Is there a God?

As one who can't chew gum and walk down the street at the same time, this impresses me. 

I took a crack at violin - more than a crack, I lasted nine years - and didn't get too good at it, but I persisted. We're supposed to persist at everything, aren't we? Try, try again - and again - and again, even if nothing is happening.

I guess reality is different. My violin experience was mostly attached to my teacher, who became a spiritual mentor for years. But the beliefs he espoused are so far from what I believe now that I wonder why I lasted so long.

It was just different then. I was not only a churchgoer, but a lay minister. It seems incredible now, as I have completely discarded organized religion and see it as something which did irreparable harm to me. The story of my former church was such a nightmare that I can barely stand to reflect on it. Leadership fell apart to the extent that no one would even admit how awful it was. TV  cameras came in the sanctuary during worship services to raise the profile and further the causes of our minister and his wife, who later appeared on CBC and talked about their  experiences in the bedroom.

If you didn't want your face on TV,  you had to speak up and say so. If you didn't mind it, you had to sign a waiver. Or maybe it was the other way around. A few years back, such an intrusion would have been unthinkable, jaw-dropping. There would have been tremendous protest. It at least would have been discussed and voted on in council. In this case, it was just "done" as a way of  promoting a certain agenda (theirs).

Things had been bad enough for long enough that it was time  for me to go anyway - long overdue, in fact. I made a stab at finding another church, and found a sort of death march of calcified old people who most certainly didn't want me there.

It sometimes occurs to me that I lost God somewhere along the way, and Jesus too. I just wonder when that happened. Those people in my former church shouldn't have bothered, because it wasn't ever about God to begin with. It was about human ego and insularity and bad decisions and conformity and fear of speaking up, in case we triggered another disastrous meltdown.

And so. All this, from a video of a woman playing a violin and dancing! My joy in that place was long gone, but I stayed and stayed, trying to make it work. It was like a bad marriage that I couldn't let go of. When I did finally leave, I was completely shut out. The hole closed over immediately, and it was as if (after fifteen years of intense involvement) I had never been there at all.

It's all very well to say, "Oh, none of that is God. It's human beings with a corrupt or too-limited idea of God." But God who? God what? I no longer believe in any sort of freestanding force that cares about us, that counts the hairs on our head, etc. etc. As a child, I learned the only theological statement worth paying attention to: "God is love."  If there is a God of love at all, we must carry it and harbour it and share it with each other. WE are love, or we are not.

Not exactly an original idea, but it's all I can do on a Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, we have this song - and it was monstrously difficult to find, by the way, and I nearly gave up on it - by a mediocre pop star called Andy Kim. 


Who Has the Answers          Andy Kim

Is there a God? I really don't know,
Does he have a son? I really don't know.
But when I'm down, and things are all wrong
I turn to him, to help me be strong.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.

God made the sun.
At least that's what they say.
The waters and trees.
He made night and day.
But who made the child who's hungry and blind?
And who has the answers that I cannot find?
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see.

Oh people everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Politicians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
People cannot find any piece of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar.
And so they live and search, never find a Church, everyone is fine 'til the final hour.

People everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares if they're dying.
Pray a little louder now children.
Polliticians swear that they really care, everybody knows that they're lying.
Pray a little louder now children.
People never find, any piece of mind, even though they have the almighty dollar.
Pray a little louder now children.
People everywhere, living in despair, no one really cares.
And so I pray Lord..shine on, shine on, shine on, shine on your light.
And let me see.
Please let me see.
Please let me see.
Is there a God?
Is there a God?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?
Is there a God?
Does he have a son?
I really don't know.
Who has the answers?

Post-mortem thoughts. I remembered a few things about this obscure song. It wasn't  played on some radio stations (too atheistic, I suppose). Almost everyone who remembers it, which is not too many, thinks it was sung by Neil  Diamond. And it's true: in almost every respect, it sounds like a Neil Diamond  song, the plaintive tune and yearning lyrics. But it isn't.

I've even had arguments about it. It goes like this:

Oh yeah, I love Neil Diamond.
Um, it wasn't by Neil Diamond.
Oh yes it was! I remember what album it was on. Cherry Cherry.
Um, you can look it up if you l like.
I don't have to look it up. It was Neil Diamond. I remember.
Um, I'm pretty sure it was by Andy Kim.
Who?
Andy Kim.
I've never heard of an Andy Kim. What else did he record?
Umm. . . Shoot 'Em Up, Baby. How'd We Ever Get This Way. Rock Me Gently. Sugar Sugar.
SUGAR SUGAR? 
Yeah, I remember -
(Then, if someone else is sitting  at the table):
No, I remember, it WAS Andy Kim.
Oh? It WAS Andy Kim?
Yeah. It was him.
Oh! Thanks for telling me.

