The Elusive Inclusive Religious Community

We were more than halfway done with the 7 hour stretch from far eastern Washington back to our hometown. It had been a whirlwind 24 hours moving Boof’s grandma into a more extensive level of assisted living. Two adults, a toddler, and a dog, had made the trip last minute, and now were were sitting in a nostalgic Mexican restaurant in my college town.

It was 3pm and in came several different groups, all dressed up. Skirts, dresses, ties and suits for the men. Even the children were dressed nicely, which made me eyeball Potamus in his dirty Spiderman t-shirt and monster truck rainboots. Sunday. Church. Yeah.

I lived in that small town. My life revolved around Sunday service and Tuesday night college ministry and Wednesday night volunteer for junior high youth group. I led Bible Study on Thursday nights (and sometimes Monday nights), and went to Mass with friends when I could squeeze it in. When I lived in the dorms I did a nightly prayer night with other people in my hall, and I regularly went on weekend retreats and mission trips. It was like brushing my teeth, going to class, or getting something to eat at the dining hall. A rhythm of life.

The experience of sitting next to a table full of small town church goers sparked a long conversation the rest of the two hour drive home. We feel so torn, both of us on how to proceed in the spiritual community. It’s not the first time we’ve had this conversation, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. But we’re stuck in this place of not knowing, not deciding, and not knowing what to do about it. Do we go to the church we feel sort of connected to, but the average age is 75? Do we go to the church down the road where Boof grew up and there’s a thriving Sunday school, but fundamentally in a theology that I don’t agree with? Do we find somewhere else? Do we not do anything?

What I came away from the conversation, was an ability to articulate my desire to not send Potamus to a Sunday school that teaches things I don’t agree with. Boof said that his parents chose that church because it had a children’s ministry, even if they didn’t necessarily feel comfortable with it. And my pushback was…WHY? Why am I, as a mom, who makes many other sacrifices, going to sacrifice the next 10/15/20 years going weekly to a religious service with people that I don’t fundamentally feel accepted by or agree with? Do MY needs as a person not matter as much as the theoretical ‘needs’ of my child? AND, do I send my child to a place where he will make friends and form relationships on a principle or set of beliefs that I fundamentally don’t believe in anymore?

It’s food for thought, for sure. Because Boof has less angst, and certainly less of a ‘bad experience’ from growing up religious, he sees that it will be a fun place for him to get to have some stories and make friends. But my argument is that he can have friends and hear stories at our house, or daycare, or a different church, or different club activity, or different religious institution altogether. I don’t think that my needs as woman/wife/mom should be shoved under the rug to fit a 1950’s ideal of an every week Sunday experience.

And yet, I feel torn, because I want to believe in something. I want Potamus to believe in something. I miss the routine and the community and the fitting in I felt when I was in college, when I was apart of that faith routine. I miss believing in something that felt right and good and connected me to others. I read articles and see that there are other people writing about being young parents with children who want a community where questions are valued and their kids can be themselves and they can be themselves, but then I go to church and don’t find that these places actually exist (except, like I mentioned at the beginning, in congregations with quite older members). Why is this such a frustration?!

Church & The Working Mother

Most Christian women I know are stay-at-home mothers, or, at most, work-from-home mothers with lots of support from nearby family or in-home nanny/babysitters. I have seen them write posts on Facebook and talk about how lovely going to church is on Sunday as a family, and all the support they’ve felt from their congregation in being mothers. And, that’s where I get a little jealous, or at best, have mixed emotions.

Because that hasn’t been my experience, at all. Getting to church on Sunday is hard, and has happened a handful of times since Potamus was born almost 2 years ago. It was easy when he was a super-new infant, and I could nurse in the pew when he got fussy, or sway in the pews to the “contemporary” (aka 90’s maranatha songs) worship music. But since he’s been mobile, we haven’t been back more than 3 times.

I was talking to a friend about it this week, and she said “church is hard for working mothers. My kid is in daycare 5 days a week, I want to be with him, not pass him off to someone else.” And that, in a nutshell, summed up everything I had been saying in private to Boof, and feeling, since the beginning. Because it is hard for my kid to adjust to his daycare, which he now goes 4 days a week. For him to adjust to a new nursery provider, for 1.5 hours on Sunday seems a bit much. How many weeks would he cry in this new place before he got used to it? And would it be worth it?

