Theological Roots - they go deeper.

So today, I biked out to a church a few miles down the road; the bike is a hybrid, even tires and a big frame. The shoulders of the main drag here in town are really more like gutters: broken pavement, sand, glass, litter, and occasionally parked cars or trucks. I was on and off the sidewalk half the way out. The church was small, comfortable, but not home. The way the house of a friend might be more comfortable - bigger sofas, better paint, softer carpet, but your house, with its bare floors and tight corners and freezing north bedroom, is home. (That's probably not a healthy way to feel about church; it's not an exact metaphor, but it works.) The liturgy was different, but I think that might be the fact that it just changed anyway, because of the calendar (no, seriously, it takes me about four weeks to get used to the rhythm of a service and then it changes and I love this church and it is challenging and crazy) and the melody of the Psalm and the Offeratory are different. But also I'm thinking that, for all I have thought while reading literature that Grace is pretty laid-back, I realized today that it's a lot more formal than we could be. (I typed "it," but that didn't work, and then "they" feels wrong. We? We. ...huh.) It's hard to put an exact finger on it - there's just quite a bit more... ceremony, perhaps? The sermon, the hymns, the prayers, are said a bit more formally. But the sincerity of the church is exact. Maybe it's the way the building is. This church - Grace & St. Peter, I think - is small, carpeted... homey. The building at Grace is quite bigger, for an equal or smaller (and significantly older, on average) group of people, and it sort of echoes. Then there's the massive imposing organ, the wall faces, the stone floor, the long, immovable pews, the altar rail... yeah, I could see the building influencing worship.

Anyway.

After the service, I talked for a bit with a few of the folks - you can't slip out immediately after an Episcopal service. I mean, you can, technically, but it's quite difficult to pull off, and it doesn't feel right? It feels like a Proper Service involves talking and coffee afterwards. So by chance, I wound up talking to the woman who has written the Sunday School kids' lessons for the past fifty years or so. I was quite impressed - our Senior Warden had me read the few of those she had on hand, when I'd asked her for "as much information on the Church as possible," because she said she'd found that the way they were written often broke down the lessons brilliantly, good for adults as well as kids. That week, for example, had been the one - I'm not going to remember it all - where Jesus heals on the Sabbath. It was good, anyway. Not an easy lesson for kids, because it involved the "God loves us, but sometimes we do things that cannot be loved," thing, which is tough to teach.

And so we come to the point which is the most important, and the central I think, for me. After church, when I got home, the family was preparing to go to Farm Fest, which is an annual get-together for my dad and stepmom's workplace. I suppose I should clarify at this juncture that my dad's boss was, for a good seven or eight years of my life, our pastor. Have I explained the church from which I came? My friends will know. My friends may remember my rants, sometimes in anger and sometimes in sorrow, about how painfully misled and horrifying my early Christian education was. How huge of a part Biblical Literalism, and Bible-Worship, by which I mean idolatry, played in my life. How I feared God, and was taught to fear God, more than love or respect. How very broken I was by the time I would have been old enough to be a consenting Christian. My friends may also remember me talking about how our pastor said this, or said that, or taught these things that led me into such a spiritual trap.

It was with no small amount of trepidation that I sat down with him and his daughter, who was once my closest friend or so, to talk. About life, college, what exactly in blazes I was doing out in Washington, had I turned into a peacenik hippie (well, it depends on your definition - by his, no not even a little), and so on. And what was he doing? His life was good. Is good! Is really, really good - is centered in his faith in God, and love, and so even though his oldest son (my age) had brain cancer a few years ago and is now in remission... well, his faith is strong and his life is love and good. And now, how was I? With, you know, that.

I told him that yes, I was more liberal politically, but my politics are always formed by my theology... and my theology has also become more liberal. He nodded. So I told him that I had started going to church again. That he would perhaps not approve, but it was Episcopal-- and he interrupted me to say, Why would he disapprove of that? That he doesn't care about denomination, and never has: what matters is the Word. Now, my mother would go on, and on, and on, and on, y'all, about this corrupt denomination, or that corrupt denomination, and this poor misled flock, and that poor bunch of fools... and I always figured that was his preaching. Nope. He was staunch about transubstantiation (which I actually totally get), but the rest of it, yeah. That one hit me hard.

So I talked for a little while, about how I'd come to Grace and finally, finally come back to faith in God. That I'd never stopped really believing in God, but faith... was another story. He nodded.

"It's hard, because as humans, we cry out for love. We need it. And when that is shattered - it can take years to pick up the pieces."

"I - yes. Yes, it did. Ten years, at least. Maybe more."

"Some people never get that far."

Now - those lines sound like three lines that could be said a lot of ways, by a lot of people, to a lot of people, in a lot of places. Those few lines of dialogue could be fit into a long and meaningful sermon. But as big as those lines are, they are of equal size with what went unsaid between them. I don't know that I can clarify that any more. Perhaps I could, but it would take at least ten years.

Do you know, for the past five years - stretching out past that towards ten, but definitely not as long as ten - I thought that most of the painful, hurtful, bitter and biting and spiteful theology that formed my childhood was him. Was his preaching. And certainly his sermons were not... what I'd agree with, entirely, now. I'm pretty sure he's still a [young-earth] Creationist, for example. But. But, the more I think and try to remember now, the more I can remember my mother - who, remember, as our homeschool teacher, was with us all day every day - as the one to preach to us the gospel of fear and hate. And the little things: she filed the 'pentagrams' on the hubcaps of my little brother's army jeeps off. Lest they tempt us, or invite demons into our home - their kids had a freaking racecar rug - you know the type, with a road map laid out all over, and you'd push little cars around it. His kids played soccer - yes, with secular outside educated kids. For pity's sake, his girls wore shorts! The more I think back, the more I realize that it was her who was the influence of isolation and scary Quiverfull sort of life aims. He was just a fairly conservative Baptist.

Even the sermon that was based mostly on two punctuation marks was actually one of forgiveness, at its heart. One of our lay preachers gave a long speech during the last study to similar effect... er, with significantly more actual biblical background, but same overall message.

And now, I wonder, as someone who realized too late that his friend's wife had become dangerously insane and, rather than try to intervene, simply asked the family to remove themselves until they were whole, how does he think about how it all turned out? Does he know how bad it got? Would he want to? Probably not. I don't know that I'd want to.

I have drunk my fill of bitter anger, aimed at my mother. I have none left to offer at this realization that it was her who perverted the Love of God into a scourge to straighten her children. What could I say? She tried to kill us all; she made us homeless and destitute, she put us in a living situation with a pedophile, she ignored us until we became wild and uncontrollable, she broke our hearts and betrayed our trust and shattered our faith in love. And I say this all - now, fifteen years later, I can say this all - dispassionately, and with only an old, faraway ache, rather than an urgent hurt. I made my peace with her memory (though she still lives, technically, the odds that I will see her again in this lifetime are pretty small - and if I do, it would be on her deathbed, belike) some time ago - and what is spiritual abuse and toxic theology to weigh, added to the litany of hurts outlined above? She was worse than I remembered; he was better.

It makes me happy to see him, our old pastor, happy. He lives his faith, and lives in love, and that is good. I'm not going to grouse about the fact that his theology is more conservative than mine. He lives in faith and in love - isn't that the whole point?