This happens to me all the time, making me wonder why I seem to lack all credibility.

EXPLICIT: crawling and mooing for Jesus

Don't try this at home! This is a Pentecostal service known as "The Toronto Blessing". It took place some time in the 1990s at a church near the Toronto airport, and started a nationwide movement of cackling and howling that went on for some years. But then it all went underground. Can't imagine why! The recent revival is much more sedate, and much of the crawling around, mooing and quacking (along with walking people on leashes, which I found especially kinky) has been toned down. Not only that - they're now claiming that hardly any of this actually happened! It was just tiny isolated little episodes which have been blown out of proportion by the usual villain, THE MEDIA. (Blame God for the rest.)

Most Pentecostals rail and thunder at this stuff and think it's the work of the devil. I DO think it's bullshit, and a form of getting yourself off, if you don't mind me saying so. Kenneth Hagin did some great work here, but it's extremely creepy. He walks around the crowd making "whoosh"ing noises at everybody while his helpers hold him up so he won't fall over. What scares me is that Hagin started off more-or-less "straight" - a normal, if there is such a thing, fundamentalist preacher. Then he got corrupted, I guess. It makes for very entertaining viewing, as do the disavowals by the OTHER right-wing/Pentecostal Christians. I guess there is a right and a wrong way to experience God.

As I went out one morning

(Author's note. I'll be damned if I remember writing this, but it has to be mine because I can't find it anywhere else. As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden is perhaps my favorite poem, so maybe it got the juices flowing. In any case, I must have borrowed some imagery here and there. Auden I'm not, but we must wade in.)

As I went out one morning

Walking the primal road

My shoulders were bent over

With an invisible load.

And down by the creek where the salmon

Sing all day in the spring

I heard a man with holes in his clothes

Say, “Love has no ending.”

I wondered at his heresy

He wasn’t supposed to speak

Of things he did not understand

And shouldn’t even seek.

“I love you, Lord, I love you,”

the ragged man proclaimed,

although his face was badly scarred

and his body bent and maimed.

The man was clearly crazy

For as he spoke his rhyme,

The salmon danced in the shallow stream

In fish-determined time.

I didn’t try to love him

But I loved him just the same

For he broke the diver’s quivering bow

And called his God by name.

“Oh tell me, man, oh tell me,”

I cried in my anguished state,

“What is the secret of the world?

Where is the end of hate?”

And all at once his face had changed

To an evil, ugly mask

His body had become the hate

About which I had asked.

“How stamp this mask into the mud,

How keep despair at bay?”

“You can’t,” he told me, grinning,

“But my God can point the way.”

“How dare you speak of God, you wretch,

When God’s abandoned you?

How dare you use the Holy Name?

He doesn’t want you to!

Your life’s just spent surviving

With the sidewalk as your bed

And taking poisons in your veins

And scrambling to be fed.”

The man just stood in leaves and mulch

While the salmon sang and spawned:

“Just see the other side of me

And tell me I am wrong.”

Another face appeared just then

A face all beaming bright

Its eyes were streaming like the sun

With pure mysterious light

“You blinded fool, you stand before

A drop of mist made rain

An eye that Paradise looks through

That holds both joy and pain.”

“I cannot understand you, for

You play such games with me!

How can you masquerade as God

And tell me how to see?”

“No one knows how Life began,

From Nothing came our birth.

A stir of seething molecules

Sparked all the life on earth.”

“Don’t tell me, wretch, you are the one

Who made this world come true!

Imposter, get out of my road,

I cannot look at you.”

“Just so,” the man said, streaming light,

“For no one knows the why.

But you will be forever changed

By looking through my eye.”

"You had me at hello"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Why I quit AA

This is a piece I wrote some years ago while I had a blog on Open Salon. It drew an unexpectedly large response, almost all of it negative. The only comment that really sticks in my mind is, "Where did you go to meetings - in a mental institution?" I should have thanked them, for the surliness and blistering sarcasm in these responses neatly proved the point I was trying to make. You can't step outside the bounds of AA convention without severe and rather nasty consequences from the AA mafia. But now I wish I'd kept those responses, perhaps paid a little more attention to the emotion and loyalty behind them rather than reacting with so much anger and offense. I didn't change the piece much, because except for the dates - my granddaughter is now eleven! - I still stand behind everything I said.