And while I only work 4 days a week, those precious family moments in the morning, are some of my favorite. We’ve tried church recently and found that either one or both of us would have to leave with Potamus about half way through the service. Not only do I struggle with feeling whether or not church is relevant to my life anyway, I wonder, is it really relevant to my life as a mother? Because the church we attend doesn’t have many children, so to dump Potamus off with the 17 year old nursery assistant seems less-than-ideal. It makes me wonder, are churches using an outdated model of childcare as a relief for mothers who are with their children all week?

It feels like we’re doing it wrong. Like this division of children and adults is outdated and doesn’t serve parents who don’t see their children all week. I don’t have answers, but watching football, in our jammies, in the sunshine-filled comfort of our own home, with our child playing at our feet, feels much more ‘spiritual’ than singing songs and worrying if Potamus is doing okay in the church version of daycare. Ya know?

In Mathew 19:4, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”  I just don’t feel like Jesus meant let children come to church and then hide away in a back room chewing on legos and doing flannel board. Maybe I’m wrong, but that doesn’t seem to be what this verse is saying…

Thoughts? Do you go to church or another religious service? Are children welcome in the service or in their own separate place?

Take Charge of Your Fertility

ancient birth control…beating off storks…

I grew up in a household that did not value body autonomy, especially not feminist ideals related to issues of fertility. My father’s favorite thing to say was “die to yourself,” using the example of Jesus dying on the cross and giving up “all his rights” in order to save us. This message translated into the overt belief that “you have no rights, because you are a Christian, and so you have to give up all your rights to follow Jesus.” As an adult I think my dad botched the true message, especially since there’s a difference between being told ‘you have no rights,’ and choosing to forgo your own desires to benefit someone else.

As a child, and teenager, it felt very hierarchical and patriarchal, that I, especially, as a woman, did not have a say in what happened to my body. When I chose to have sex with my boyfriend, at 2 months shy of 18, they believed I was trying to be “like her,” and assumed that my boyfriend took advantage of me. Because I certainly couldn’t make the choice with my own body. And while hindsight shows me that there was peer pressure from the other half of my relationship, it wasn’t anything close to rape, or even date rape. I made a choice with my body, and even if it was a choice I later regretted, it was still my choice.

And so, today I finalized my choice to take charge of my own fertility desires to not have another baby (right now? ever?). Sure I consulted with Boof, but I chose this for my body. And it feels good, although a bit crampy since it’s settling in. Haha. But while I am bodily and spiritually confident in my decision, there’s this niggling back-of-the-mind thought that has entered a few times, and I know it’s based on my childhood upbringing. There’s this judgment that I am an evil-hell-going-feminist. That I have strayed so far from the party line that I’ll be burned at the stake. While a few close friends know of our my decision to get the IUD, most family hasn’t been let it on that decision. I’m mostly optimistic that they’ll be supportive, but there’s always a little doubt that they’ll still love me at the end of the day. And I worry, will I regret my decision?

I don’t feel completely different. But here I sit, a woman who can have unprotected sex from now until 10 years from now when the IUD craps out, without worry about getting knocked up. It feels liberating, although I’m sure it’ll take a little getting used to…

How does your values, or values you were taught, inform your reproductive choices?

Agnostic Christian?

In a work ‘break-out session’ during our college’s opening day activities, I participated in a group activity about identity. We had to make a little pipecleaner sculpture representing 4 parts of our identity, and I chose marital status/region/sprituality/family structure. I was a mother, wife, from Seattle and….agnostic.

When I said the words out loud I almost fainted. It’s the first time I’ve ever said that out loud, especially to viritual strangers. And when the president of the college (who happened to be in my group) and another group member went in explaining their identities and said they had also chosen spirituality, and said they were Christian, I noticed myself all aflutter inside. My first reaction was to say “wait, I meant Christian. Yeah, I’m  Christian, you guys, don’t listen to anything I say,” but I didn’t say that. I just felt it. The uncomfortable desire to want to fit back in.

