Isaiah and Jeremiah are Contagious (the writing style)

1   Woe unto us, oh brethren!

2   For we have turned the fear of the Lord into a terror of being judged by other men,

3   We are proud of our shame; we clutch it to our breast as a mother clutches her newborn babe to her teats, and we suckle it all the day so that we may take pride in how it has increased and grown.

4   We have turned unity into narrowness, and durst not join ourselves to other Christians, lest we be mistaken by others as being no more righteous than they are.

5   We do not love.  (Not even as men measure love.)

6   Behold, the Lord is doing a great work in us, but we will have none of becoming it, and will not  do it, for we know not exactly what it shall be; we say "he is an austere master; him we would not anger."  And so we do our own work and call it his.

7   We are not servants of the Lord. We choose to follow men, and to give lip service to the teachings and traditions of the sons of men, even unto the seventh generation.

8   We bury our talent in the ground, lest another man judge us.  Every one of us has hid his light under a bushel lest our brothers see it and mock at how small a light it is;

9   We are full of care about the smallest of things, straining at a gnat, and do not let him care for us.  But when those who have the rule over us ask us to swallow a camel, we do so, unthinkingly.

10   We sell our lives to false shepherds who do not spare the flock, putting ourselves under their power for our whole lives so that we may be sheep forever, and never young lions, eagles or men;

11   We imprison our hearts and sell our birthright, the liberty we have in Christ, for a bowl of ancient manna and long-dead maggots.

12   From our ecclesiastical battlements we spy the naked worship of others, and lo it is beautiful; therefore we fire arrows at her and pass laws in our own palace that it not be seen among us, despising any who dance before the Lord.  We teach that worshipping the lord is to lie as still as a dead man, and to keep silence among the tombs, in our chains, railing upon our brothers who walk free before the lord.

13   We leave with the Lord what he has left to us to do for him, yet we do not wait to see his salvation when it is imminent; we do not wait for him to do any great thing, for we have no faith that he wills to do so.  "The Lord delayeth his blessing of me!" we say.  "How long shall he tarry?"

14   We do not trust in the Lord. We say unto him "Why hast thou made me thus?  There is no wisdom in it at all."

15   We will not live as who the Lord has created us, neither do we allow the Lord to be himself in our eyes, nay, not in any of our dealings with him. We are hypocrites, professional play-actors, playing characters, even in a play we have written, filling it with our own foolish imaginings.  And the part we have written, even created for the part of our creator, is one he will not consent to play.

16   We will not lift ourselves up and stand on our feet like living men.  We crawl on our bellies in the dust from whence we came, and to which we will return. We eat dust all our days.  The breasts of our wives give forth dust and not milk. Our children are clothed in dust.

17   We have been called forth from the tomb, but wrap our bindings around us, saying "Yet a little slumber, yet a little folding of the hands to sleep; death is upon us if we only wait for it.  Oh, ask us not to come forth, for we have put our burial raiment upon us and cannot rise, our bodies have been washed for the grave and so we cannot walk."

18   We are a valley of dry bones, singing piously about our deadness and our dryness, unwilling to rise up.  Smiling we say "Sing unto us again that song, yea even that song about how it is the last days, how it is a time of weakness, and how we are all dead. We like that one." We shut the door fast upon us; we sing and hear stories and neither go out, nor bring any man in, for it is death in there, and there is no water for them, but only dust. We lie in state, as if we were dead kings.  We rest in the peace of dead men, though we have not lived lives.

19   We bite and devour one another in endless disputings as to whom among us is least, that our shame may be victorious and justified; we are destroyed by each other, bloody with wounds.

20  We cannot hear sound instruction, but follow foolish fables, cunningly devised myths and admonitions to not repent of what we collectively are; we tell tales of how our fathers failed to do various things before us, and yet were humble about it.  Whose faithlessness we follow.  Who sold us into slavery to cruel men.  Who haul us before the church magistrates. Who banish us to far countries, to other churches, and make prodigals of us all.

21   We preach another gospel.

22   We have turned our father's house into a house of slavers, selling the freedom of his children to any who is rich in legalism, closed-heartedness and ecclesiastical ambition; we will turn our children over to any man with a scourge.

23  The lord is the light of the world, but we will have no light shed upon the private doings of our assemblies, for our deeds in them are oftentimes evil and merciless, so that women are forbidden to look upon them; we are the ecclesiastical offspring of church vipers. We the dead judge the living, and we turn away repentance.  The lord is not our lord.  We walk paths of suspicion, spite and darkness in the assembly, though he is peace, love and light. Nevertheless, we claim his presence and say we are surely his true children, even the fruit of his loins and the offspring of no other.  We are the children of who we serve.  Selah.

24   We are loved from heaven and yet we will have none of it, declaring ourselves unworthy, saying that the lord of all heaven is wrong to love us.  We turn his love into an occasion for shame, changing blessings into guiltiness.  We are like one who turns away from a glass and straightway forgets who his lord is making him.  We invent evil so that we may deny good.

25   We insist upon a form, an appearance of godliness, but reject any manifestations of the living power of what is godliness indeed; we are whitewashed tombs rather than mansions in the country of the lord.  We hold only dead men's bones.  The laughter of a child is cut short in us.  The children of the fathers have gone forth and will not return unto them.  Stillness descends.  Selah.

26   We know how to do good, and do it not; we do what is not of faith, and to us it is sin.  We are ignorant of Satan's designs, and we serve them. We are devoured daily and know it not.

27   We judge outer appearances, and not the inner things of the heart; we memorize the scriptures so that we may make others look wrong with them.

28   We are respecters of persons, saying to a man wearing a tie, rich in lofty doctrinal knowledge, "Sit thou here" and to a man in a bright t-shirt, newly discovering the light of the holy scriptures, "Sit thou there. Perhaps a different church....?"  We schedule everything and say "Surely the Holy Spirit hath done it!"

29   We do not hope. We have not tasted his blessings, but we have judged that the lord is not good.  We have failed to earn his generosity and so we will have none.  Our lives are not finished, and yet we have judged them already to be vanity and vexation of spirit, emptiness and pursuit of the wind.

30   We bow down to ordinances: touch not, taste not, handle not, see not, purchase not, download not.  We do this so that we may have our shame, and clutch it greedily unto ourselves.  We love our shame.  Above all things, we hate joy and rejoicing.  It does not go unpunished among us.  We buffet our flesh with scourges of shame for tiny pleasures, and forgive ourselves ecclesiastical iniquities the Whore of Babylon would blush at.