My sobriety date, which I will never forget, is November 30, 1990. Today I celebrate twenty-four years of sobriety.

The other day I was lurking around in the children’s section of my favorite bookstore, trying to figure out what a four-year-old grandgirl might want for her birthday. Flipping through the $30 board books and propaganda about toilet training and environmentalism, I heard someone call my name.

I looked up. Oh, hi, Jim. Oh, I’m doing OK. Yes, really. Just doing a little shopping here. No, really, I’m OK. How are you?

It’s hard to be looked at with a mixture of embarrassment and pity, but that’s what I was seeing in Jim’s eyes. Clearly he didn’t want to run into me, as he had been making certain assumptions: that I had either “gone back out” and was drinking again, or else was in such a state of “dry drunk” rampage that I was making myself and everyone around me miserable.

Welcome to the wonderful world of an ex-AA. As with an ex-con, the sense of ensnarement never ends, at least not without a Velcro ripping-away and endless guilt.

There was a time when I needed AA like I needed to breathe. Yes, I am a real alcoholic, and I didn’t fully realize it until I crawled into a meeting on my belly in 1990. Scared sober, I became enmeshed in an organization that quickly took over my life. Moreover, the more embroiled I became, the greater the praise heaped upon me. If I went to a meeting every day, I was a “good” AA member; more than once per day, and I was a spiritual giant.

It’s often said at meetings that you never graduate. This might be OK if I at least had a sense of moving on to another level, but this is discouraged. People with 20 years sober are supposed to say at meetings (whether they feel it or not) that they are at exactly the same level as the newcomers, and are only one drink away from disaster.

I agree with this part: I’ll never be safe to drink again, and I’d better not forget it. After years and years of having this fact jackhammered into my head, I think I’ve accepted it (for after all, “acceptance is the answer to all my problems today”).

From the very beginning, I was disturbed by certain pervasive beliefs in the organization. Conformity is one. Don’t ever speak outside the pre-set AA rhetoric, or other people will assume you’re not doing it right, fighting the mighty and immutable truths of sobriety. There is such a thing as AA dogma, often promoted by what is called the elder statesmen: one elderly man, a veteran of World War II, came to the same meeting at noon every day (supplementing it with evening meetings nearly every night) and talked at length about The War. He talked about The War as it applied to AA, of course, about how he drank his way through the horrors of the battlefield (who wouldn’t?), came home to a wrecked life, and began to set himself straight on the Road of Happy Destiny.

I can’t begrudge an old man the comfort and safety of sobriety, but why do exactly the same dynamics have to apply to a 15-year-old kid? In AA, one size fits all, and if it doesn’t fit, YOU are made to fit yourself to it. If you ever hear a criticism, it’s always couched in terms of “well, I used to object to this and that” (I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see). But glory hallelujah, now I see the light.

The 12 steps, forged in the ‘30s by a failed stockbroker and an inebriated doctor, are all about breaking the will, surrender, and absolute reliance on God “as we understood Him”. Though the founders were in some ways quite spiritually evolved, leaving the door open to diverse interpretations of the divine, the actual practice of the program involves the God of Sunday school and revival meetings and “that old-time religion”. As usual, the practice is light-years removed from the original text.

We constantly hear things like “ninety meetings in ninety days”, “it works if you work it”, and reams of other cute sayings (my favorite of many acronyms: sober stands for “son-of-a-bitch, everything’s real!”). None of these are found in the main text of Alcoholics Anonymous, usually known as the Big Book. Though many members preface everything with “the Big Book says”, their interpretations are often pretty far off the actual content.

But that’s not what made me quit.

Though there was one defining crisis that caused the actual split, there had been a steady accumulation of episodes that disturbed me. No one seemed to be willing to talk to me about any of this, as they were too busy going on and on about humility, surrender and the “incredible journey”. (Many AA members I knew literally had no friends or even business associates outside the program, and had brought their spouses and children on-board. Those who didn’t usually ended up divorced: AA widows abound, and affairs rage in spite of the organization’s unrealistically pure motives.)

Item: I was a couple of years in, doing well, stable, sober, and going to five or six meetings a week. Anything that bothered me about AA and its principles was relegated to some sort of seething pit of doubt that was without question my fault, due to my arrogance, lack of surrender and refusal to absolutely rely on God.