It was an honest answer in an honest moment. Though sometimes the answer will be Christian. And sometimes I might say Buddhist. Because I feel like I’m all of those things. Buddhist. Christian. Agnostic. I’m not sure how those labels all work together, but they feel true in this moment. Just like sexuality, it’s hard for me to quite fully feel encompassed by one label. But that’s for another post.

So here I am, in this place of unbelief and belief.

We went to church last Sunday and it was so sweet. I didn’t feel cynical and angsty. The songs were lame and I sang them anyway. Potamus sang with us, in his little toddler cooing, ahhing, voice. He paid attention during the sermon, though the little bag of cheddar bunnies was far too crinkly for  my liking. We chatted with people afterward and it felt lovely to have a sense of community.

And yet I wasn’t convinced. It felt like home, but it didn’t feel like answers. It just was. I was. Like floating in warm water, rather than trying to fight a current, or swim upstream, or any other cliche about something being a struggle. I feel okay with where I am. Like maybe the answers will come to me, or maybe they won’t but as long as I’m asking questions I’ll be okay.

Though I’m not going to tell my parents the whole agnostic bit. Because they’d probably shit themselves. And that’s just not something I’m interested in cleaning up.

…and nothing but the truth

Yesterday my bestie loaned me a book that her grandpa recommended: Proof of Heaven by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander. It was a fascinating story chronicling  his decline into a week-long brain-dead coma caused by bacterial meningitis, where he has a near death experience. There was even an adoption theme woven throughout (where the guardian he meets in ‘heaven’ turns out later to be his biological sister that had died right before he reunited with his biological family. It was fascinating to read such a skeptical doctor, with such a great knowledge of medicine and the brain, write about this very personal and beautiful near death experience where he became enlightened spiritually. Super cool.

Except it is all bullshit.

Well, maybe not all, but I gobbled the book up in a few hours the afternoon sunshine, and was so excited that I googled the book. And found a link to an article debunking the whole thing. Well, maybe not debunking the actuality of the experience on the other side, but certainly debunking all the medical aspects of the story. Like how the doctor didn’t have the most rarest form of bacterial meningitis, that according to the doctor (who treated him) it was a medically induced coma and that he was actually conscious during that week, though in a very hallucinatory state.

Ouch.

Of course this back and forth ‘is it true, is it not true?’ thoughts come on the week of Zen pen where were are exploring writing from our soul. To be honest, my soul feels so torn by all of the spiritual mumbo jumbo about. I want to believe…in something…anything. No, I don’t want to believe in something, I want something to be true. I want to have confidence in something. I sometimes even want to believe in the Christian stories that  I was taught as a kid/teenager/young adult. Something. I feel like  I’m floating in the abyss of unbelief, a hungry ghost of a soul, wailing and looking for truth that doesn’t exist.

Except, at one time, that truth existed for me. While not a coma-induced near death experience, I once, at such a low point that I thought of death as an option, had a vision/hallucination/psychotic break(?) where I saw Jesus (at least that’s who I perceived him to be, it was a glowing white robed shining figure) who picked me up in his hand, out of a dark hole, and put me on a grassy field. I wasn’t depressed after that for almost 2 years. It was because of that experience that I was baptized as a Christian and started to attend church regularly. While I’m not proud of my fundie evangelical years, that experience was beautiful and authentic and clearly what I needed in that moment of time.

But here I am now, 12 years later, and not even sure God exists, let alone the whole religion based off some dude who lived a bunch of years ago. It feels like a ‘dark night of the soul,’ if I were to couch it in religious terms, though at this point…what’s a soul anyway?

I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I’m tired of feeling lied to, tricked, hoodwinked, duped, and confused.

 

Searching for a Guru…

In prep for this coming quarter, I thought I’d watch a few documentaries that might expose my students to the idea of critical thinking and questioning the status quo, not to mention that I really enjoy documentaries with a spiritual flavor.