31   We do not restore those we cast away, judging life to be simpler when they have gone. We hide from one another. We shut our doors and quietly sing hymns of death and dust.  We have made the house of the lord into a tomb.

32   We live lives which deny mightily that we are one body, one church, one faith, one hope and one baptism, so that we, yea we only may claim to be the true and obedient servants of the lord;

33   We will not be hot nor cold, but mandate and revere lukewarm, stagnant tepidness, teaching that being so is the will of the Lord and is a delight unto his mouth.  We spit on those who have fervour and passion.  We laugh at them that weep and weep at them who laugh.

34   We are fat and filled with vintage translations of scripture, which we belch in the faces of the hungry without feeding them simple food they can eat, without giving them faith, hope and love, as we have none.  We are fat with with vivisected scriptures, puffed up with prophecy charts and bible knowledge, and cannot rise from our couches.

35   We love to have the preeminence.  Woe unto us!  We have our reward, and our reward is dust and shame, which things we love. 

36   Who are we to scourge and reject ourselves, whom the lord has loved, yea even accepted as his own?  Awake, oh fearful sleepers!  Arise from the tomb, ye exhausted dead men, and ye shall find rest! Cast off thy burial raiment and the lord shall clothe thee with glory!
37   Seek ye the lord.  Those who claim to have found him already cannot be seen to seek him.  Seek him, oh my brethren!  Repent of thy collective ways, for they are a snare, a trap, a pit. Follow paths of seeking and ye may meet him in the way.  He speaks through the mouths of babes, beggars and drunkards yet forsweareth the company of the mighty, the pious and the devout.  So go out, therefore, and seek him.

38   For if we turn from our ways and seek the lord to love him, if we trust in him to seek us and be a rewarder of them that seek him, then surely we will sit down together with him and we will eat and drink and be filled with one another's company.  We will talk and we will sing and we will have rest.

A Fire

This isn't easy to explain.  Nor is it likely to be terribly interesting.  Something that always set me apart in my church growing up was my inability to be content, and leave things be, to not listen and not remember and not care.  I couldn't help listen, remember and care, and this had the direct effect of making me likely to think about and bring up stuff people didn't want brought up, and it contributed to my being increasingly discontented with the spiritual climate by which I was daily buffeted.  It wasn't that I felt it wasn't correct enough there.  It was that it was hurting me, and I increasingly found, a whole lot of others.  It certainly wasn't for everyone, they said.  Only "us chosen few."  We made the sacrifice of healthy Christian community, in order to really please God.  Others gathered and worshipped however it pleased them.  Our group wasn't like that.  In fact, the vast majority of Christians found it so toxic and dead that they were never able to attend for long  They left, or stayed away, in fear of losing their faith.  Which made us feel like spiritual badasses, of course.

   And I grew up thinking it was all incredibly normal.  But I didn't fit.  Oh, I tried, alright.  I did all the right stuff.  I did all the normal stuff hard, and to an abnormal degree.  But the only way I can describe it is that eventually it felt like God had lit a fire under me.  And that felt just like being an ant under a magnifying glass.  Kept me squirming and hopping.  And not smiling and zoning out contentedly.  I couldn't sit around complacently, staring fondly at my wife as she stared fondly at our child.  And there weren't cell phones, really.  So I stared at the floor.

   I'd be at a bible conference, and some guy would talk and afterward peole would smile and say how wonderful it was. Wasn't it wonderful?  And I'd realize that the talk had made me mad, made me doubt things, and made me feel like I needed a shower, like I had been emasculated or lobotomized, like something essential to God Intended me-ness was being removed from my spirit in order for events to unfold.  That something God had made, in me, clearly somehow threatened said events, which was pretty suspect, actually.

   I remember as a young teen often walking into the church and finding I was feeling that feeling.  It was kind of a dizzy, dark, open, empty yawning wrongness that ran right through me like a train tunnel.  It was like being naked, but finding one's genitals had been removed too.  It was also having had all of my innards removed when I hadn't been looking, somehow.  What was happening to me seemed very much like someone else's idea, but it was being done to me all the time, without me quite knowing.  And it seemed like everyone else was wholly asleep to it all.  They smiled and said things were good.  That we were so blessed.  They didn't believe me.  They just thought I was crazy.  The feeling was wrong.  And it was coming from absolutely everywhere when I was in there, for as long as I could remember.  I used to blame myself at first.  Sometimes I would go down to the church basement and it would intensify.  I would even go look at myself in the men's bathroom mirror to see if I looked as pale and odd as I felt.  But I didn't.  I looked normal, and felt deeply wrong.  I didn't understand what was going on.
   It was kind of intensified when it came over me at bible conferences.

Paying Attention

At first I shut up.  But I'm not good at shutting up.  Increasingly, when someone smiled and said "Wasn't that wonderful?" or "Isn't it a privilege to be here, hearing a Word like this?" I'd say "I guess" or eventually "Actually, I didn't like it much."  This left it up to the smiler in question to choose whether to start up with me or not. They could always choose to tell me what exactly was so wonderful about being in the room and hearing the guy talk, or they could leave me alone.  It was amazing how seldom they left me alone.  It wasn't okay not to be content and pleased, it turned out.  It was a form of betrayal.  Disloyalty.  Seemed to threaten them.

   And what was staggering to me was how often the people singing the praises of some talk or other proved, immediately after it, completely incapable of remembering any of the actual specifics of said wonderful talk.  They would flat out deny certain things had ever been said, even if I quoted word for word, which I was extremely good at when I was a bit younger.  They would even deny that anything like various things had ever been said.  They would certainly deny any number of things about the overall tone, about the tenor, the focus of what had been said.  They didn't notice what got repeated, or what got omitted.  It was like touring an art gallery with colour blind people.  I got very used to people starting conversations with me, and then bailing on them, and fleeing with some greasy remark flung at me over their shoulder as they retreated in haste, an odd mixture of unease, disapproval and disgust in their eyes, which were showing way too much white.

   And I was not attending all of these weekly, supposedly helpful, talks during a peaceful, neutral kind of time.  I was attending them leading up to, going through, and afterward, when pretending a huge church division hadn't really been important, and in fact, had barely happened.  So there was a lot hinted, and there was a lot not quite being said, and a lot of odd "slippage" when people said things that would be denied almost immediately afterward.  (like a guy closing Sunday morning in prayer, not one month after kicking out 60% of the people, and thanking God that we, at least, we faithful few, though now only a very few, had at least been Ones who had proved faithful, dutiful and obedient to the clear leading of the Holy Spirit in scripture.  I didn't like that prayer much.  And afterward, people denied pretty heavily that anyone had ever prayed anything like that prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude for our superior level of correctness.)

