Christ, that's funny!: Portraits of the Laughing Jesus

From what we know of Jesus - which, from a historical perspective, isn't very much - he doesn't seem to have been a real good-time sort of guy. In spite of all those references to turning water into wine, officiating at weddings, last suppers and the like, and even if people claimed he DID get a little tipsy from doing so, wisecracks and one-liners do not abound in his many familiar sayings.

THIS was the Jesus I grew up with, and if ever a sobersides existed, he was it. He had this long, sombre, Anglo-Saxon face, a receding hairline, and the high forehead of aristocracy. Not exactly a laugh riot.  The only quizzical line of his that  I can think of is the camel through the eye of the needle (or was that a needle through the eye of a camel? Poor camel!), and that line about, "You see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but not the great log in your own eye." Maybe you had to be there.

We want to know what Jesus looked like. We're curious. Even non-Christians want to know. Even people like me - and in spite of years of uneasy association with the church, I now believe Jesus was a composite, the teachings and sayings and saving deeds of many itinerant prophets rolled into one - want to know. Unconventional takes are welcome, even the above, rather smarmy pose, which probably shows up more often than any of the others, and in more guises.

Sunset orange.

Pastel blue.

And this one, an obvious corruption.

I don't know why it is, but artists have a hard time portraying Jesus as a - what? A real man, or is that too homophobic? What I'm trying to say is, Jeez! He looks like someone competing in America's Got Talent or something, telling us all that his Mom ("Hi, Mom! You're my inspiration!") is completely OK with his "awesome" lifestyle. Even the hairstyle is a little too Vidal Sassoon for my liking.

But this one is just plain disrespecful. Yes! - I believe that Jesus, if there really was a Jesus, likely laughed, because practically everyone who isn't brain-damaged laughs. But like THIS? The look in his eyes is wicked - demonic. He looks to be hatching some sort of evil plot. I don't know what puts these ideas into people's heads. You'd think, if you'd go to the trouble of painting or drawing a Laughing Jesus, there'd be a little more benevolence involved. To quote a Hindu guy I know: "Holy cow."

But it gets worse! Yes - this really is supposed to be Jesus - laughing. They sure had purty teeth all those thousands of years ago.

Does he have to look like this? In all of them? Or am I thinking in stereotypes again? Raymond Burr was gay. Rock Hudson. Gomer Pyle! None of them looked like this. "Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

Howling, but more in pain than laughter.

This one, for some reason, reminds me of a picture I saw in an anthropology text that depicted an australopithecine, humanity's distant ancestor. 

Once in a while, though, I find a depiction that just sort of appeals to me. This may look nothing like the "real" Jesus, the one who may or may not have existed. But it's a nice picture. He looks just Middle Eastern enough to defy the washed-out Sunday School stereotype, without being an out-and-out Neanderthal. He's - well, he's gorgeous is what he is! Just a hint of androgyny, enough to be cool without the salon look. I think I would welcome him as my personal Saviour - if he, and I, were so inclined.

P. S. (the "kicker"): Been looking for this one for years! Though there are those who believe I am nuts, I am an avid Blingophile. I love making Blingees, as they are my only real shot at visual art, and this one, sentimental though it may be, is quite beautiful. The subtlety of the animation is quite pleasing to me. It took a reverse-search through my TinEye program to find a true animated version, as I only had a jpg on hand from a post a lo-o-o-o-o-ong time ago. By the way, my search yielded 122 results. And as I look at it now, the reflection seems almost feminine, like the face of Mary. Jesus could always depend on his Mom. 

I was quite intrigued to find, upon researching the paintings of Greg Olsen (who did the Christ image at the end of my Laughing Jesus display), that he also did the face of the Blingee I like. Some of his imagery is kind of cool, bringing contemporary figures into a Biblical setting. I wish my old white vinyl-covered Bible with the zipper on it had had pictures in it by THIS guy - I might have paid more attention in Sunday School.

Another, more secular Olsen painting. I think it's quite charming and well-composed, and I like the quality of the light. I also like what it's saying: I have a couple of granddaughters like this, whose fashion sense ranges from tutus and ballet shoes to beat-up jeans. And there's not a princess in sight.