I  knew going into the documentary that Kumare was fake, a man doing a Borat-style (though, seemingly with less malintent) social experiment meant to expose the ease in which swamis/gurus/prophets/babas/etc can exploit people’s desires for truth and connection. I knew he was fake the whole time. They tell you right from the beginning, and then you follow him on his journey to become the false-prophet Kumare, and gain a following, but I found myself compelled by his persona the whole time.

What is it about the search for a guru that compels me so much?   I WANTED to believe in what he was saying and who he was. It’s crazy the feeling that I had while watching it, because I am normally the most skeptical person ever.I sit in church and pick apart the sermon. I read and analyze and am open to learning, and yet in so many other ways I simply give in to emotion and believe random things that come along that just “feel” right to me.

So why do I feel like I want a guru/teacher? In my mind I envision sitting at Jesus’ feet and it feels SO RIGHT, but he’s not here anymore, and in so many ways I feel like his message has been twisted and changed by the church and pastors to mean something different than it was intended. It makes people feel unloved and unaccepted, and that’s not what I believe to be true.

In so many ways I have felt a part of a spiritual community in our home church, but now with a little-one and a church comprised of 70+year old grandparents, and virtually no under 3 child program or way of me getting my spiritual needs met while Potamus gets his spiritual needs met, leaves me feeling frustrated. And yet I’m not inclined to go to the neighborhood rock n’ roll church with a preacher I disagree with, simply because they have a “good child program.” I also don’t want to drive a bazillion years to get to church, because I like that ours is in the heart of our town and is such a community feel. I wrestle with my motivation for wanting to go and my motivation for wanting to stay home. And my desire for Potamus to have spirituality as a foundation, but wanting to steer away from the way my fundamentalist upbringing.  I know that I believe being a part of a community is important, but if I were to say I have a “guru” it’d be in the form of writers like Anne Lamott or Donald Miller or Brian McLaren. But part of me wants to sit at the feet of a teacher and experience the love. Ya know?

Thoughts? What influences you spiritually? Do you have a teacher you resonate with? Have you seen Kumare? What were your thoughts on it?

My First Sun Salute

My first sun salute happened at age 16. Obsessed with all things India, I checked out this yoga book from my school library, because I had this desire to do yoga, but was super freaked out because of my fundamentalist Christian parents and the upbringing that equated yoga with devil-worship. But I felt called to do yoga. I can’t explain it, other than something in my heart and body said, ‘try this,’ and I had to follow that calling.

So I fumbled through a sun salutations, in secret, at night, in my bedroom. It was hard, looking at pictures from a book and trying to figure out how to link the sequence or figure out the right alignment without any verbal directions or hands-on tweaking. I fumbled on until the book had to be returned, and I smuggled it back into my library to not be checked out again, by me.

Not willing to risk delving deeper into yoga, I gave it a break, for about a year, until a summer or two later when I came across an excellently marketed product called iFit yoga, that had stripped the Indian spiritual and philosophy, from the asanas and made it appealing as a form of exercise. I snapped up the packaged mat/block/strap/bag and audio CD, and began practicing for 45-60 minutes every night (again, in my bedroom, in semi-secret). I felt more open about my practice, but focused on the exercise benefits.

My practice has waxed and waned for years. Whole years have gone by where I haven’t actively practiced asana, and simply focused on breathwork, or philosophy, or at the very least, simply reading yoga magazines and wearing yoga pants to the grocery store.

But I miss it.

The asana practice, that is.

So, today, while Potamus was sleeping, I did some asthanga yoga to a youtube video. It felt hard, and good, and right. And it also felt a little bit scary. Because I’ve been on this journey for years, and I love it, and it feels different than running, because it feels like it hits my soul in a different way. I avoid because it’s hard to go inside myself and feel things I don’t want to feel and be exposed to the big picture of suffering and complexity that seems overwhelming. Why this happens during yoga and not other exercise (yet) is a mystery to me, but there it is. In some ways I am still both drawn and frightened by yoga, as that teenager fundamentalist was drawn and frightened. For different reasons.