   I didn't at first understand what was wrong with me.  Eventually I came to feel like God had lit that aforementioned fire under me.  People didn't think I ought to pay attention like I did.  People advised me to never mind, to not think about stuff, to not dwell on "negative" stuff, to let it all slide off my back like water off a duck, to remember how bad I was, and that therefore I certainly couldn't judge anything, but I'm not made that way.  I'm very much a "the emperor's guard just executed that child for saying the emperor has no clothes, which, though true, none of us now dare mention" kind of person.

   I'm not saying the doggedly, desperately contented people were wrong.  I'm not thanking God that I'm not like them.  But far be it from me to ask the Potter "Why hast Thou made me thus?" to ask why he created me like this, functioning like this.  (I mean, I do go there from time to time, but I don't stand behind that kind of inquiry.  By now, if I do that kind of stuff, it's just me being self-indulgent when I don't get to fit, and when I can't live how I want.)  But it feels like God lit a fire under me and like I couldn't "just fit in." And it feels like He meant to do it, no matter how inconvenient it is to me.  No matter how inconvenient it is for other Christians, too.

   People have told me my whole life that I am "negative."  I suppose it's true.  Thing is, though, "negative" doesn't usually actually mean a whole lot.  It's generally spoken just as if things simply are 100% negative or positive, and like it's actually very easy to make that black and white moral judgment about them.  But really, most often when people say it, they just mean "I don't like that" when they say something's "negative" and "I like that" when they say something's "positive."  For example, sometimes people say that I'm really a very negative person.  If I then tell them I feel that to be really a very negative comment, they often then "feel" in turn that what I've just said is negative, while they were just making a neutral, factual observation. 
   It must be odd to be so negative, a pastor once told me.  Because, you see, he's very positive, and never negative like he feels I am, he says. Doesn't make judgments like he feels I do.  Doesn't criticize.  Not like me. He thinks it would be very weird to be like me.

Comfortable People

Today, when I see people who can be comfortable in those kinds of settings, I don't want to judge them, but I do not relate.  I can't get comfortable.  Can't smile and sing.  And I can't recommend those settings, people, doctrines and events to other people, either.  I don't feel like I can really trust them with new Christians, or people with real problems in their lives.  Because they don't even know how to handle sincere, disgruntled, seasoned Christians like me.  How would they handle someone with actual spiritual problems?

   And I don't even know how they can be (relatively) content.  'Cause I just can't.  Oh sure, they say things about "Well, no one's perfect, and no group of Christians is perfect, and we have our problems of course, but..." but then they rush forward, emboldened and safe because of the "but" and immediately proceed to talk their way out of it all.  They want to settle right down and be (kind of) content again.  Like that's their job.  Their sacrifice for God.  What He wants.  I wonder Who they think He is, exactly?
   Or perhaps they just fear, too much, any serious contemplation of change.  And growth requires change.  I can't really talk to them for long, usually.  They get upset and leave.  Or treat me like a tetanus shot they probably should face up to every several years or so.  But not Friday night or anything.
  They do not show spiritual discernment.  Not in the sense of being discerning about people's spirits, or what the spiritual problems around them are, how they're contributing to and maintaining them, nor certainly what could help, regarding them.  They are not careful of, nor helpful to people with wounded spirits, in my experience.

  They sometimes read my blog.  They very occasionally have uncharacteristic-for-them conversations with me about their doubts, various memories that don't sit well, problems in their Christian groups, but then they soon pack it all up with great relief, and say how interesting and odd it was to be so "honest" with someone, about Christian things(!) for once, at least for that half hour.  Then hey go back to living the opposite of what they've just talked about.  They fall in and march with the flock of contented livestock. I just don't get that.  And I certainly can't do it.  I used to feel inferior.  Now it's all too tempting to feel superior to them.

Free Me

I reached a point in my twenties.  A point when I knew I needed to be saved from the spiritual environment in which I was raised and to which I was wholly enslaved, and which I could never escape, I didn't think.  It was a mold I'd solidified in, and which wasn't removable, once one had been poured into the narrow little opening at the top.  I didn't want to actually go to a different church.  I didn't even want to stop going to my church, though I increasingly found it a real ordeal to show up there. I certainly didn't want to be kicked out of it, or walk away from it.  But I knew I was trapped and locked up inside.
  If some of the "points" of being a human, and certainly a Christian, involved caring, loving and connection at all, we were doing all the right things to ensure God didn't get any satisfaction from us in that department.  We had taken what could have been a clearly Christian, supernatural-seeming ability to do those things, and sacrificed it for quietly exclusive uniformity, all the while claiming to have more of a grasp of Christianity than the average Christian.  More grasp on caring, loving and connection that an average human being, certainly.  And I knew in my twenties, eventually, that we had no right to claim that.  No right at all.  You see, I met some average human beings.  And we couldn't keep up with them.  And I knew bad things were continuing to be done to my spirit and soul, to my heart and mind, among the people of my Christian community. It even affected my body.

   If I hadn't gone to see the middle chapter of The Hobbit trilogy, this evening I might have taken a crack at recording a song I wrote back then.  Maybe tomorrow.  The drums have been recorded for a month.  What that old song says over and over is "get me out."  I didn't mean my physical self, or even that I wanted to lose my membership.  But I had reached a point where I suddenly knew I desperately needed my life, my deepest, most authentic, God-intended self free from it all.  Because it was stopping me from living.  And that's dying, obviously.  And it sure felt like it.  
   Everything inside me was slowly dying away, locked inside the Brethren mold casing.  It was one long plunge into despair. It was like being locked up in a mental institution so I could be kept safely neurotic, paranoid, depressed and delusional, as there was some danger of me finding my feet if I was just left alone.

   The really troubling thing was that God actually got me free from it, in fairly short order.  As fast as I could stand it.  And there was a brief period of me walking around free in that Christian community, but it deeply upset everyone, and they soon kicked my ass out too, so that body followed soul and spirit.  Oh, I attended a bit afterward, and asked back in repeatedly, but that wasn't happening.  (It generally isn't done, once one's proven one isn't one of the chosen few.  Can't cut it.  Not worthy.  Not of like precious complacency.)
   I'd changed.  I was something they didn't want around.  I was at liberty.  I was told they "didn't get me" and that I'd never be allowed back in until they "got me."  I pointed out that shunning me so completely didn't seem to be giving them a chance to ever "get" me.  They pointed out in turn that this was exactly the sort of thing they didn't like. Not one bit. My brethren were "uneasy."  Because of who I was.  And who I was was wrong.

