Sunday Morning Coming Down July 17, 2009

Well, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.

Sigh, Kris and Johnny.   Always knowing just how a soul is feeling.  A ugly headache that came on like a freight train round 11:00 last night,refused to be ignored, sent me to Sheetz at midnight scrambling for the miraculous release of Excedrin, and then reluctantly parted company at about 4:00 this morning, derailed my best-laid plans for church this morning.  It also left me with the odd semblance of a hangover and removed the filter that I usually cling to like a life-preserver. (Sunday)

(Friday) I’ve been working up to this post for almost a week now, looking at it, jotting down a few sentences, discarding them, and then abandoning the whole enterprise all together.  So here goes:

My faith is a shaky creature, tremulous and timid.  I never seem to have a firm grasp on it when I need it most.  I spend probably as much time running from God as I do running to Him.  I imagine I’m not alone in this, but it feels lonely. As a rule, most Christians are not very good at admitting weakness and to admit that sometimes you’re just not sure how the whole thing works seems like a mighty big weakness.  I envy people who proclaim to have never had a doubt, who never seem to experience that darkness where all we think we know seems on the verge of unraveling if we pull the thread that bedevils us.  I guess I’m a thread-puller. Even if it leaves me perplexed, holding one end of what used to be a gorgeous cashmere sweater, you can bet I’m gonna pull that damn thread.  I have a compulsive need to know things, to figure it all out, to get a definitive answer.  And therein lies the rub.  Faith is not an exercise in the absolute.  You would think that after 33 years, I would be better at accepting this.  I’m not there just yet.  For a girl who prides herself on independence, on being able to go it alone, reliance on a supernatural father is a hard hard thing to grasp.

So what’s a girl to do?  Read, pray, seek, go to church, open up to those you trust.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Being a Christian is a process.  I will never be a finished product in the here and now.  Thank God for the process.

Right now, I’m on my 4th or 5th read-through of Brian McLaren’s Finding Our Way Again.  Have you ever read something, and had the eerie feeling that somehow the author read your mind, scooped out your innermost thoughts, and then oh-so-eloquently put them to page?  That’s this book for me.  Thus the compulsive re-reading.   It’s passages like the following that send me reaching for this book over and over again.

“If you’ve lost your way to the desired destination, you’re in shallow trouble.  But if in the process you’ve also lost the address you were supposed to visit,  your trouble just got deep.  If you don’t realize you’ve forgotten what your desired destination is, you’re in the bottomless pit…namely, to be in a hopeless situation but not realize it or feel bad about it.”

I hope I’m never so complacent that I fail to realize when I’m lost.  I hope I never get so consumed with my shortcomings that I fail to realize that Jesus loves me nonetheless.  That he accepts that I’m human so I might accept it too.

And since it’s been over a week since we’ve mentioned Kings of Leon here, let me  remedy that right now:

“I talk to Jesus.  Jesus says I’m okay.”

The Runner

I should probably listen to Jesus more than I do.

Gimme That Old-time Religion June 3, 2009

So our buddies Dave & Tony over at Muddied Waters are currently in the midst of a weeklong experiment/challenge in which they are only consuming Christian pop culture.  Godspeed, little men.

Anywho, it has been an endless source of entertainment for the rest of us as we witness Dave suffer from the lack of competitive sports viewing and Tony from the dearth of good music.  Their efforts to spiritualize Twitter has led to the invention of  handy new phrases (thanks to Jen for most of these) such as  twestify, twitnessing, and my personal favorite twongues.  Hey we’re all Pentecostal in some shape or fashion around here and twongues is funny!

So mosey over to their blog and read about the boys’ adventure in the land of all that is holy.  And in their honor, here are the top 5 spiritual (to me) songs on my i-pod.

Because of the Times May 18, 2009

In the family of Pentecostalism, the Church of God was originally one denomination. As typically tends to happen, ego, legalism, and stubbornness led to a parting of ways; resulting in the birth of the Church of God of Prophecy.

Luc and I grew up in church; she in one, I in the other. I tend to see the two denominations as twin sisters; fundamentally alike and fundamentally different.

They are alike in the sense that each instilled in us profound ideologies, traditions, faith in something other than ourselves, and a belief system of sorts. They are different in the sense that the Church of God is like the sister that we OP’ers would say “rebelled” and got jewelry, gold lame and big hair. The OP on the other hand is the stubborn-play-by-the rules (EVERY rule)-penny-marching-too-tightly-wound-sister.

Luc and I often discuss the church. It’s the thing that brought us together and has formed some of the best friendships I’ve had in my entire life.