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End times: when clergy turn atheist

New movie about atheist pastors: “Losing Our Religion”

Losing Our Religion is a feature length documentary about preachers who are not believers, and what atheists do when they miss church. Allowed access to the 600 members of The Clergy Project – a safe haven for preachers from all faiths who no longer believe – the documentary follows ex-members and clergy who are still undercover.

They are not just losing their religion, for many they are losing their friends, community and even family. As well as their job.

As events unfold that change lives forever, their stories also connect with secular communities that are growing in surprising places. New groups are experimenting in ways to have church without god, and asking the same question as unbelieving clergy – “what’s next?”





Losing Our Religion is a documentary about community, acceptance, and a view inside the complicated lives of clergy who are stranded in the rising tide of non-believers.

Losing Our Religion is produced by Zoot Pictures Inc. in association with documentary Channel, the financial assistance of the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit, the participation of the Canadian Media Fund, and the participation the Government of Manitoba - Manitoba Film and Video Production Tax Credit and financial investment from the Manitoba Film and Music Feature Film Production Fund.

I recorded this film which aired on the Documentary Channel, left it on my PVR a while, then watched it last night, kind of reluctantly. And it did turn out to be sort of depressing. (These films are always disappointing somehow, so I don’t know why I watch them). This wasn't so much about The Clergy Project as individual pastors who had “lost their faith” (in essence, become atheists) after a long period of spiritual disillusionment.

Through a lot of very talky interviews and not much else, the film traced their need to get out of the church, or even (in the case of one man) to stay put in it and continue to lead, and preach something he absolutely did not believe in. To my shock, Gretta Vosper (the woman who was asked to step down as a United Church minister because she was an atheist) was interviewed, and presented as something of a martyr. Her hurt and sense of rejection by the mean old church was obvious, though I don't see it that way at all. 

If you are clergy in any mainstream Christian denomination, it makes no sense to me to preach Communism or Buddhism or Scientology – there HAS to be a basic belief system based on the Bible and the teachings of Christ. That is what makes the Christian church Christian, but when Vosper spoke, the filmmaker's sense was, “How dare they persecute such a brilliant, sensitive spiritual leader?" This is what comes of telling five or ten per cent of a complex story.

The rest of it was quite sad. One couple, somewhere in the States, just battled and battled and twisted and turned, and it was extremely painful to watch. The wife's bitterness and even bafflement at what was going on was disturbing. The soon-to-be-ex-pastor husband was offered a juicy plum of a job that he knew he could do well and love, but his wife made him turn it down because she would “lose her support system”. Support system? This was completely gone already because everyone in the church had turned against her (she said) and wasn’t even speaking to her. It was strange to see her try to hang on to the shreds of what she only half-heartedly believed in, mainly in a desperate attempt to hang on to her identity and status in her religious community.

From sort of liking her, I came to actively dislike her and the way she had put herself in a box and was angry and self-pitying, often spitting venom at people she once loved (and even, nonsensically, at God, whom she called an asshole). Watching her face contort with anger and internal conflict was unsettling. But why did she think her friends would continue to support her? What did she think they’d say? “Oh, it's OK if you hate God now and call him an asshole! We still respect and accept you as the minister’s wife.” It was completely unrealistic. 

Never once did she seem to think of the fact that THEY might have felt hurt, angry and abandoned by someone who used to support them. The congregation's belief in a personal, all-loving and all-powerful God was being threatened by someone at the very heart of the church. The minister's wife is often the most accessible person in the area of pastoral care. It's possible and even likely that in their minds, SHE dumped THEM instead of the other way around.

In fact, it never seemed to occur to any of the disillusioned clergy in the documentary that they may have hurt and abandoned their flock, as they spoke only of how lonely and hurt and persecuted they felt because no one understood or empathized with their agonizing plight. The filmmakers did nothing to emphasize or even acknowledge this pastoral black hole. Or perhaps it was just edited out because it was too complicated.

Much of the tone of the film was atheistic in an antiseptic way, and one scene showed the crowd in one of these "alternate" groups singing “What a Feeling” from Flashdance (!!), self-consciously jumping up and down and trying to look un-embarrassed. Pep rallies for non-belief. These were utility halls, all-purpose rooms that may have been practical, but I sure didn't see any beauty or grace, or hear music that wasn't lame and devoid of real passion.