   By then, though, I had so much more peace.  Peace as to working with God, and not fighting Him over who he'd made me to be.  Peace about how that self wasn't a "convenient" one to have to be in that group, but peace that this was just too bad.
   Peace.  I still had that fire lit under me, though. God was making no apologies for who and what He'd made me to be.  Certainly not to me.  It was time to get down to being who He made me to be.  Better.  More.  Excellently.

Being Aware

Back in my twenties when I was very much trying to figure out who I was, I met a somewhat flaky, but good-hearted exBrethren Christian who "diagnosed" what he felt my spiritual gifts were.  That had never happened to me before.  I was always treated as a problem, with problems of my own too, and never as a potential solution to anything.  Certainly I was never treated as someone who could help, or who had spiritual gifts.  For one thing, I wasn't fifty-seven years of age.
   But this guy had a book, and he felt he could identify who God had made me to be, and what use I potentially was to Christians.  

   He decided very quickly that I had the gifts of a prophet.  The bible prophets, not televangelist ones.  Not Gandalf. Not a fortune teller, telling people what job to apply for, or getting a strong impression that the name of someone in the room's first crush had started with "J."  No.  Someone who knew when things were going wrong. Someone who knew which way the wind was blowing. A canary in the coal mine.   Someone who kept track of lapses in integrity. Someone who could follow subtext.  Someone who tried  the spirits.  You know?  Like in the Old Testament.  Nathan.  Samuel.  Obadiah.
   Not one of those modern guys who would never let anyone call him a "prophet," but is currently writing books drawing contrived, antsy charts connecting Fox News with Revelation 5.  Not those guys.  I don't think that's what seeking prophetic gifts is like.  At all.  And I think actually having awareness of spiritual things (instead of playing wizard and using the scriptures as goat entrails or tea leaves or tarot cards) feels like a curse, a lot of the time.  Showing those gifts makes Christians want to crucify you, for one thing.  Makes you wander alone through the wilderness of Christian community, hoping not to be sawn asunder.
   Regarding all of this, I gradually started to realize that I had been purposely created to be someone who was shocked and uncontrollably disgusted by the stench of spirits going bad and hurting people in his immediate surroundings, despite not wanting to know about any of it to begin with.  It wasn't a choice.  It wasn't controllable.  It wasn't about judging.  It wasn't about power.  It wasn't even knowledge.  It was much deeper than that.  It was very built in.  It was a sense, like a sense of smell.  It was on purpose.  It was just being sensitive to danger. 
   And danger, I increasingly found, wasn't just from going to watch movies.  There was lots of danger right there in churches.  Danger from lies. Danger from people grabbing after power and scheming and getting into positions of trust with money or ministry, or teenage girls or people's wives.  Sudden odd and telling changes in the focus and tone of teaching.  Christians being herded in mysterious directions and denying this was happening at all, just as they'd always been trained to deny things like that, or at the very least not "dwell on them"/mention them.
   I had no real intention of being a whistleblower, and the depressing thing was that, once I realized that I was picking up on a whole lot of problematic stuff people were desperately denying the reality of, I had to face facts like:

a) it wasn't like I knew what to actually do about any of it, even though people were being hurt,

b) I would certainly be punished for talking about it with anyone, and this scared me

   and worst of all:

c) it always turned out that a whole lot of people had known about all the bad stuff all along, and were more terrified someone might want to do something about it than of it continuing unabated.

     and
d) no one cared.  Not to the point of being willing to discuss, let alone do anything, I mean.

I filled with this awareness of all the crap that was building up in my community, and which wasn't to be discussed.  It choked me. It poisoned me.  So I wrote songs at first.  Because I had to put things into words.  I'm like that.  When the very atmosphere stank and was toxic to me, and I could see what it was doing to so many others, when I could see unprincipled people hurting others and people being driven away in droves, I had to crystallize it into some kind of "product" somehow.  So I did songs no one heard.  There was no Internet, so I had no way to reach any audience.  And I talked to people. And they mostly said it wasn't good to dwell on the negative. Sometimes they said "I know, I know, but..." before they said that.  But it always came down to "don't think about that stuff."  I couldn't help it. I think I was made to think about it.  And it was all around.

   It took me quite a while to gain the courage to write a blog, and eventually, books.  I am still often told I really shouldn't do this, that it causes trouble, is negative, unhealthy, and does no good.  That it is airing dirty laundry, or telling it in Gath.  The more I feel increasingly less (?) identification with Christian communities of any kind, and the more I feel like we've all lost touch with who Jesus Christ was and is, the worst this gets.  But I have slowly, inexorably come to accept the fact that being who I am, and feeling and thinking what I do, is part of who and what God created, and that it does help people, even if they don't want it.  And it is healthy.  And it does good. Even if people don't think it should happen at all.

   I'm not perfect, and I'm not done learning and growing.  I'm not even fifty-seven years old.  But maybe I can do stuff.  Because I'm on purpose.

Can God Do Anything He Wants?

When I was a kid in Sunday School, the first things they taught us about God were these:

1) God can do absolutely anything He wants

2) God loves you (if you live to please Him)

3) You can ask God absolutely anything you want and He might do it.

Of course, a lot of people just said "Well, that's some awfully nice stuff to think about. For the hour" and went on with their lives.  Some of us, many of whom wanted to be friends with Spider-Man and the Hulk and Batman at that time, also wanted to be friends with a God of Whom these three facts were true.

    But then as so often happens, trying to actually see if these three things were really true messed up everything.  I believed that God could do absolutely anything He wanted.  I believed that He loved me.  And so I asked Him for things.  
   Sometimes just silly little things, but sometimes for the things that mattered more to me than anything else in the world.  And most often, almost always, I really didn't get what I asked for.  At all.  This made me wonder what to do with the above list of things. 

    Starting at the end of the pre-school Sunday School list, I was tempted to decide that maybe you couldn't ask God for much of anything after all, without being guaranteed disappointment.  God had a Plan, and wouldn't tell you what it was, clearly, and so you had to leave Him to it.  He wouldn't tell you what it was, even if you prayed about it all day for weeks, and He wouldn't alter it, so what was the point of praying?  What could you do when you had problems?  God had planned these problems, apparently. He put thorns into flesh and demanded they stay dug in there good.

