This past year, I’ve been trying to go to church again.
I used to go to church fairly often in my childhood. Then almost regularly when I was an undergraduate.
Then not at all for a few years.
Later, I went on occasion – at Christmas, Lent and Easter. No more.
Of late, I’ve felt a real desire to go more often.
In the last couple of months, I’ve gone three times. For me, that’s a lot.
One was a Byzantine Rite Catholic church.
Another was Lutheran, which is my family background.
The last was a radical, leftist church.
The leftists had the best music – gospel-type singing and lots of clapping, spontaneous outbursts, and terrific piano-playing. The preacher (pastor?) was funny and referred to his gay partner casually. A woman gave communion. It wasn’t my thing, but it was genuinely infectious and welcoming. No harsh words. The crowd was about 65% gay, a number of black people, some seniors.
The Lutheran church was definitely much more bourgeois and more formal. The priest was stout and cheerful, I remember. The hymns were the old ones and the liturgy was traditional, but not in any way boring. The crowd was mostly white, middle and upper- middle class folk. They went out of their way to talk to me and ask me to come back.
Culturally, they were closest to me.
The Byzantine Rite Catholic church was mostly Eastern European. I understood the service only intermittently by reading the translation. The music was unaccompanied chant and there was a lot of standing and kneeling. My knees hurt. A young man crawled on his stomach the full length from the door to the iconostasis. The women were carefully dressed and their heads were covered. They lifted up the little children so they could kiss the Bible and the crucifix. From every corner, red candles flickered and the somber faces of ancient saints and angels looked down on the congregation.
There was no quick good feeling to be had. No infectious singing. The chants were spare and medieval.
Yet it was here I was most at home.
Each church offered something.
For those who scoff at foot-thumping, head-nodding services, I say, remember King David.
He danced and sang in exaltation in his worship. He even took off his robes while he sang. Some people pointed the finger and scorned him for it.
For those who mock the stuffy middle-class, remember that Jesus never did. He was at home in the houses of tax-collectors and publicans, drank at their marriage feasts and played with their children.
He didn’t deride their conventions, even when he flouted them. Instead, he kept traditional feasts in the traditional manner.
http://redefininggod.com/2015/09/my-journey-out-of-christianity/
Misguided. Lost compass.
Why?
I feel very much at home and in the right place and time.
Maybe it was not your way. It’s mine.
Sorry, comment was not about you. Your post is beautiful. I was just pointing out one of the many who are lost.
Oh, thank you, then.
I don’t think I believe in universal reconciliation, because I am pretty sure that there’s got to be a point of no return in this, as in other things.
But a lot of differences in worship and even dogma are ones of temperament and upbringing and not much more.
Nice post. Thanks for that, and all the similar ones. And, the others, too.
I’d say more, but it keeps coming off as an attack on churches, and i don’t intend that.
Anyway, from this, it seems like we run parallel more than we run incongruent .
No, no. It doesn’t matter. So long as you aren’t hurling abuse or trolling me, you’re welcome to vent about churches as well, if it’s rational and not just a phobia.
Phobias actually are welcome too, if there’s some evidence to justify them!
God, please forgive me, but I just can’t get myself to open up on this thread, as much as I want to. Or, lately, any other thread.
It’s so unlike me but all I keep thinking about is how this is added to my Stasi/NSA file and how someday it’s all gonna come back and bite me. …Which surprises me, because I’ve said worse.
I guess I just don’t want to pile on anymore and make it worse for those around me.
… As if, that’s all my words accomplished.
As I’ve read elsewhere: now I know what it’s like to have lived in Germany in 1935 – 39. …If I were still twenty years old I’m pretty sure I’d be a part of the White Rose, but now, yeah, “they” use what you love against you. To great effect.
Twenty year olds are resilient against all that.
Getting old is more than just a drag.
…Yeesh, that sounds like such the words of a coward and. …I’m starting to think that’s what it means to be an American, i.e. go along, to get along? …E-gads, I’ve become repulsive. A.k.a. an ugly American.
Gag me with a spoon.
(Early 80’s slang expression.)
It’s just that I haven’t seen any indication that those in my city have any other thoughts than of: revenge, destruction, and a desire to be The king of the hill of All the world.
Why should I be a nail, in a world full of people with hammers?
Yurtle’s turtles, everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yertle_the_Turtle_and_Other_Stories
Anyway, I’ll do my best not to be a turtle at the bottom of the stack. But somehow, I think they’ll use me. As they use us all. Besides, what did the White Rose accomplish anyway? Jack?
Perhaps that’s a part of, God’s Plan?
Not only am I a helot, I’m a rook, too.
I only just read this through.
What did the White Rose accomplish?
I don’t know.
I don’t think we see anything more than the tip of the iceberg in the “real world.”
So how would we ever know?
What about the butterfly and its wings?
Perhaps something was set off somewhere else that led to .. who knows what.
How could we ever know what the White Rose ever did or didn’t do in the real world. That would be something for God and the angels to figure out.
But we do know that they did something in the moral world, because we read about them and go back to them.
And they shore up our understanding of what it means to be moral.
We do know that.
Everything is God’s plan anyway. It’s just that we all want the title role and don’t want the bit parts.
Well, mine is a bit part, but it’s MY bit part and no one will take it from me.