For you see, “everything happens for a reason”, everything happens “the way it’s supposed to happen”. (When my son’s roommate was savagely kicked to death outside a bar, an AA member I knew said it was “all part of God’s plan.”) You hear this at nearly every meeting. Though I didn’t voice my objection, because you don’t do that at meetings, this seemed like passivity to me. “Self-will run riot” was the ultimate evil, but it often seemed that having any individual will at all was somewhere between a sin and a crime.

My friend Louise told me this story: she had been horribly abused as a child, bullied by a sexual tyrant who was now beginning to abuse his grandchildren. As she sat around a campfire meeting, an exclusive club in which your deepest feelings were expected to be revealed, she finally shared the agonizing decision she had made: “I’m going to lay charges against my Dad.”

There was a brief, embarrassed silence, followed by this from the meeting’s ringleader: “Louise. . . I believe you have a resentment.”

There followed a long discussion (or rather, a series of uninterrupted soliloquys: AA doesn’t do “cross-talk”) about how Louise had to surrender, let go of her anger, forgive. This was what she “should” do. I met her several months later and asked her how she was doing. “Much better. I’ve left the program. I was tired of twisting myself into a pretzel.”

Another episode, even more harrowing, involved a young woman who had been systematically tortured by her father. Her sponsor told her she must pray for the person who abused her, and wish for him everything she would want for herself. If she forced herself to keep doing this for long enough, she would actually want these things for him and feel mercy and forgiveness towards him. She was also told during her Step 5 (the confessional step) that she must always look for her part in everything that ever happened to her. She wrenched her brain around trying to figure out what her part was in being sodomized at five.

She stood up at the meeting, looking fragile as glass, with tears running down her face. “I just don’t know how to make amends to my Dad. My sponsor says I’ll feel so much better if I do. But I feel like killing myself. I guess I’m just a lousy AA member. This is supposed to work! I’m not supposed to feel this way. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

I would have talked to her after the meeting (God knows what I would have said) except that a phalanx of members swarmed her afterwards, eager to make her case fit the unquestioned (and unquestionable) model. I wonder what happened, if she ended up like Hannah whose background was similar. Unable to endure what had happened to her, she committed suicide. Members talked about “people with grave emotional and mental disorders”, and carried on.

If I am painting AA too darkly, if I am leaving out the tremendous compassion I found at those early meetings, then I apologize. But as time went on, I found I couldn’t keep the dogma fresh. Except for some of the stories in the back, the Big Book has not changed since its first printing 70-some years ago. What other self-help program wouldn’t update itself in so many decades?

What about all the discoveries we’ve made about family dynamics, about heredity, about mental illness? What about issues of race, of gender, of sexual orientation? (There are a few “gay AA” meetings in which members are held in quarantine. But in the general assembly they have to keep their mouths shut. I once saw a man at an open meeting refer to coming out, prompting an old geezer to literally stomp out of the meeting saying, “I didn’t know this was a meeting for fags.”) No, it’s all swept into the great gulf: obviously the program “works if you work it”, so why make any changes?

But I have come to believe that if the program works, it is because people sublimate their individuality, their power to differ, discern and object. The fact that the 12 steps have been applied to every addiction and disorder in existence alarms me, as if the steps truly are the holy grail of recovery, unassailable, irreplaceable, and beyond question.

My irritability mounting as the years went on, I finally hit a real crisis in 2005. I had suffered from some kind of psychiatric disorder all my life, and in spite of years of good remission I feared a return, but was repeatedly told in AA that it would never bother me again if I stayed sober and constantly relied on God. It was obvious to them (though not to me) that it had all been caused by the demon alcohol.

I secretly took two drugs to control my whatever-it-is (and in all that time I’d never had a correct diagnosis, because the psychiatric system is so incompetent, abusive and full of shit that it deserves to be torn down forever). Suddenly I learned over the ‘net that both these drugs had been recalled at the same time. My doctor had no idea this had happened. So I was left with a choice: try something new, as my doctor recommended, or go “drug free”, as all my AA friends had been urging me to do.

My first reaction was a huge flush of euphoria, of tremendous energy, and an eerie turning back of the clock. I had never had so many compliments about my appearance: I looked ten years younger! Looking back on photos of that time, my eyes were like pinwheels and I was constantly beaming, but apparently no one thought there was anything wrong with this.

Oh, and the compliments on finally being “clean”! “Oh, thank God you’re finally off all that stuff.” “I knew you could do it!” “See, you don’t need to lean on pills because you have God in your life.”