     This led fairly logically to the second step.  Maybe God didn't love me.  Not really.  Maybe He used to, but He just didn't like me anymore.  Or maybe He kind of loved me, but was really angry at me all the time, because I liked stuff I wasn't supposed to (like Spider-Man).   In fact, if #2 wasn't exactly true, then what difference did #3 mak anyway?  
   I was raised to believe in a God who loved me as to Afterlife, but didn't like me one bit as to after dinner.  He loved me so very, very much that He wasn't, after all, going to torture me for all eternity, probably.  But He was absolutely going to require me to torture myself (and let other people torture me) especially at church, and just in general.  Life was a form of purgatory.  Saying no to joy pleased Him.  And if I didn't do that, He wouldn't really like me.  Wouldn't send me to Hell, and I could live a life free of the tortures/penances/sacrifices/martyrdom of church people and my culture, but I'd always know that He didn't like me any more and wouldn't give me anything I asked.  Which He'd never done anyway.
  So, if I didn't want anything that He wasn't already giving anyway, then things were cool.  But if I wanted something I didn't already have, or which Christians weren't supposed to want because it was fun, then I couldn't have anything I wanted.  That all seemed pretty dumb. What was the point?

Thing is, though: what if #1 isn't true?  Then #2 and #3 can be true after all.  (I feel like C.S. Lewis, arguing like this)  Because if #2 isn't, practically speaking, true, if God doesn't exactly like you, apart from not sending you to Hell, and is always disappointed in (grieved with) you, having had NO IDEA what kind of person you'd grow up to be when He sent His Son to die for you, then #1 and #3 aren't really important at all.  
   But what if #1 isn't, practically speaking, true, and #2 and #3 are?

   What if, in order to let us be, to let us grow, to let us live lives, to let us play any part in our lives at all, God chooses to, and kinda "needs to" not force us in any number of ways?  What if He has to wait, too, to do things the way He does them?  What if, in order to have the relationship, dynamic (and creation) that He wants (because He knows it's good) He needs to let us name the animals, bargain like Abraham, question like Job, over-reach and blurt things out like Peter, so that we eventually find ourselves getting to the point where we can make certain choices that would not previously have occurred or appealed to us?
   Maybe He has to help us grow to the point where we even think to, feel like, and become able to actually make choices that work for Him.  Maybe He has to "wait" too.  For us. Like us.  Maybe if He forces us, or utterly thwarts us, that defeats His purposes utterly.  Maybe if He keeps us from screwing up, from hurting ourselves, our planet, animals and other people, this defeats those purposes.  So, maybe He lets us do horrible things and doesn't stop us, and is there when we need to dig our way out.  Maybe He humours us as we pursue worthless things.

   So maybe God can only in theory do anything He wants, but in practice, there are any number of things that He wouldn't do, because they'd defeat What He's Up To.  Maybe He sees good, and wants us to see it too, and be involved in it.  (I know.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.  Trying to believe the bible, here.  Let me know what works for you, for decades and decades.)

   So if #1 isn't practically true, then #2 and #3 might be.  And I want them to be true.

   

Ghostly Choirs

In my very early 20s, I was working all evening or night shifts.  I was almost entirely nocturnal.  So it was hard to find people around when I wanted to do stuff.  Finding people around when you want to do stuff is somehow much more important in your 20s, before all your friends marry and take off on you, and you kind of get used to that.

   I'd put up an ad for musicians, and had met a few local musicians, and there was a coffee house on a Wednesday night.  Now, at that point in time, Wednesday night was my "Friday Night/Saturday" because I didn't work Wednesday or Thursday.  I always worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Often, I worked night shift on Tuesday night, either until very late, or actually until the next morning, and then I'd go to bed at dawn and wake up Wednesday, wanting people to do stuff with.  And so I arranged to meet up and play at this coffee house.  It was great.  It was my "Friday," and I was hanging around with people I did music with, and this was good because I'd been feeling more than usually lonely and lost at that point.  So we played some songs, then everybody suddenly had stuff to do, though the evening was still young, and I'd not be able to sleep until the wee hours.  The main guy I'd been planning on hanging out with afterward met a girl, and very abruptly took off, despite our plans, without saying anything to me.  Just tossed his guitar into the trunk of my car with mine, expecting me to get it back to him later, and scampered off into the night to find the girl.  I didn't have a girl.  As usual, there was a distant one who didn't actually intend to be with me, though I (kind of) had her respect.  That's kind of who I am, to women.

   So, feeling quite flat, I got in my car and was driving home, in mid-evening.  It was dark, and it was fall.  No moon.  No stars.  Wind blowing leaves on the ground.  I got more and more lonely and morbid and depressed the more I drove.  And then I drove past the graveyard most people from my church, and quite a few relatives are buried in, and I thought "I'm so morbid and alone, I think I will actually go into the graveyard, sit on a tombstone, and write a song just for my only audience, these dead people, who aren't about to run off with girls."

   And so I did.  I shut the car off, and noticed that it was very dark, and I went and sat on a tombstone, and I made up a song.  I liked it, so I sang it a few times so I wouldn't forget it.  Then I saw a police car pulling in, so I took off rather abruptly, got into my car, and drove to Tim Hortons, where I got out a pen and wrote the lyrics down on a napkin.  I'd gone in there so as to have light and something to write on.

   At first the song was called "Hello, Dead People."  That seemed too "on the nose." So then I called it "Wednesday Night" for the longest time, before realizing that more people would "get" the title if it was "Friday Night."  They would understand this better than my saying that I'd spent Wednesday ("my" Friday) evening writing this, really, because for most people Wednesday isn't their first night off.

   I did various quiet recordings of the song, just the main voice and a quiet guitar, like some of my most successful pieces are recorded.  And I played it from time to time at open stages and performances of various kinds.  I always felt a little self-conscious about the words, and felt like it needed a preamble.

   One summer night, in the woods around a campfire with a bunch of visiting musicians from Toronto, I played it and a girl gushed at length, over my honesty in writing a song about not having a girl, rather than about how many girls I score.  She kept repeating "People don't SING about that.  You don't HEAR songs like that..."  She had a boyfriend it wasn't working with, and would have been more than happy to have me as a platonic gal-pal, but I would not.  Was already that for too many women.

   Another time, a guy  (a dwarf/little person who is a friend of a friend) came with us to an Open Stage, heard me sing it and told me "I like that 'Bloated People' song."  I said "It's 'Hello, dead people" and he said "No, it isn't. It's 'Bloaaa-ted people..."  Made me laugh.

