At my request, we bundled up and took ourselves to a different church than our usual, went on to Strange Donuts (oddly, also religiously instructive), and ended out back at the church we've been going to for the past 13 year. This is the short story of how it happened, what happened, and what might happen in the future.
But first, maybe we should go to the far past. All my life, I've had an active relationship with God. As I grew up, that relationship definitely went through several metamorphoses In my childhood, it was "God The Father" with a scientific twist. I didn't want to disappoint God and I wanted God to understand that I didn't want to be good just to get into heaven, but that I really, really wanted to do God's will. But, I also thought frequently, "Where did God come from?" "How could something ALWAYS be there?" I couldn't suss it out to make sense. In the college years, it was a kind of Arts and Sciences relationship with God (God, how can I pray to you when there really isn't a 'being' such as God. And what about religion as an instrument of oppression, patriarchy, etc. And what about the Holocaust?! And yet, in my gut, I believe in You...so I guess I will just be mixed up and avoid church). Then, in my late twenties and early thirties - my early years as a social worker- I saw so much human suffering and the most vulnerable people every day - I knew I needed a spiritual community and something that sustained me spiritually, so I began attending a Unitarian Universalist congregation, which, religiously stems from Judeo-Christian roots, but in practicality, it's a spiritual home for people who range from Buddhist, to Jewish, to secular humanist, to Christian, to pantheist. And since then, my relationship with God has been been daily in both mundane ways (Have you ever seen Fiddler on the Roof? I talk to God pretty much like an invisible friend at times i.e., God, do you think you could make my life lessons a little less jarring? Would that be so troublesome?) and also in mysterious ways that are beyond my ability with words. It's become unimportant to me whether the word God is what's used to name God. I use the word God, but I know a lot of people feel uncomfortable with that. Many of those same people experience deep in them something like I do: a knowing that there is something more. I call it God. I see it and feel it as Love, and I know it as Mystery and a Goodness Beyond Words.
So, that's the backstory. The current story is this: two things are converging. As my marriage was ending, I felt increasing curious about how Christian theology might fill out the meaning of my experiences of my marriage and the end of my marriage. So, I met a couple times with a Methodist minister I know. Also, I grew up Methodist, so the familiarity and frame of reference appealed to me. Not only that - I've been compelled, as so many of us have, by news, politics, intersection of religion with currents events, and I've been wondering how to be a part of the solution, even a small part, in this miasma of vitriol, anger and hate. The solution, for me is compelled by what I consider to be not only my civic conviction, but spiritual beliefs.
So, that led me (and my daughter) to the rock and roll Methodist Church yesterday. She looked at me early in the service, as the band was rockin' out and said, "we're more uptight than this." But twice during the service, she whispered, "I really like this, do you?" I did. The message, pivoted on a quote from the Sermon on the Mount, but it broke down the Bible verse into interpretation and emphasis - it gave choices, and emphasized both/and thinking (rather than either/or thinking).
Afterward, of course, my daughter didn't want to go to a second church service in one morning. What 11 year old kid does? But, I wanted to go directly to our 'home' church and see how that felt. So I bribed her with Strange Donuts and off we flew. The man at the donut counter asked us what we were doing and when I told him, I also asked if he grew up with a religion. "Catholic," he said. "But I don't go anymore. It's interesting that I'm studying at a Jesuit school." We laughed and talked for a few minutes about Catholicism. And as my daughter and I walked out into the wind and cold, she said "That's weird that we had such a deep conversation in the donut shop." I said "Stick with me, kid." Because truthfully, I have weird, deep conversations with people in passing all the time.
And then we entered our familiar, old church. The sanctuary where we've spent holidays, watched baptisms (Unitarian style), taken part in Youth Talent Shows, and Christmas Pageants. Not to mention all the 'old' faces - the people we've seen age, the children I've seen grow, the characters I've come to have so much affection for. This is the weird part to me - not deep conversations, but to find myself contemplating a religious crossroads, to wonder if I'll take a step toward a further metamorphosis in my relationship with God? Or will it be a different iteration of my relationship with the church?
Walking and talking and laughing and learning with my daughter, I felt and feel joyous and grateful. We are together in a country where we can choose our religion, where we can disagree and talk and wonder with people we know well and those we've just met. We can change our minds! We can walk down the street with the wind whipping the hair in our faces and practically skip with the energy of it.
And, I don't know what will happen next. And, I treasure both the freedom and responsibility of that.