My sleep was whittled down slowly, but by the time I was down to two hours, strange things were starting to happen. In deep hypnosis (by a friend who didn’t know what he was doing), I had an encounter with the Divine that was completely shattering. Almost at the cost of my life, I learned that “meeting God” isn’t at all peaceful or pleasant. The ancient belief that we will die if we see God face-to-face turned out to be true.

The sickening free-fall that followed, the dive into a depression that pushed me below ground, is beyond my powers to describe. It was three years before I began to feel like a human being again. I am now on five drugs and have finally found a decent, competent psychiatrist on the recommendation of a friend. I no longer take medical advice from people who aren’t doctors or try to “heal myself” on milk thistle or coffee grounds But when I think how close I came to giving up and committing suicide, it makes me shudder.

AA did not help me during the most harrowing time of my life. All I got was more unhelpful rhetoric. I wasn’t surrendering, I wasn’t practicing the principles, I wasn’t adhering to the tenet of “no mind-altering substances” (another thing that’s not in the Big Book, but often “quoted” by members with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other).

In other words, it was my lack of commitment that had made this happen. Almost everyone assumed I had “slipped” and was drinking again (which I wasn't – I had a healthy terror of the stuff by then). At first it was subtle, but then I felt roped off, excluded, unable to strike up a conversation with anyone. I stood in the crowd after meetings looking at a lot of turned backs. Even my sponsor always seemed to be busy.

I had been a loyal, sober member of the program for 15 years.

It didn’t really occur to me, because I had been so thoroughly indoctrinated, that there were other, equally effective ways to be peacefully sober. So I ventured out. I rediscovered a close friend who had also dropped out, and we compared notes. I began to realize that in any other case, if a human being were relentlessly exposed to the same simplistic information over and over and over again, it would be reasonable to assume they “got it” and wouldn’t need any more exposure. Do we go to Sunday school until we’re 47? Do we need to have the Golden Rule blasted into our ears by loudspeaker every morning?

OK, I realize that if AA no longer means what it used to, I don’t have to attend. But the guilt still sometimes jabs at me like pinpricks, even two years after I left. The pity in Jim’s eyes, the sense of “oh, she’s going to fly apart at any minute” was palpable. In his view, there is simply no way that an alcoholic can ever stay sober and be happy and productive (though the program is not very big on “productive” and even seems to discourage normal ambition) without relentless exposure to the principles of the program.

I hope I don’t drink again, but I know there is no guarantee I won’t. I am profoundly committed to the sober life. I do appreciate what I was able to learn from my many years in AA, but I don’t think I’ll attend meetings again unless my view changes or I find myself in a dangerously slippery place. And if I do, I will not expect “fellowship” or any kind of a welcome. I can imagine what they would think if they saw me again: some smug or even pitying version of “I told you so”.

I no longer see AA recovery as real recovery: as with “that old-time religion”, no one questions the tenets, assuming they are infallible. Longtime members creep me out. They are broken records of recovery, parrots fed on the same bland diet, grateful to be huddling together in a place where everyone accepts them and nothing ever changes.

But that’s not life. Things don’t stand still except in old Jimmy Cagney movies, forever frozen in time. Life necessitates constant adaptation to change which is often unexpected, wrenching and unwelcome. But we are not taught that in AA. We are taught to rely absolutely on God “as we understood Him”, to believe that everything happens for a reason. When adversity hits, we’re told it’s “all in God’s plan”.

If this is so, then I think I’ll make a plan of my own.

For more on the subject of AA, click the link below to watch a 48 Hours program (including complete transcript) dealing with AA and the threat of violence against women. This is a subject the program has refused to touch and will still not acknowledge, claiming it's an "outside issue".

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-sober-truth-investigating-the-death-of-karla-mendez-brada/

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

What in Christ's name does this mean?

The Starlight Night

LOOK at the stars! look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! 

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! 

Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes! 

The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! 

Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! 

Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!—

Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows. 

Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs! 

Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows! 

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house 

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse 

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

So what does the poem mean?

What means this bizarre double-jointed curvature, this sharp hairpin turn from fireworks "ooooooohs" and "ahhhhhhhhs" into the kind of heavy and even suffocating religiosity that leaves me completely kerflummoxed?

I don't know much about Gerard Manley Hopkins except to say that when he became a Jesuit, he burned every poem he had ever written. Thus perhaps some of his best works were relegated to the ashcan.