   The song sat around with all my other songs, getting forgotten for years and years at a time, then would be played for someone (or just me) perhaps once in a given year, then not played for years again.
 When I was getting drums recorded for various songs recently, for the album the song goes on (which is about thoughts relating to death of various kinds, literal or metaphorical), I decided to get drums for it.  I'd never had drums played with brushes on a song of mine, so I asked for that.  And I threw in, very last minute, the idea that there'd be a ghostly choir at the beginning and end.  George played drums to my voice and acoustic guitar, with a single high little voice marking where the choir would be. Sounded pretty silly like that, without all the bits.  And George got his biggest kick drum and his brushes and played away like a trouper one Friday night in his darkened music store after hours.

   Last week I finally put the tracks down to it, as a way of filling my actual Friday night, which was to be spent alone. I did a different version than ever before, abandoning the stripped down acoustic guitar concept, and (extremely rare for me) putting not a single acoustic guitar in it, opting instead for an attempt at a vintage, kind of 60s, surfy, rockabilly ballad sound.  I did it all in a couple of hours, doing the "biggest" fake choir I'd ever tried.  About eight voices, as I recall.  It wears my voice out pretty quickly to sing for extended periods of time falsetto.  The new version pretty much recorded itself, really pulling the ideas right out of me.

   Then I listened to it a couple of days later and didn't like it as much.  It was jangly.  It was jarring and harsh and odd.  The vocals had been recorded too "hot" and were scratchy and grating.  So tonight I resang it and remixed it to sound more smooth.  I think it's more listenable.  The words are:

Friday Night

Hello dead people, do you sleep well at night

Or do you lie awake thinking you could have done better?

Hello dead people, are you feeling alright

'Cause if this stone's free then I'd like to rest my bones here

Tell me, dead people, can I ask you a few things

'Cause I'd like to if you could spare a minute

Tell me, how does it feel to wake up in a grave

Knowing there are things that you must leave unfinished?

And how does it feel to lie there in a box

As the world fills up with folks who never knew you?

How does it feel?

I'm listening, kind dead men, what is it you'd like to say?

You would like to tell me how to treat a woman?

She needs a listening ear and she needs a gentle touch

Twice a much as someone to solve all her problems

What was that dead women? What you looked for in a man?

Would I fit the bill or even the description?

Tell me, where could I find someone who'd think I was alright?

I could sing to her, instead of to dead people (no offence)

And why do I feel like I scare them all away

Leaving dead folks as my company tonight

(originally: As I sit here on a tombstone Wednesday night)

You know how I feel?

Good night dead people, I guess I've got to go

I might have years of life stretched out before me

Take care dead people, it was real nice being here

But that policeman's gonna ask why I'm talking to you

Good night dead people, I will lie here too, someday

But for now there's things that would remain unfinished

But just before I go, can I ask a couple of things

'Cause I'm curious and I don't like to wonder

Tell me, how does it feel to have decades left to sleep

When there's nothing left on earth could ever wake you?

How does it feel to sleep beyond all harm

When there's nothing on this earth could ever hurt you?

How does it feel?

Poems

Poems are like songs, sometimes.  They can get you through a dark winter day, or at least sing at you while you slowly forget the sun's ever coming out again, that it'll ever be Spring, while it's always winter and never Christmas and you're not warm.  Here are three I like a lot:

Alone  
Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Chocolate Cherryblossom
Angel Merriman
Nightish cloak of tresses dark
Draw eyes from gleaming crown to pleasing toes
Elfin eyes with mischief spark and shutter click
And oh, and now...a nose, a nose!
You are a glorious spectacle.

Hm. Pause.  If you say so.
I am not what you say!
You do not know.
(You really do not know)

Oh! To tangled get in that fair lip...
Lost for days and days.
Wandering languid that oasis
To sing for weeks and years about the trip!
And legs lasting millenia.

I am vile! she protests
The Whore of Babylon writ large
Unpainted Jezebel!  Bathsheba with no bath!
Voice soars from dulcet tones to harpy screech
Then down again and down some more to sultry sigh:
You do not know.
(You really do not know)

Your heart is huge

Voluptuous and lithe and firm and warm

Nothing but openness and welcome

For any and for all

Unless they love.

(Unless they love.)

For then you needs must flee.

Clutching control tightly to your lovely chest.

In fine, elegant hands.

I am napalm, cordite, cyanide!

A toxic waste.
Graveyard of broken hearts.
Faerie light florescent lighting fools the way to dusty death
Look upon my past, potential suitors
And despair!
You flatter me in vain.
You do not love.
You do not know.
(You really do not know)

Thoughts that spiral serpentine,

Then gleaming, shatter into shards

That splinter, form, regroup and mend

Sure shaming thoughts of ancient bards.

You cogitate compulsively.

Relentlessly, excitingly.

Crystalline explosions daily.

A mind?  What mind?  I do not mind!
(I do mind children)
I was but born to womb
Not let my mind soar skyward
Taking my heart-string with it
And mine is murky, inconsistent, trod on,
Gone.
You do not know.
(You really do not know)

Be. Be! For there's naught else.
Rage.  Rage! Oh rage and cry!
Grow. Grow! Thrust roots through bed and laugh,
Live.  Live! For sure, one day we die.
  

She Walks in Beauty

 Lord Byron (George Gordon)

She walks in beauty, like the night

   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

   Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

   Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

   How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

   So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

   But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

   A heart whose love is innocent!

Inspiration

I saw a quotation recently about how we sit in front of the TV, and we decide we want a Coke, to buy some jeans and we decide we know what car we want, and that we also want a hamburger, and we actually think these are our own ideas.

   I was thinking about that yesterday while driving.  How we think we have free will, and that we know where our ideas are coming from.  I'll go to Wal-Mart to pick up some glue to fix something, and come out with no glue, but batteries, a DVD and chocolate, and will go home and over the next hour will think "I really like girls in jeans.  And I like Seth Rogan. He's funny.  And Monster is my favourite kind of energy drink.  And I wonder if the sequel to Thor is any good.  And I need socks.  And I like cupcakes."  And I won't really know why I'm thinking this, unless I pay attention.

   I was thinking about how when I was a kid, every time I felt a little surge of passion or life surging through me, I was trained to the point where I'd "have" these thoughts, these ideas and feelings:  "That's the flesh."  "The World is calling."  "Got to be a good testimony, of course."  "Can't expect the Lord to bless me if I'm doing things I know right well aren't pleasing to Him."  "We are such sinful creatures."  And I really thought I was thinking these ideas myself. I had no idea where they came from.  I thought they came straight from me.