The ebb has come back to flow, and I think I might do asanas more regularly. And I want to expose Potamus to yoga, but that’s a whole other post for another day…

Help. Thanks. Wow: A Book Review

This book, is about prayer. And when I think of prayer, this is what I think of:
Anne is one of my dashboard saints. Though she would probably rather be my dashboard dancing hula girl, since the grass-skirt would cover The Aunties.  She is my go-to in spiritual famine. A breath of fresh air. I read nearly everything she writes including anxiety inducing facebook posts about the Election 2012.

And while this book doesn’t read as much like the hilarious coffee-house storytime gossip chat punched with spiritual wisdom, it does read like a really real fireside chat with a spiritual mentor, about things that are true and good. So it’s more spirit talk peppered with personal stories and wickedly true metaphors, than a personal jabber cupcake with Jesus sprinkles. Which, I was sorta hoping for the latter, but feel like the God I’ve been avoiding, really wanted me to read the former. Confused? Keep reading.

The book is about prayer. The 3 categories she puts prayer into (Help. Thanks. Wow.), is refreshingly honest and cuts across the denominational divides…though my fundamentalist upbringing sometimes shouts from the devil-shoulder that I shouldn’t listen to such nonsense, and that it does too matter if it’s God or Earth Mother or Hewlett Packard (Higher Power) that I’m praying to. But mostly I ignore that voice, because Truth speaks much louder.

Here are a few of my own prayer thoughts, based on some of her most powerful quotes.

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She says:

…and when I spent the night at your houses, I heard all of you saying these terrifying words, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my sould to keep. If I should die before I wake…” Wait, what? What did you say? I could die in my sleep? I’m only seven years old…
“I pray the Lord my sould to take.”
That so, so did not work for me, especially in the dark in a strange home. Don’t be taking my soul. You leave my soul right here, in my fifty-pound body. Help.

As an adopted kid, my parents had to modify the traditional bedtime prayer, because it gave me nightmares. Reading trashy kids books like The Face on the Milk Carton made me nervous that my own parents had kidnapped me. I then also worried about my unknown birth mother coming to snatch me away in my sleep. And then I had to worry about legit strangers coming to steal me and take me into an orphanage or make me a slave. I did NOT need to think about God, in all his scary white beardedness, coming into my bedroom and snatching my soul.

So my parents, awakened by my anxiety driven night terrors, made up a less terrifying version asking Him to  give us good dreams and God blessing mommy and daddy and monk-monk and monk-monk’s brother and sister, forever.  But still, the lingering fear of “soul to take” and “dying before I wake,” was still there. I mean, sleep is like a little death, and what 7, 8, or 29 year old really wants to think about the possibility of not-waking-up.

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“In prayer, I see the suffering bathed in light…I see God’s light permeate them, soak into them, guide their feet. I want to tell God what to do: “Look Pal, this is a catastrophe. You have got to shape up.” But it wouldn’t work. So I pray for people who are hurting, that they be filled with air and light. Air and light heal; they somehow get into those dark, musty places, like spiritual antibiotics.”

I think that’s beautiful, and definitely something to aspire to, though this is often more like how I am:

“…they might say, jovially, “Let go and let God.” Believe me, if I could, I would, and in the meantime I feel like stabbing you in the forehead.”

There is nothing worse than that kind of  “let go and let god” drivel, in my opinion. And yet, I never know what to say to people when they give me such Hallmark lines. A friend, who later became an adoptive mom, used to practice lines with me to answer people who asked about when she was going to have kids. Not wanting to talk about her infertility with everyone, let alone in public, the lines we practiced sounded like, “this is not an appropriate topic for the frozen food aisle at Safeway.” It shut people up, and was less drastic as stabbing them in the forehead, though she had to practice in order for it to not sound rude or worse yet, burst into tears. It had to become muscle memory. Much like prayer becomes muscle memory after a time. Especially the help prayer.

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I write down the name of the person whom I am so distressed or angry or describe the situation that is killing me, with which I am so toxically crazily obsessed, and I fold the note up, stic it in the box and close it. You might have a brief mment of prayer, and it might come out sounding like this: “Here. You think you’re so big? Fine. You deal with it. Although I have a few more excellent ideas on how best to proceed.” Then I agree to keep my crazy mitts off the spaceship until I hear back.