Of course there were standup comics for atheism, too, and a sick song at the end about different denominations, concluding that instead of all that, "all I have is a brain”, implying that no one who believes in this stuff does. It was hateful, but they ran it as a whimsical, funny, lighthearted way to end the documentary. Apparently, we were supposed to laugh.

I am something of a refugee from organized religion myself, so I did get a large part of it, or some of it, but I felt the need to write about the part of the film and its approach that turned me off.  I think religious leaders need to handle their loss of faith in God with extreme care, and with great sensitivity toward the people they are walking away from. But according to this film they are mostly concerned with themselves, with whether they'd still have a job and how they would support their families, and how this sudden lack of a loving God in their lives made them feel sad, alone and misunderstood. 

They seemed to be asking their people: why are you so upset with me?, as if unaware they were jerking the rug out from under them. But I kept thinking their people were justified. What would it have said about them if they had been completely indifferent to their minister's loss of faith? Anger and hurt is a more honest response than the phony pseudo-acceptance I constantly saw in the United Church. If anyone was angry about anything, they swallowed it and tried to be okay with everything that was going on, no matter how outrageous. Hypocrisy on toast.

I have a theory as to why this is. I call it the Titanic Theory. The United Church of Canada, like all mainstream Christian denominations, is a sinking ship. It's crucial to put asses in seats so that they can continue to exist (and, most especially, to hold on to those drafty old buildings with their outrageous upkeep), so they now have to be very, very careful what they say.

During my 15 years in the church, I was constantly being squeezed for money. Once a year, someone would come to my house to talk to me about how much I was going to give, laying on a subtle guilt trip if it wasn't enough. The annual meeting was an exercise in misery and depression, even doom, as once again we were told the church was failing financially, and it was basically our fault. One minister even resigned over it, claiming from the pulpit that our church would be thriving if we weren't all so stingy and selfish. Obviously, our priorities were all wrong.

I didn't find out for years and years that practically every United Church in the country had this same problem, and that in fact our givings were higher than the national average. My own offering, which by the way my family could not spare, was well above average, but who knew? No one told me that until much later - in fact, I found out by accident. Secrecy about money is the norm, as is the chronic isolation of individual churches. There was a sense we were better than the others, didn't need them, or at least had to figure out our problems on our own.

My beliefs are very hard to contain within an institution of any kind. My experiences of mysticism were feared and disapproved of, so I learned to keep them to myself. Love Jesus, but for God's sake don't really love him or at least express any of it, except in wheezy old hymns by John Wesley. I was seen as crazy and unstable for weeping in church, while at the same time the lack of expression of emotion on Sunday mornings was criticized.

To stop believing in God, become an atheist, lose faith, or however you want to say it, is not the same - at all - as becoming disillusioned by all the human bullshit that goes on in churches. True, my spirituality no longer fit, and I was tired of using a shoehorn to try to make it fit. But it was the sickness of the institution that made me sick, the sense of constantly bailing out the ship, of everything turning on money, of frantic attempts to modernize and be cool and "inclusive" (my ass!) while our rituals couldn't have been more wheezy and out of date, even irrelevant.

I was done with it, and was only sad about missing all the years when it was still good. It's the same (I hear) when a marriage breaks up. You mourn for and feel nostalgic for the years when it still worked. But having it end doesn't mean that it all meant nothing. 

As for these atheist clergy, the fact is that many people in many different fields become disillusioned with what they do. But what exactly does "disillusioned" mean? It means you had illusions in the first place. Perhaps the whole structure was built on illusion. If so, leaving is a bold step towards reality, wholeness and health. Remember how you preached forgiveness for all those years? Then forgive all those people who depended on you for being hurt, angry and pissed off at you for changing. Atheism is not what you signed on for, it's not what they expected or what they need, and to expect sympathy and understanding from them is  ludicrous. If your head is where I suspect it is, the view must be dark indeed.

This one goes out to the dreamers (a Scientology moment)

NOTE. Posting this video in no way endorses or promotes or says "hey, hey, hey" to the vile practice of Scientology. I just want to show you these guys' new strategy. They've replaced those cheesy rallies and Veg-e-Matic-style announcer with THIS - steamy, dreamy images that don't really mean anything. Nicely shot, however, which is really why I posted it. 