As we’ve stated on here quite a lot recently, we attended the Kings of Leon concert in Fairfax. In case we didn’t love those boys and their man-vests before, we are now what you could call big time fans. These days it’s a big deal to go to a concert and hear someone sound better than the cd. In my opinion, the music industry (along with photography/art and Photoshop – don’t get me started!) has changed dramatically. So much of what we hear isn’t real – it’s synthetically created in a studio with a technician mixing each and every element to a precise level of perfection that isn’t able to be reproduced in real life.

It’s this central issue of reality that has bombarded my life these past two years, and is now finding itself in some boys playing rock-n-roll and my spiritual life. Eric brought me a copy of the Rolling Stones article regarding the Kings (Thanks Eric!!) and I jotted down the quotes that jumped out in the 8 page spread:

“You’re under the microscope,” Nathan says.  “It was like TMZ before TMZ. God forbid you get caught going to a theater, or watching TV. Then you’re screwed*.” P. 42  (*He didn’t say screwed, he used a word that I don’t think I can post on here.)

“By the end of their relationship she had seen this powerful man of God becoming more human every day,” says Caleb. “He had a lot of character flaws.” P. 43

“When Ivan left the pulpit, Caleb became disillusioned. “I was going to be a preacher – it was everything I knew,” he says. “My heart got broken, seeing that it was impossible to be perfect. So I said to myself, ‘I have to go the opposite way’.” P. 45

Maybe it is because perception becomes reality, but the one thing I see in these quotes is the fact that the church doesn’t handle reality well; nor do they allow anyone else to choose it. The rules are so strict there is no room for failure (and let me tell you, with a ‘failed’ marriage at the age of 28 I’m knocking that one out of the ball park), and we have somehow instilled this idea that perfection is attainable for every member and every leader.

Because of the times I am living in, reality has become something I yearn for. I am choosing to keep people in my life who embrace reality – and life with all of its imperfections. If they can’t accept me with my faults and failures, I have no desire for relationship. This idea seems to be at odds with the church.

And I wonder, is this something the next generation can help to change – or will the church that gave me my history and heritage continue to exist in a bubble, alienating them from the very people that they are commissioned to reach, when they have trouble admitting that they are one in the same?

Holy Roller Novocaine May 14, 2009

yes, this is where i grew up

A friend (Hi Tony!) sent this pic to me this morning.  Oddly, it fell on the heels of a oft-repeated, never-resolved conversation my husband & I had last night regarding our Pentecostal background.  This is the marquee from the church I grew up in.  Honestly, I am pretty much a lapsed Pentecostal at this point.  Though I spent twenty-odd years attending a Church of God, and even worked for the church itself, it’s mostly been an uneasy fit.  But to paraphrase Tim O’Brien, it’s one of the things I carry-a huge chunk of my personal DNA.

To be Pentecostal is to be fluent in a language that is something of a mystery to the outer world.  Last month, Rolling Stone profiled Kings of Leon, and I couldn’t help but laugh to see the music industry bible attempt to explain the culture of the band’s childhood:  mixed bathing, traveling evangelists, youth camp, camp meeting, prayer lines, hymns, no shorts, no secular anything.  Strange to your average Rolling Stone reader I’m sure, but  par for the course to any Pentecostal.  Personally, my parents were not very strict.  I think they just liked certain things too much to let them go, so I cut my teeth on the movies and music of their youth-namely the Vietnam era.  Every year my aunt had to sew culottes for my cousins and myself so we could be properly kitted up for youth camp.  Our usual summer uniform of shorts & tanks was not allowed, so for one week out of the year we looked the part of modest Church of God girls.  The culottes were then relegated to the back of the drawer never to be looked at again.

My husband is the son of a Church of God preacher.  We met at the fore-mentioned camp.  I don’t think Eric saw a movie until he was a teenager.  When he & I stopped attending a Church of God, he was informed that he was breaking a family tradition of generations.  And while Pentecostalism can make for an exuberant and warm environment,  it can also leave you with the sense that you can never ever measure up.  It’s part of our shared DNA-one that’s oddly made for a pretty strong alliance between the two of us.

I guess that’s one reason I do adore Kings Of Leon.  In the midst of the sex and the drugs and the absolutely lethal rock-n-roll, you can hear the echoes and vibrations of countless Sunday nights spent squirming in a church pew absorbing things that are mysterious and wonderful and terrifying.  You can’t really amputate any part of your childhood, can you?  It stays with you in one form or another.  The things we carry…