He's the one who wrote about depression, that Carrion Comfort one that I find so harrowing, to the point that I think he must have been a true sufferer. But why must everything in Hopkins be Christified?

The poem starts off very much like an innocent Robert Louis Stevenson verse for children, a "how would you like to go up in a swing" sort of thing. But there is a sort of urgency to it, as if we'd better look now or we'll be too late. It seems to tug and poke at us, hey, take a look up there, look at Casseopeia (which I can NEVER see - I am the poorest of visual discerners and can't tell one bloody constellation from another). Then comes a flood of almost-precious elven description right out of Lord of the Rings. Cockle-shells and dingle-bells. Except that, because it's Hopkins, he can get away with it. It's a surprising, even shocking quality, the art of verbal daring.

Fire-folk sitting in the air, why yes, that's a line any poet would kill for. Quickgold: that's perfect, isn't it - why didn't anyone think of that before? The air swirls with magic, you can see your breath, you're shivering yet too warm, your companion's hand is like ice in yours. Yes, you're there, transported, borne up like a downy feather (take THAT, Gerard!) as the constellations wheel drunkenly over your head.

Where I go off-course is in the line, "Ah well! It is all a purchase, all is a prize." What can he be getting at? Taken literally, it makes no sense at all. Purchase what? Prize what? Does he mean we have to earn the right to get into heaven, so to speak - heaven represented by the rapturous star-filled night? Is immortality a kind of lottery, a spiritual 6-49?

Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows.

I don't know if he's talking about "buying your way in", trying to bribe God (good luck!), or the cheapness and crassness of reality compared to the gasping celestial vision. It's one of those weirdball Hopkins-ian things that makes you want to toss the book across the room.

But then he gets back to the "look, look" stuff, which by now is getting a little old (can't help but think it!) in spite of the "Maymess" (a word I really thought *I* had invented) and the "mealed-with-yellow sallows".

But then come the strangest lines of all.

These are indeed the barn; withindoors house

The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse

Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

I don't know, this grounds the poem with a thud, steals all its magic. Hopkins must have had some sort of a thing for Christ, and it's weird. When I first read this startling thing, my reaction was "what"? These are indeed the - barn? And what are "the shocks"? Kindly explain yourself, poet.

I can only guess - and I am really guessing here, because this is an odd thing that doesn't make much sense even after a lot of analysis - that he thinks of the heavens/nature and all that jazz as "housing" Jesus and Mary and all those holy folk who to him represent God. Or does he glimpse the holy/eternal in and through, are those starfolk sitting in the air little glints of God, God's little birthday candles maybe?

Is the universe just God's skin?

I might be reading more into this than I should. Hey, maybe I'm smarter than he was, or at least less obscure. But there are things I don't like here, words that may or may not be used for jarring effect: "barn" (barn? Haven't we just travelled to the farthest reaches of the universe? Why use the image of an outbuilding that is basically full of shit?); "shuts" (an awful word, implying "shut-in" and even "shut up!); "spouse", a sort of creaky word referring to one's life partner - oh, that's creepy! Oh, that's creepy! Is he married to Jesus, or his mother? I guess "espouse" can mean just believing in something. Or something.

Or surrendering to it? Oh God. I was never one for surrender, though in certain circles (does the term 12 Step Program mean anything to you?) it's considered the highest achievement.

And that word "hallows" is not one I am comfortable with either - all hallows eve, hallowed be thy name (which for some reason always reminded me of the inside of a pumpkin, that punky smell). So he throws in some language which could not be more at odds with the dazzling fluidity of those first few lines. What of buying, selling, bidding - what's he on about? Maybe it would be better to stop at Line 7. Can the Sunday school lesson; just dazzle us.


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Is God a Republican? and other musings on a dying faith

My husband likes to say that January 1st is just "a day like any other", and maybe he's right, though I used to think of him as an awful party pooper. Only the numbers change, after all. There are those who might think 2013 is already unlucky because of that ominous 13.

But hey, it's not really 13. It's 6. Add the digits together, and you'll have. . . I don't remember the numerological significance of 6, though I used to know.

I used to know a lot of things.

Years and years ago, I knew about palmistry, astrology (so much so that I cast birth charts for friends), numerology, spiritualism, magic stones, and even (my strangest allegience of all) the United Church. Though all these things might be seen as attempts to understand the unknown, they're also a means to try to bend reality in some way, to shape it in a fashion that suits you. What surprises me most of all is how long I followed that path without really questioning it.