The cut-off text is just crap anyway.

Running out of time? God will give you more

I recently found a trove of  "As Seen on TV" videos on YouTube, the kind you will never see on TV (or, at least, I haven't). There's even a Facebook page with a daily video. Oh joy! Some of these are just weird enough to appeal to me. I didn't think anyone was religious enough to want a talking clock that spews scriptural verses at you, but then again -. Here it is.

And I'll bet she isn't even a virgin!

Virgin Mary Statue Crying For No Good Reason

NEWS  January 3, 2011
VOL 47 ISSUE 01 News · Religion

WORCESTER, MA—Nearly a week after a statue of the Virgin Mary began shedding what appeared to be actual tears, worshippers at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church told reporters Wednesday they had lost patience with the figure's nonstop whining and carrying on.

The self-absorbed drama queen.


"Like everyone else, I got sucked in at first," said the Rev. Paul Doherty, the pastor of the church, who admitted he had once kissed the tears streaming from the eyes of the 5-foot wooden altarpiece. "But now it's just too much—crying in the morning when I come in, crying during baptisms, crying, crying, crying all the time. I've called around to other parishes, and all of their Marys are doing fine, even the cheap plaster ones that have to stand outside in the wind and rain. There must be thousands of Marys in the Greater Boston area, but ours is the only one who can't hold it together."

"To think I actually thought it was a miracle," added Doherty, looking up at the statue's glistening, tear-slicked face. "The real miracle would be if Old Faithful over here would turn off the waterworks for five seconds."

Longtime church organist Agnes Wright told reporters that the weeping statue had become a distraction and that she now privately hoped someone would lay a drape over the self- indulgent figure or at least turn it so it was facing the wall.

"I know she's sad, but c'mon, she's acting like the world revolves around her or something," said Wright, adding that Mary's incessant sorrow had made receiving communion a "chore." "I just spent the past 10 years watching my husband slowly die from Alzheimer's, and I cried on my own time. I didn't make it this endless production."

"Show a little dignity," Wright continued. "The statue of Jesus has nails through his hands and feet, for God's sake, but you don't see him crying."

Despite warnings from church officials that any pilgrimages to the statue would only encourage its blubbering, thousands of faithful from around the world have converged on the church in hopes of getting a glimpse of Mary and her extraordinary appetite for drama. Day and night, visitors have been standing in lines a quarter of a mile long in order to witness the statue's breathtaking self-absorption firsthand.

"I came all the way from Oklahoma City because I had to see Mary's big pity party with my own eyes," said Jen Gammons, 53. "When I finally got up close enough to get a good look, I just wanted to smack her. We've all got problems, okay? But we don't all break down and start bawling like a bunch of babies."

At press time, church officials said they planned to continue services as normal for the foreseeable future, despite the fact that the statue's weeping continues unabated.

"I don't even want to deal with it at all, frankly, so I'm just going to ignore her," Doherty said. "Why indulge it, you know? I'm not going to debase myself by going over and consoling her and saying, 'Oh, you poor, poor thing, what's wrong?' Screw that. I'm going to read my sermon, and if she wants to cry all through it like some kind of grade-school prima donna, then she can be my guest, but I refuse to so much as even look in her direction."

When reached by reporters, a Vatican spokesman said Pope Benedict XVI would be arriving in Worcester next week to "give that statue something to cry about."

From The Onion, a few years back, but still pretty relevant. Pregnant out of wedlock? Are you kidding me? Not another single Mom mooching off the state!

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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I dreamed I saw St. Augustine

Jesus was homeless. . . wasn't he?

'Survival' of United Church not a priority

(Blogger's note. I was a longtime, active member of the United Church until a sense of alienation drove me away a few years ago. The National Post article below (describing churches scrambling frantically to survive financial hardship) scored a direct hit. During my 15 years as a committed member, I saw churches trying to maintain cavernous old buildings, in dire debt because they couldn't make their mortgage payments. I saw them grabbing people practically as they walked in the door to join committees, shaming people if they couldn't or wouldn't tithe (often actively questioning their commitment if they felt their money was better spent giving directly to charities), and even driving away people who were contributing in a way that was outside the box. Such interlopers made everyone uneasy, as they seemed to be saying: look, guys, the old ways aren't working any more. What can we do that's new? 

