Churchianity

Maybe Not

October 31, 2010 — 2 Comments

Here is a new song, and the first one we’ve recorded as a video and posted on Youtube.

Lyrics –

Maybe Not
copyright 2010 Julia Bloom

My life is a movie edited for TV, seething under docile mediocrity, and if you paint pictures better take a good look, if you like stories this would make a good book. Or not, maybe not.

I grew up in the back seat of the family Ford. My daddy was a preacher traveling for the Lord. My momma smiled sweetly and dressed us up well. We labored in the vineyards keeping sinners out of hell. Or not, maybe not.

I’ve gazed at stars until they burned my eyes, drunk living water till my throat was dry.

I had a hundred crushes but I never caught one, I had a couple boyfriends and we had a little fun, I had a couple babies with the man who calls me wife. We’ve been together twenty years, we’re bonded now for life. Or not, maybe not.

Sometimes under my feet I think I feel the world spin round. Is each day going faster now or am I slowing down? Once when I was concentrating, unafraid to see, speeding past myself I saw a lively younger me. Or not, maybe not.

I’ve kissed the hand that held me in my place, I’ve wiped each wisp of wonder from my face.

Every time I think of getting something off my chest, my barricaded broken heart cries, “citizen’s arrest!” I never can remember why I left the womb. I maybe lost my keys, I’ll maybe find them in the tomb. Or not, maybe not.

I used to paint pictures when I was a little girl. I used to write stories that could echo round the world. The colors are all faded now, the pencil marks erased – those scribbles of my childhood were nothing but a waste. Or not, maybe not.

I’ve lain awake just waiting for a dream. I’ve held my tongue until I want to scream. I’ve kissed the hand that held me in my place. I’ve wiped each wisp of wonder from my face. I’ve gazed at stars until they burned my eyes, drunk living water till my throat was dry.

Or not. Maybe not. Or not, maybe not.

Further Thoughts on Redemption

September 22, 2010 — 15 Comments

Commenting on my last post, Nnox sees no grounds for a redemptive view of things. I said that redemption is not my observation of the way things (usually) work, but my hope. I wanted to add that this doesn’t make me a helpful optimist and Nnox a harmful pessimist. On the contrary, it has been mentioned by others with good reason that many people who believe in “happily ever after” tend to trivialize life (“so heavenly-minded that they’re no earthly-good”), while some who don’t believe or even hope in a happy ending to the cosmos are deeply-committed humanitarians and joyous lovers of life. In their perspective (as I understand it), birth to death is all we have, so we may as well enjoy it and do our best to help others enjoy their lives too.

But it’s painful to know that many – maybe most? – of the men, women, and children who live and have lived and will live on this planet have not, do not, will not enjoy a life like the one I was born to. I expect to eat whatever I want, go wherever I want, live wherever I want and with whomever I choose, have uncensored access to information, stay warm and dry, receive proper health care should I need it, and above all that, find my calling in life and live it out in a fulfilling way. It’s difficult even to make a list like this because all these “basic needs” are met without my really even thinking about it. It could be a book-length list. (When was the last time I felt grateful for the well-maintained streets in my town?)

So why do I get this, and a woman in Haiti does not? It regularly breaks my heart to gaze at my beautiful children, so safe and healthy, well-fed, well-dressed; and see in my mind’s eye pictures of another woman’s children starving.

Do I hope in redemption because it is a good excuse for me to get on with my beautiful life? Otherwise, how can I justify these discrepancies between my life and most other people’s lives? And yet, suffering seems hardwired into existence. If I live long enough, I will inevitably lose someone I love, become terminally ill or injured, or simply experience the pain of aging and the unknown cliff-edge of death as it looms ever nearer. If I don’t live that long, then I will have died young and tragically missed out on living a long, full life.

In earlier years of my life, awareness of the pain and loss and seeming futility of existence would drive me to tears, moodiness, some winter evenings even to what felt like the brink of sanity.

Then I had children, and after the predictable (for me) post-partum blues with my first child, the dark and heaviness lifted. Why was that? Is it a typical survival instinct, something to ensure I bring up nurtured and well-adjusted children – who will at some point learn enough about history and current world affairs to question me about my beautiful life and insensitivity to the suffering of others?