Maybe I needed it so desperately that I couldn't question it.  I think my greatest spiritual addiction was prayer. When you really think about it, the whole concept of prayer is pretty ludicrous. What is it, anyway, but an attempt to change reality? With the exception of praising God or thanking God for being so swell to us when "good" things happen, prayer is a sort of petition. All right, Big Guy, here's what I want.

It implies that there is something wrong with things as they are. This person shouldn't be sick, that person shouldn't be bankrupt or an atheist or whatever-else is unacceptable to us. So we pray that they (or the situation) will change, that it will be different than it is. And we think it will be different than it is because of the intervention of "God", some force that either cheerfully obeys our request or decides to withhold his grace, either on a whim or because for some reason we piss him off.

From the outside, as an ex-pray-er, that's the only way I can see it. Either we "worship" some being who is completely capricious in granting our wishes like some wayward genie, or "thank" this being for being so good to us in giving us things we're largely providing for ourselves, or "ask" this being for help to stop being such a wimp in the face of reality, or seriously "approach" this being to convince him (it's still generally him - calling God "her" still provokes chuckles and "oh yeah, isn't it true" in most circles) to change things so that they will be closer to what we want. There's even an official name for it: prayers of intercession.

But even the most selfless prayers imply that things aren't really good enough they way they are.  Hey, I thought God was omniscient and knew what was best for us! Then why should things have to change?

 

And here's a doozy. Everyone knows the Nazis thought they were Christians, and terrorists sometimes identify as devout Muslims. Surely they pray for certain things that are somewhat at odds with our own desires. The ramifications of this are too horrendous to contemplate. 

But what if it's less clear? What if two different people, or two different faith communities, pray for opposite things? What if, in fact, they are praying against each other? Who does God favor, or do the chips just fall where they may? I've been in a situation where a spiritual community devolved into civil war, and believe me when I say that prayer was being used as a vindictive weapon by both sides.

My years and years of fervent praying that the world situation would somehow get better seem to have backfired. I see only alarming deterioration. So what's the purpose? There's a stubbornness that believers exhibit at this point, a "no, we're not going to give up" that reminds me of my own futile and somewhat ludicrous efforts to accomplish what I thought was my work on earth. It's not gonna happen, so why bang your head?

You keep banging your head because on some level, you believe in fairy dust. You believe in that sparkling magic that will somehow make it all better. If a situation spontaneously gets better, which it sometimes does, you say something like, "Look, God intervened". If it doesn't change or gets worse, you can always blame Satan, or maybe just pray a little bit harder (and louder). In any case, you never, never, never give up. This is called "faith" and I often wonder what it does to change anything at all.

It's been said that practicing prayer as a way of life increases sensitivity and compassion in the person who does the praying. I can't think of a better way to be hacked to pieces when certain events happen in the news, such as 20 sweet blameless school children being blasted to kingdome come. Their parents and siblings will never see them again and will be wounded for the rest of their lives. You can pray for the survivors, but does that help them feel better, feel the loss a bit less, or "heal"? If so, how does that happen? Does some mysterious current of energy leap from your God-charged brain right over into the area of trouble where it magically swirls around like a fairy godmother and takes the pain away?

I started off writing about the new year, a day like any other, and somehow ended up here. Gee, I wouldn't be bitter, would I? I wonder. When did that succulent apple turn so acidic and sour? But bitterness only elicits pity from those who still believe, who still think that prayer is just as effective as UNICEF or an ambulance rushing to provide real help.

One could say, OK, UNICEF is divinely inspired and ambulances, far from being hired and paid for, are God-given vehicles. My concept of God at this point (and I still can't quite call myself an atheist or agnostic because these quasi-religions only promote more of the suffocating "isms" I hate) is something that is indwelling, and sometimes gives us a shove to do something we might not otherwise do, or even something that we used to think was impossible.

Years and years ago I asked my husband, who does not adhere to any particular ism or category of faith, how he defined God. He said, "God is your conscience." I asked him, is that all?  He added, "God is. . . going with the flow." He was describing the sort of innate grace I will never have as I head-bash and flail around, feeling mostly God-forsaken.

Back in 1990 I felt like my life did an almost violent about-face, turning me  (completely unexpectedly) towards organized religion. It was a sort of conversion, or a re-conversion to the faith of my childhood, and I needed it desperately. Whatever I didn't believe, I swallowed anyway, not knowing how toxic that can be. It all came down to a desperate need to belong.