   And when I was seventeen, and lying in bed thinking "Why are you such a freak?" "Why can't you fit in anywhere?" "Why does no one like you?" and "You'll never get a girlfriend" and "If you killed yourself, everyone would be sorry," I thought I was thinking up all of that, all by myself too.
   Some people I will interact with, and will find afterward I am thinking "I am interesting and know things and people like me being around."  Others I will interact with and afterward will find myself thinking "I am a self-deluded fool that everyone can see right through."  It would be slightly comforting if the best of people made me feel inadequate, and the silliest people made me feel good, but it's usually the opposite.

   Apparently the ancient Greeks sometimes thought that their thoughts and impulses were the gods acting.  That the muses giving them their best ideas.

   And all over the Internet right now, people are saying "We can't let gay people marry or we'll stop being a Christian country" or "Republicans will bring us back to the Stone Age" or "gluten will kill your grandmother!"  On and on.  And people think these ideas are coming from them, too.

   So I started thinking "Do you know where ideas come from, generally?  Like, when you have them, do you check them and wonder where they're coming from?"

   Because when I was a teenager, some of the most inspired, passionate, popular rock stars described what it was like to "get in the zone" while performing.  How a mood overtakes them, how when they write or perform songs, it's like they are a conduit for the songs.  The photocopied articles my parents were given by others said this was proof positive that the devil was possessing these people to seduce children to make them serve Satan.  And then my parents thought this stuff too for a couple of years at least.  And they also thought they thought these things up themselves.

   But songs come to me.  And I wonder where they come from.  I no longer assume the answer is always "Satan."  Nor "God" nor "my muse" either.  And "my subconscious" doesn't really tell me much of anything, nor is it, probably, the whole story.

   When I was a kid, we had bible conferences with "Ministry as the Lord May Lead."  Nowadays, they just say "Ministry As The Lord Leads."  The claim is the same.  If a man takes that platform, he is inspired and led by God to go up there.  We didn't have the hymns picked out in advance for Sunday morning worship, either.  We believed strongly in the idea that the Holy Spirit should inspire what happened at church.  But it was odd.  The men didn't sound like that was happening. I mean, who were we to judge and all that, but they just said the same exact stuff the guys who'd died had used to say, forgetting exactly how it had been worded.  Photocopies of photocopies of photocopies.  It didn't seem like inspiration.  It seemed like imitation.  Some even imitated the vocal cadences of the dead guys.  If enough people die,  soon no one will know they're doing that.

   Now why would God not speak through these guys?  People are listening sincerely, aren't they?  Ready for whatever God might have to tell them?  Or are they?  I think this is all a very interesting question.

   Nowadays, when I go to meet up with any group of people, to do music, or talk, or help or listen or whatever, I want the Holy Spirit involved.  I'm not going to claim that I am always silent until the divinely inspired words pour flaming down on my head and out of me like a whirlwind.  But I know what "being in the zone" is like.  I know what synchronicity is like.  I know what sympatico is like.  And I want that. And I think God's in that.  I think when people, things and events "come together," the Holy Spirit is involved.  I think He binds efforts together and makes thoughts and feelings get understood and expressed.  Sometimes music or cooking or touch expresses things which cannot be uttered.  And I think He's in that.

   Do we even know what ideas are?

Comparing Cultures

I spent Saturday evening with Mike and Garima, a couple of friends, drank wine, ate pie and picked up a conversation I hadn't quite finished with her before.  Mike and I went to school together from Grade 3 up, and lost touch for eleven years after we graduated.  When we reconnected, he was with Garima.  They got married this summer.  She's older, was born in India, and transplanted to Toronto when she was an infant, and was raised traditionally Sikh, with several visits back to India when she was a child.

   So Garima grew up "different" at school, and apparently racism was something she suffered quite frequently.  (Hard to imagine this in Toronto nowadays, but I guess the sixties were different.)  She said neighbourhood kids shouted "Paki" and threw stones at them on occasion.  So she grew up "outside" the Canadian culture at school, dressing differently, and not being allowed to cut her hair and do typical Canadian things.  

   In her culture, women served men.  This is how she was raised. She is a very strong-willed person now, but she still questions herself overmuch, and apologizes far too much, despite the fact that she will always inevitably eventually do only exactly what she thinks makes sense, despite what anyone thinks.  After melodramatic periods of self-doubt.  This strong-minded confidence and strong sense of identity isn't how she was raised. The apologizing, doubt and shame are.

   When a Sikh girl reaches adulthood, she is traditionally put into an arranged marriage, and the husband's family "inherits" her.  Her own family is no longer viewed, traditionally, as having really any duties to her. In very traditionally Sikh families, she says, the wife doesn't eat until the husband has eaten.

   Garima's parents set up an arranged marriage for Garima, and he was slightly more traditional than she was.  They got along okay at first, but over time she gradually became more Canadian and modern and (comparatively) free-spirited, and he didn't like this.  Couldn't cope. His unspoken, traditional expectations were not being met, as to who she was inside, however she made herself act outside, however much she stifled who she was.  The marriage broke down, painfully, over a few years.  She left.  She felt utterly cast out, not only by her husband, but by her family and culture as well.  Her family didn't disown her or anything, but she felt like she'd failed her culture.  Like she was a reject with no place to be.

   Garima, though adult and about thirty, went through a pretty violent period of change at this point in time.  She started eating meat and drinking alcohol.  She cut her hair short and started dressing in very androgynous clothes.  Jeans, boots and a slate grey pea-coat.  She dated a lot of guys.  Each only once.  Indian and otherwise.  She couldn't connect with them.  Couldn't respect them or open up or take them seriously.  

   The bottom of her whole world fell out from under her, really.  She had an onslaught of miscellaneous health problems.  She dealt and dealt and dealt and thereby got used to dealing, with getting on with the life she was made to live.  She uncontrollably found herself becoming a tougher, spikier, more closed but more honest and less secretive person who was eventually simply able to handle perpetually being an outsider.  She got used to having to be ready to fend off odd, random crap at any point, from anyone.  She became a pharmacist, eventually planning, running and reorganizing pharmacies, specializing in dealing with methadone clinics for heroin addicts.  She continues to do that job, and it means she can still expect odd, random crap at any point.  Some patients know where she lives, and throw eggs at her car sometimes.  I don't imagine she could feel any more "outside" of the culture she sees and serves, shambling in, needing their methadone each day.  She says I'd be surprised what professions have a lot of heroin addicts in them.  It's not all homeless people. At all.