This just kinda-sorta-don’t-really-want-to-admit happened to me this last week. If reconciliation and Help prayers can be facilitated by my over-functioning-anxious adoptive mother. Because, if you’ve kept up, I am crazily mad at my adoptive sister. So much so, that I did the only adult thing I could do: defriended her on Facebook. And, even better yet, have been almost-smugly telling people about how  annoyed I am with her.

And then I got her name in the rigged name-drawing for Christmas.

Awesome.

But instead of glowering, I changed out of my yoga pants and went out Christmas shopping. And, instead of  buying her athletic socks and gum, I found her something she would actually like. I’m almost sorta proud of myself for getting through my crazy anger, but then I don’t want to be seen as a braggart, so I’m just here blogging about it. Maybe my help-me-n0t-hate-her-forever prayer was sorta answered. Though don’t expect me to text her anytime soon.

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Help, help, help. Thank you. Wow. Amen…And then two hours or two days later. Help….

I think my prayers are sometimes even less sophisticated. I often pray Please, which is the younger brother to Help. It’s the “beggy prayers,” of please please please, which feels both more pathetic and more manipulative than the distinguished Help, which has an air of surrender to it. I mostly approach God like a 5 year old who wants ice-cream and feels that they might utterly die if the wish isn’t granted. Lately I’ve found myself saying please please please about all sorts of things, like Boof getting a job, or getting a few more hours of sleep (in a row, this time, thanks), or that my boss wouldn’t find out that I’m an utter sham and fire me on the spot. These pleading, groveling prayers also have this air of manipulation in them, as if I were to say the prayer in such a tone that surely God would get tired, but instead of my mother would say, “stop using that one of voice monk-monk,” She would, in her eternal patience, realize that yes, I really do need that ice cream cone.

Beggy.

Perfect word for it.

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Wow means we are not dulled to wonder…Wow is about having one’s mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous: the veins in a leaf, birdsong, volcanoes…Alpine blue spider lupine, monkeyflowers, paintbrush. Wow., because you are almost speechless, but not quite. You can manage, barely, this one syllable.

When I take pictures, I capture wows, and they somehow turn into well-worn wows when I re-visit the moments. When I’m seeing the world through my viewfinder, I am less critical, more open to wonder, more childlike and excited. I sometime shout

“LOOK A DAISY!”

Or stare in awe that such a beast can sleep with her mouth open

 

Or, a little gasp of wonder about the beauty of an upcoming wedding ceremony:

And even that sometimes-truth can be found on rusty burn barrels

Wow. I get to see things. I get to capture images. I get to re-live moments in full-color and share memories with others.

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Now as then, most of the time for me gratitude is a rush of relief that I dodge a bullet-the highway patrol guy didn’t notice me speed by, or the dog didn’t get hit by someone else speeding by. Or  “Oh my God, thankyouthankyouthankyou” that iwas all a dream, my child didn’t drown, I didn’t pick up a drink or appear on Oprah in my underpants with my dreadlocks dropping off my head.”

This is a pretty thankful time of year, with people’s incessant gratitude posts on Facebook feeds, which mostly make me nauseated and remind me that I am possible the least grateful person on the planet. Though I am thankful, I just get sick of it being plastered all over the internet. The internet is for worry and anxiety and pictures of food that will make us guilty later. Why do I hold the things I’m grateful for in such a grinch-like vice grip? Probably because I’m worried about losing them, and hope that my cavalier, almost disdainful, attitude will keep the big bad God from taking away those things that He/She/It most likely influenced in the first place. Because, “The Lord Giveth, and the Lord Taketh Away,” as the saying goes. Where this Milk-Money Bully of a God idea came from I have no idea. Okay, a small idea. But I hate always blaming my fundamentalist upbringing.

So I say thanks. But quietly. And sometimes in that same beggy way, like “please please please don’t take this away from me because now I know I can’t live without it, I mean, don’t want to live without it.” And I feel almost worse than the groveling 5 year old ice cream kid. Like someone who thanks you for buying them a sweater from Goodwill. That sort of, martyr-ey way about people, as if God went soooo out of Their way to throw us a bone.

