.  Social life = church.  Anything which falls outside of that tends to allowed to simply fall away.

  And at the funeral, I said to the man's wife how we should have a coffee sometime.  Because I miss them.  "There's coffee at church!" she said. I really like her.  Very single-minded.
  "I don't do church on a first date," I said, assuming I was being understood.  "It's one of my rules."

  "No more rules!" protested the woman's stunning adult daughter, who I didn't see go through her teens and twenties, and who now has a brain sharp as a tack to go with her piercing blue gaze.

  "I'm serious," I said.  "We should get a sandwich some time, or I could come over." (I am a bachelor and literally don't own a table, so inviting families over is something that I, like most bachelors, never think to do).  "We could all eat together. We can do that now."

  "There were sandwiches at the funeral!" she said.  "We did eat together.  Anyway, why don't you come tomorrow?"

  Could it be?  Was I to be invited back to that house to eat with them for the first time since my church kicked me out in 1998?  "I didn't eat sandwiches," I said.  "But tomorrow?  At your house?" I asked.

  "No. Here," she said, indicating the church. Because the next day was Sunday.  She didn't want to hang out and catch up so much as she wanted me to show up at church.  For my own good, I very much imagine. Because she's the kind of person who's always thinking of other people's good.  But Church was still the thing we all served, clearly.  It defined our timetable.  (I may well be wrong.  But it sure felt like that to me.)
  The conversation ended warmly and funny, when I confessed I'd eaten a brownie, which was more intimate than sandwiches, my ex-church compatriot declared, and I was inclined to agree.  But still, I'd like to eat with her/them at their house, or a restaurant.  Not at a funeral.  I don't see why someone has to die for us to all see each other.

  And before this, my sister and I met up with a guy we went to high school with, who went to our church until the division orchestrated within our church in 1991, after which we had never eaten together again.  We went to Pizza Hut.  We had beers.  (Well, my sister and I did.  He had Coors Lite instead).   He went on and on about how the half of our church he'd "gone with," (the opposite to the half we "stayed with" until it kicked both of us and our parents out) was so modern, so much freer, and so very unlike the repressive experience we'd grown up with.
  And in the middle of it, my sister wanted to take a selfie with him.  She was figuring out her phone, but wanted to have a picture of herself with him.  And he freaked out.  Because there was a Coors Lite can on the table right there in front of him.  He worried that if the picture were taken, someone at his church (he gave actual specific names that had him worried) might see that he'd drank an almost-beer with us.  I said I was unimpressed by the level of freedom people from his church claimed to possess, given the fact that this was even a concern.
  He has never spoken to me again.  "Was he not cool with what I said?" I asked my sister, because I'm completely clueless.  "I don't think that went over with him at this point," she said.
  I don't get "church."

  "But it's normal and proper and scriptural for Christians to deal in Christian community" I hear dissenting voices say.

  My response is "I find it abnormal and improper for Christians not to be able to deal in any way outside their little clubhouses."  And also "I'm not seeing much community."

I Haven't Given Up

  But the experiment continues.  I live surrounded by Christians.  My goal is to see if you will share a bite with me, knowing full well that I am not a potential attendee at your church.  That once you give up on recruiting me, you may yet acknowledge me as having some other worth as a human being, if not a Christian. I've lost faith that people can even tell the difference between God and "church" anymore, in many cases.  And I do not serve a "church."  And I do not follow a pastor or elders.  I emulate someone much less easy on the ears.
  But I will be continuing to carry out this experiment.  Because I have this odd idea:  I believe that, in theory, the community of Christians is a Unity. It is one.  Yet we've been trained to live as if it/we weren't.  Every Sunday morning, "we" go into our own My Little Jesus clubhouses and then have little or nothing to do with the Christian community as a whole. And we feel this is perfectly okay and quite natural and proper.
  But this effectively negates us.  God gives teachers, evangelists, shepherds and so on.  To everyone.  Not to specific "churches." And we guarantee we'll never spend time with most of them, unless they happen to be the specific ones we've met, and have officially appointed to those positions, in our tiny, poorly-attended church.  (Because they'll consent to be members of our church, rather than of all the others, again, which seems to be all important, for no good reason.)  We would rather plant churches than develop lasting, intimate, sincere, honest, open relationships with the Christians who live all around us.  We build far more churches than we could ever hope to fill.

  And tonight, the two Christians I know who will actually meet up and talk to me about bible things are meeting me at a restaurant to talk about James.  (I know.  I know.  That doesn't count as "assembling together.")  There is no church oversight.  No clear leadership.  It is, in fact, the opposite, or an alternative to proper church membership, involvement and attendance.
  And because they are both ladies, and are married to each other, I wouldn't trust most of the Christians I know to treat them as what they are: Christians.  I expect they'd be made an "issue", to come down on one side or the other of.  I expect no one would talk with them about James, but only about what they presumably do with their genitals.
  I expect all this because I've been watching Christians on the Internet.  And Christians seem like they'd much rather judge people, especially for matters sexual, and habitually look to the bible only to affirm ideas they have already been given long ago, than look to bible to get ideas from it.  Or hope.  And I need both ideas and hope.  Simply knowing who and what's "wrong" has lost the attraction it once had for me, and my reading of the bible seems to find it being about more than that.  And my life needs more than that.

  I also don't need to sing songs about how lovely it is for us to get together and sing songs, in a "smiles-only" environment.  Where things have to be fine.  Because we're Christians.  Or at the very least, where any problem a person has needs to get solved that month.  Otherwise it may make us need to doubt that person's spirituality for fear we will otherwise doubt God's willingness and ability to use church to "heal" people.

  Here endeth the lesson.  I predict a barrage of comments from people seeking to differ from me and not connect, due to my heretical views on that sacredest of evangelical sacred cows, "church involvement." And the necessity of Christian community, which I will be talking about with my Christians friends tonight when "forsaking the assembling of ourselves together."

 

There

  Since we spoke last, I wrote a book.  It's several pages long.  You might recognize the cover art as a parody of the first book in The Hardy Boys series.  I have been told it looks like Harry Potter.  But it's me.  And I looked like that twenty years before Harry Potter was written.
  I also woke up this morning with a song in my head waiting for me to write it.  So I did.  It is here.