In 2005, my life fell to pieces (no thanks to the church, which only isolated and stigmatized me in my hour of need). I experienced another violent about-face, away from everything that I thought had helped me for 15 years. It wasn't exactly like waking up and saying, "Gee, I think I will renounce everything I once held sacred." In fact, I didn't even WANT to renounce God or anything else that I thought had helped me. But it was like the end of a marriage. It started out great, but one day the lights went out, and frantic efforts to re-light them were utterly futile.

It was over.

I am left with that indwelling model, but I wonder if it isn't just part and parcel of being human. We want more. We reach for more. We want it so badly that we create it. The old philosophical/atheistic argument is that WE created God in OUR image, not the other way around. Certain recent items in the news seem to run counter to the model that we were created to resemble God.

It's not that there's no religion left in the world. While mainstream congregations founder and sink due to boredom, hypocrisy and irrelevance, the fundamentalists are thriving on their own particular brand of smug insularity.  Anything they don't like is Satanic. Sure, they'll feel compassion for you if you toe the line, give up your homosexuality and have that baby even if you were raped.  After all, there's a certain kind of rape where women can prevent getting pregnant, isn't there? And just think of it this way: you'll have an entire political party supporting your every prejudice and prayer.

They didn't win, but they still lie in wait, crouched.

I don't know what happened to Jesus, but I am beginning to seriously doubt he ever existed. This idea would have appalled me a few years ago. He's a beautiful story put together to teach us a lesson, but at this point I'm not sure what that lesson is. The funny thing is, the longer I stayed in the United Church, the more it seemed to espouse that particular model of Jesus as myth. Even United Church moderators began to make proclamations that Christ wasn't actually divine, or even that God doesn't really exist except as a sort of abstract concept.

I think this was done to attract more people, mainly younger people, or to get lapsed members back, mimicking the way the Catholic church is trying to round up the strays with those endless TV ads. It isn't working because a secular church is too much of a puzzle. Painfully pseudo-hip web sites don't help, even if they supposedly "get the discussion going" and provide cute, pat answers delivered by magic squirrels.

 

 

 

 

While I'm still in this bizarre realm, can I pose a serious question: why am I the only person I know who thinks this E-Z Answer Squirrel is a ludicrous joke that makes the United Church look even more shallow and irrelevant than it already is? And why is their web site called WonderCafe, as if any mention of the United Church - or ANY church - is assumed to be anathema to the public? This desperate scramble for the attention of younger people seems to go without criticism or even comment of any kind by church members. It's hard for me to believe that everyone is in favor of it.  Are those who disagree with it afraid to say anything, and if so, why - and of what?  No wonder more serious and committed denominations think the United Church is "squirrely".

 

 

Mainstream religion is a sinking ship. This isn't exactly why I jumped off when I did. I jumped off because of loneliness, despair, and the pity of people I thought respected me. I also jumped off because of stultifying boredom and an appalling abuse of leadership, often designed to suit an agenda which the congregation only reluctantly agreed to (if at all). This involved things like TV cameras in the sanctuary during Sunday service: if anyone objected, they were told, "oh, your face won't be on national television unless you sign an agreement". So the sense of violation and invasion as those cameramen swooped down on the sanctuary like nasty dragonflies didn't count at all. 

Personally, I hated it, but such was the atmosphere in my church at that time that I knew I could not say anything about it without being seen as overly negative or a spoilsport.

In the course of fifteen years with my former church, I saw one minister run out of town after nine years of faithful service, another minister shattering the congregation with vindictive lies (which wasn't our fault: obviously he fell from the sky, meaning we had nothing to do with selecting him as the best of  five candidates), another trying desperately to glue the shattered pieces together, and - finally - someone who really just wanted to be on national television as a shining and very public example of moral courage. Give me a break!

I stayed as long as I did out of incredulity that things could deteriorate this badly, along with personal need and spiritual loneliness. I think by the end I was viewed as pretty much of a crackpot. I once asked a psychologist, "OK, please tell me, what is a FUNCTIONAL family?" She answered, "A functional family is a family where everyone gets to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of being put down or ignored." It had been a long, long time since I had felt comfortable expressing my thoughts and feelings in that place.

 

So where does that leave me with regards to God? I have a conscience, and I do, at times, find myself able to go with the flow, music being the most powerful example of "flow" I have ever found. The finest Christians I know aren't even Christian and don't identify themselves with any sort of spiritual label. They just get on with it. It might take me the rest of my life to even begin to follow that quiet but supremely effective example.