   We talked about how she dealt with her period of change.  We talked about how we both knew people who seemed to be able to "have it both ways" as to their birth culture to some degree, and how in some ways the "clean, dramatic break" was probably (in some ways) simpler, but more brutal to get through.  We talked about how we didn't get to "pick" how much our culture worked for us or didn't, nor when or how we had to break with it, nor really even to what degree.  It was chaos for us. For some people, maybe it's not like that.  Maybe for those people, "dealing" with it isn't something they need to do as thoroughly.

   When it was happening, her marriage having failed, leaving her childless and outside of her culture, Garima got her finances together, bought a house and a car and a dog, and lived her life.  She remained connected to her nieces and nephews, and increasingly as she got older, looked after her aging parents too.  Meeting Mike was a bit of a surprise, and his combination of unflappable solidity and patience, with his sense of humour, depth and quiet emotional insight, seems to be something she really values.  She can't always see or share her feelings, so she's got him to point out the obvious.  Which he will do, if he feels like it.  Because he's terribly practical and intelligent. He doesn't miss much.  Sees what's going on, and ascertains root causes.  He knows when to shut up, which is something I admire.  He came out to our church children's stuff a few times when he was a kid.  I have no idea if he believes anything.

   Though she's a bit older, from a very different culture, and is female, Garima and I can't help but compare notes and see how much is the same about our lives.  We talked about how rooted in the superficial her culture is.  (Mine too.)  She said that, with modern Sikh kids having poor Punjabi speaking and reading and writing skills, and not being willing to necessarily follow the dress restrictions, there is pretty much nothing left if they give that up.  Once they cut their hair and dress Western and watch movies and speak English, they don't seem very Sikh anymore even to themselves, and there's little to pass on.  Every one of Garima's brothers married a white girl, forswearing arranged marriages.  The nieces and nephews know little of Sikhism.  (Some brothers and their families converted to Christianity.)  Garima feels that Sikhism is lost on the new generation, having let hers down.  When it's all about dress and speech and rules, there's nothing deeper in it, she doesn't think.

   I was having this conversation, sitting next to an older couple over at Mike and Garima's house, who had been heavily involved in a local Christian community.  They were once ardent Christians, but they lost their faith, somehow.  They live up the street from Mike and Garima.  James is a retired lawyer.  Quiet-spoken, small and thin. Chooses his words very carefully.  Reading my book earlier this year, James couldn't help but contrast his path with mine.  He does that every time we meet up.  Church always worked for him in a way his faith didn't, he has decided in retrospect, and when church stopped working, he had really nothing left over. He genuinely thought his church dealings and community were an experience of God, thought he was experiencing God through other people, mainly, and was following their words, their hype and their claim to really know God on a very immediate level.  But once he saw through these people (once everyone in the community did, that is, and they'd run off with the money, and things had been swept under the carpet), James realized he didn't even know that there was a God to experience, without all of that church stuff going on in his life. James seems to be haunted by my descriptions of going off alone to deal with God.  His life was always about going to church stuff to do that.  He can't stop thinking about it.

   Obviously, church never really worked for me, but my tempestuous and occasionally Job-like relationship with God was always a thing.  The more church hasn't worked for me, the more my faith seems to stand out (to me, and to people like James, when reading my book) as not being part of a church community at all, really.  

   For me, my faith has in many ways diverged strongly from my tradition, because it needed to grow, deepen and become more personal and authentic.  In other ways it hasn't.  I feel very much like I had to choose, and the sometimes rather contradictory-seeming and distant God made more sense than the very unchanging, consistent, strident people who were in my face and watching my every move.

   After reading my book, James wonders why I'd ever talk to Brethren people nowadays.  He wonders why I harbour any fond feelings for women as a gender, also.  I'd like to think my attitude to my church and to women has deepened and improved, rather than simply grown closed and bitter (despite what people say about said attitude, the bastards).  James speaks to/of me in the third person, unless he stops himself. He says "What I ask myself is why Peter Grey's story ends like this. Why doesn't he wash his hands of Christians and women who flee honest connection? When does Peter Grey decide he's done with it all?"
    It's a bit weird.  Like being interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos .  We talked this way while drinking wine and eating raspberry/blueberry pie as ships sailed by and the neighbours' Nova Scotia flag fluttered over the St. Lawrence out the window.

   James and his wife Martha have a happy marriage and children (and some dogs), and they met each other through the church.  The church failed them and their children, more or less at the same time, and they've never really regained what it was they'd thought they were celebrating weekly at their church events.  It seems they might have been celebrating the actual church events themselves, really.  Their kids are quite certain they know all there is to know about God and church, and to them, the two are one and the same, and they're a con.

   James and Martha were very active in their church organization, both locally and further afield, holding salaried positions of power and importance, with a great deal of training and credentials.  It was all they did, and it made up their whole lives for a time.  They even bandy around the word "cultish" on occasion.  But when corruption and shady dealings inevitably tore things apart in the whole region, James became a lawyer and although he looks back from time to time, it is with wonder that he was so into it then at all, because he really can't imagine that now.

   James had been close friends with a Christian University professor of mine who appeared rather unflatteringly in my book. He'd had a falling out with him (partly over the man's treatment of the question of their gay son) and said that my book made him reach realizations about the man's character that he'd not quite arrived at before reading it.  That my experience of the man many years ago shows that he hasn't changed at all.  That my depiction highlighted the reality of the downside of who the man continues to be.  That was a bit odd to hear. I was just writing the story of my life.  Not trying to help senior citizen lawyers and university professors decide to fail to work out their differences.

   In some ways, sitting in that room, I felt very connected with these other, older people, and how their culture/milieu/community let them down, and ceased to work and be relevant and help them be who they are apparently created to be.  Whether I go to my own church, or other people's, it all looks irrelevant, watered down, self-referential, empty, holding on by a fraying thread, and failing to deliver the God.  So I relate, in a way.

   In other ways, though, I felt very sentimental and odd.  Because I feel like I, now, really rather have Who and what my culture promised me, but wasn't delivering.  Because I went to God directly.  As directly as you can, when He doesn't have a phone or keep office hours.  And He certainly isn't As Advertised. But I found going to the Source beat being put on waiting lists and promised that if I'd only make the sacrifices, do the time, pay the dues and make my loyalty and constancy clear, Things would Work Out.  I couldn't wait around for these people.  And God doesn't need to be conjured by rituals, seemingly.  Nor is He as deeply into the actions of committees and councils and collectives as we sometimes try to claim.

  To paraphrase the bible, people really do doggedly, stubbornly look mainly at how things look, rather than what's going on inside us.  And we need room to breathe and grow in.