So today I found this article online which was written SIX YEARS AGO. I wonder what has changed. Probably not much. Members are still probably sitting through endless annual meetings in which the main subject is financial doom and the reprehensible lack of members' commitment which has brought it about. I remember the gloomy, depressed feeling hanging over us as we left these meetings, shamed into believing we were letting our church down and even letting the United Church die because we didn't care.

Though everything in our culture has changed  so radically that it is practically unrecognizable, the United Church expects to go on operating in the same way it did in the 1950s. Why doesn't it work any more? Can you guess? But shame isn't the answer, nor is panic, scrambling to get the old ways back, or bitterness and gloom.

Ask yourself: how many churches did Jesus build? Only one, and it has no walls.)

By National Post October 13, 2007 

The leader of the United Church of Canada says his Church is too "preoccupied" with protecting its buildings, counting its money and recruiting members, and should instead devote its energies to helping the poor, the hungry and the sick beyond its walls.

Reverend David Giuliano, the Moderator, or spiritual head, of one of Canada's largest Protestant churches, has sent a letter to United Church congregations across the country, urging them to worry less about "buildings and budgets" and become more concerned about the "suffering of the world around us."

"Our hope is not for our survival or even growth," Rev. Giuliano writes. "I am praying that our preoccupation with getting people into church is transformed by a passion for getting the church out into the world.

"I am praying that we welcome strangers with a radical hospitality that sees in them the face of Christ -- not an 'identifiable giver' or a 'potential committee member.' "

Rev. Giuliano's plea comes in the midst of a difficult period for the Church and its roughly 600,000 members. Along with other mainstream Christian denominations, the United Church of Canada is experiencing a long decline in national membership; its congregational lists fell 39% between 1961 and 2001.

In July, the Church announced program cuts and layoffs at its national headquarters in Toronto due to financial pressures -- including the closure of its audiovisual production office and the cancellation of its award-winning current affairs television pro-gram Spirit Connection, which will air for the last time on Vision TV on Dec. 30.

In an interview this week Rev. Giuliano acknowledged, "There's a lot of anxiety in the Church about our institution --about money and numbers."

He said the Church, which once boasted more than a million active adherents, was for many generations a source of cultural and social authority in Protestant Canada.

"Many of us are reluctant to give up [that authority]--even if it doesn't really exist today --but I see the change as liberating, because we don't have to hold on to that any more."

"Jesus's followers were not a huge group of people, and they were not prosperous," he said.

"The measurement of a faithful community cannot be in its numbers."

Rev. Giuliano said that as one example of the Church's preoccupation with survival, too much money is spent maintaining Church buildings that serve little purpose other than to shelter a declining group of worshippers once a week.

"I think we have too much property," he said. "We have places where we have three United Churches within three blocks of each other."

He applauded one of the country's oldest congregations, First United Church in Ottawa, which sold its old building last year and now leases meeting and programming space from a nearby Anglican Church.

Rev. Giuliano likened the Church institution to a treasured car that a proud owner might keep in their driveway.

"The Church is a vehicle intended to get us somewhere. If you keep it fixed and washed and waxed but you don't ever take it anywhere, it doesn't have much purpose," he said.

"If what we do is ask the question, 'How do we get big or even survive,' I think we've lost our way," he said. "For me, the real question is, 'What does it mean to be faithful?' "

© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.

(Post-blog. I can hear the protests now. But it won't work. It won't work. Whether we like it or not, the world runs on money and it can't be any other way. End of discussion.

Show me ONE organization that has survived for more than a couple of years without significant financial support from its membership?

I have one, and it has many branches and exists in many forms. It was started in the 1930s because a doctor and a stockbroker couldn't stay sober. But together, with mutual insight and support, they found that they could. No one told them that survival without money was impossible, so they survived. They did more than survive: their tiny church of two became the most successful worldwide self-help organization in human history. And all this with no dues or fees, so that NO ONE would be excluded.

Maybe just a little bit closer to what Jesus had in mind.)

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.