My ready response is, “I am not God. Even if I devoted all of my energy and resources to lifting others out of suffering, it wouldn’t be enough. So I’ll live with the painful awareness of worldwide suffering, and make lifestyle choices with that in mind. I won’t try to shield my children from the truth. And I’ll hope in redemption, because to be aware of so much senseless violence and global inequity, and not to trust in a final remembrance and making-right of all this wrong, will either desensitize me or drive me to insanity.”

And so, perhaps I am a good illustration for those who hold that God is an invention of the human psyche. Maybe this is just the best coping mechanism we as a species have yet come up with. It is certainly a persistent one.

Some people say that God speaks to them often. What do I know about that? I have no grounds for disagreement. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard God speak, but there are three distinct times when I thought it might have been God – and these are the words I heard:

“They don’t own me. And neither do you.”

“Take your time.”

“Don’t be scared.” (yes, “scared” is what I heard, not “afraid;” let the reader decide whether this could possibly be the language of a proper God!)

No tidy conclusion here. Further thoughts tend to lead to further questions, and this post is a prime example.

Prince Charming

July 21, 2010 — 2 Comments

[New posts in the works – in the meantime, here’s a poem]

Prince Charming

© 1/7/2010 Julia Tindall Bloom

Prince Charming’s got to go
There’s just no room for him anymore
Not in this mind cramped with memories and questions
Aches and wounds and inconsistencies.

Prince Charming’s got to go
And when he goes
I know that will be the end of him.
He’s too delicate to live.
A lover of my creation,
His lungs have never breathed
The air outside my head.

Sing a song for Charming
He was perfect in my dreams
Swallow Charming whole
He tastes like cotton candy
Dreamy fluff solidifying
To sweet sticky lumps
Like old January ice chunks
That was nice
But I’m still hungry.

A God of Mythic Proportions

June 23, 2010 — 8 Comments

What if God really is a construct of the human mind, collective human consciousness, generations of human culture? Does that mean we’re not still on to something? Our stories about transcendence, our yearnings for immortality, for perfect love and world peace – are they really only wishful thinking, or could they be baby talk in a real language we hear but cannot comprehend or speak yet?

I suspect we the human race have never gotten it right in our attempts to fully describe it – and it’s possible we’ve not hit on anything remotely close yet to the reality of that being/force/substance/unimagineable I Am/none of these things.

Are we truly naive and destructive for reaching, seeking, asking, theorizing? Of course not, not for those things. But for insisting, grasping, lying (willfully), closing eyes to the observable truth, claiming superiority, excluding, and faking – therein lies religious humans’ ignorance and destructiveness.

I can’t think like I used to – or pray like I used to – can’t sing or talk or go to church or get into a Bible study – not like I used to – but I can’t let it go either. Is it embedded in my psyche because it’s what my ancestors did? Partly, I’m sure. I can never know what it would be like to encounter my faith tradition with the wisdom and discretion of an adult. I can’t completely separate personal nostalgia from the stories of my faith, can’t divorce the little-girl wonder and comforting taste of church potlucks, soft embracing arms of Sunday School teachers, smell of glue and construction paper, sound of rich organ strains, from the doctrine of the Trinity, the gospel of Jesus.

I also can’t completely filter out the shaming looks and words, the hateful tones used of people different from us, the arrogant proof-texting and the general dullness and deadness – the constricting sameness, the denial of humanity in its richness, brokenness and wildness – that hummed around me like the radio station always tuned in and played low.

No, all of that is there, mingled with the body and blood of Christ, between the lines of the King James Version Bible memory verses filed away in my brain.

But it breathes like a living thing in me. It does not lie there mutely like a sterile model under museum glass, oblivious to my scrutiny.

I respect my fellow humans who see no sign of God. Their ideas have given me courage to explore my own – to go down deeper, unafraid (well, less afraid) of people’s opinions of my excavations. I have been changed, and am being changed – I am plunged more into myself, more into humanity, more into life and truth and this shattered, shining world.

The God of my past looks increasingly like a puppet, stitched together from Bible stories, religious aspirations, moral intuition; and animated by power-hungry men. But somewhere in there, I feel so sure, is a beating heart.

Lately I’m letting go of the fairy tale god who came prefabricated for me, all outlined in the Christian school curriculum, and pursuing the living God who cannot be contained in anyone’s mind, or so the stories go. Maybe this God is only a myth in the not-real sense of myth, or maybe this God is deeper and weightier than anything I’ve experienced, which is why this God for now resides in myth.

I journey on, a pilgrim in search of God – and I think it will be a lifelong quest, which only underscores the worthiness of the One I seek.