Gratitude is clearly not my strong suit.

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I think you should read this book, even if you don’t think you pray. Because, maybe you’ll find that you really do.

Still: A Disappointed Review

Lauren Winner is one of my dashboard saints. She is in the list of writers and spiritual seekers who influence my own journey. When I was in college I voraciously read her two books “Girl Meets God,” and “Mudhouse Sabbath.” I loved them. Simply loved them. I tried out her “Real Sex” book, and found it less-than-applicable, so I put it down halfway. It’s been years since I’ve thought of her, but finding myself in this confusing spiritual place I decided to pull out a few of my saints and see what they were up to. Anne Lamott’s book isn’t out until November, and I’ve been making do with simply her facebook updates, so seeing that Lauren had published a new book, entitled “Still: Notes on a Mid Faith Crisis,” I knew that I HAD to read it.

I so identified with Lauren’s “character” in her first memoir, as I, too, was wrestling with my own shocking conversion story and jump into a spiritual practice and life that had energy and passion and wasn’t quite as conservative as the faith I grew up with (though there were PLENTY of fundamentalist tendencies I would later see). A mid Faith Crisis? Perhaps a good description of where I am, as it relates to my actions and feelings about church/God/religion/Christianity, etc.

Sadly, with a bursts of shiny quotes I can hang on to, my love of this book stopped at the preface. And in that, the most powerful part of the preface is a quote she uses by some other author:

When the Lord came into me,”  Buddy tells her, “it was such a good feeling. I thought, well I can do anything because of this feeling, but then there was all this stuff to do and to think about, and I don’t remember the feeling all that well.”

Yeah, that sums me up pretty well.

The rest of the book read like random thoughts, mixed with metaphor and some prose/poetry combination. While I resonated with the overall feeling of questions and stuckness of “staring against a blank wall.”

But the magic I felt during her first memoir was gone. The breathless reading and relating was gone. Perhaps its more of a testament to where we both feel we are, but I did leave, feeling rather disappointed.

Jesus Loves Me This I Know?

Boof’s sister is getting married on Sunday, and we have “hired” my parents to come over for the weekend to help care for Potamus. They are very exuburant in their love for Potamus, with my dad always saying things like “say hi grampy!” in this funny voice. I was on-call today and so while I was taking calls and doing paperwork, Potamus got a little fussy. In the only way she really knows how, my mom bounced him on the exercise ball and sang songs ranging from “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to “Jesus Loves Me.”

For some reason, when she broke out in her rendition of “Jesus Loves Me,” I got internally annoyed. Like I wanted her to ASK if it was okay to sing a song about Jesus, and not just assume that I was okay with it. But that thought process felt squicky to me, especially since we attend a church (Boof is practically an ordained minister after all), and I am an ordained elder in my church (though we only attend about 3 times a year).

I thin I was triggered because I was raised, and left, the fundamentalist conservative Christian upbringing that my parents raised me in (and the version of Christianity that they still believe). When my mom sang that song I didn’t hear it as “Jesus loves you, even if you’re gay or democrat,” but as I was raised “Jesus loves you…but it’s conditional and you might go to hell if you screw up.” Yes, my father did actually tell me two weeks ago that the Republican platform was the most “christlike” and that democrats were evil. When I turned and said, “well, I guess this conversation is over since you just called me evil.” That’s not a message I want Potamus hearing. I don’t want Potamus to be taught religion or politics  from my parents. My insides feel very twisted as I even think about it. And yet, I want him to also authentically know his grandparents, in all of their imperfections. I want to feel okay about him learning to sing “Jesus Loves Me” from my parents, but I just…don’t…yet.

Boof and I have even talked about it…how we’re going to approach the religion/spirituality conversations someday.  What we’ll answer when the questions come from inquiring little minds. Boof is more relaxed about it, growing up in a very open, and yet clearly Christian environment. He’s just not that worried about how we’re going to handle the whole religion/spirituality conversations as Potamus grows up.

Are you going to raise your kids with religion? Is it the same or different from how you were raised? How do you handle family members with differing religous/spiritual beliefs?