Faith and doubt

Matryoshka Doll

October 2, 2012 — 5 Comments

Here’s a poem I wrote last year, about my multilayered identity of recovering good girl, wife, mother, and aspiring artist.

Matryoshka Doll

When they drop by the house
I am in my apron in the kitchen.
In their eyes I see a glimmer of worship
At sighting a domestic angel.
My young son is building superstructures in the living room
And I am baking bread
So I am a stay-at-home mom
(Apparently).

Once, remarking on my unpainted face,
Someone asked for counsel
About wifely submission.

They find me writing at the coffee shop
And praise my husband for giving me time off
From what (apparently) is my real work.

A little girl within
Believes them
Craves their favor.

A woman deeper still
Knows more
Feels lonely feisty misunderstood
Amused
Angry stuck sad useless.

At her heart is a human
Being
Living
Gestating
Faith hope love.

The heart of her heart
Throbs with the secret
And the strength
Of labor
The grip of death
That releases life
And, once more,
She breathes.

On Suffering, Evolution, and Humanity

September 5, 2012 — 2 Comments

Contrary to the calendar, summer has officially ended. I am all finished road-tripping across the country, my children started school this week, and I now have predictable slots of time to work on this blog.

This week, I want to share with you this On Being interview with Xavier Le Pichon, “Fragility and the Evolution of Our Humanity.” I listened to the podcast last week, and was touched and challenged by many of Le Pichon’s ideas, as well as the depth of his thoughtfulness and compassion.

While many people, myself included, have pointed to the problem of suffering as a major roadblock to faith in God, Le Pichon sees it as a touchstone for entering into the deep mysteries of life, and a catalyst for further advances in human evolution.

“Our humanity is not an attribute that we have received once and forever with our conception. It is a potentiality that we have to discover within us and progressively develop or destroy through our confrontation with the different experiences of suffering that will meet us throughout our life,” writes Le Pichon in his paper “Ecce Homo,” on which much of the interview is based.

For a recovering Christian fundamentalist like myself, it does my heart (and mind) big-time good to hear someone so obviously committed to his faith intelligently discuss this issue of human suffering in the context of biological evolution.

Whenever I dredge up the problem of “suffering and God” in thought or conversation, a tiny thought recurs in the back of my brain: “what do you really know of suffering?” This interview amplified that thought. Beyond philosophy and reason, there is love and presence with “the other” – and if I am not willing to truly search out these aspects of my humanity, what do I really know after all?

Against My Will

August 16, 2012 — 3 Comments

Every day I get an email with a list of e-books that are free for my Kindle that day. One of these books I recently downloaded is Becoming a Vegetarian Against Your Will by Tiffany Dow.

Tiffany grew up in Texas, eating meat and loving it. One day, as an adult, she picked up a box of fried chicken at a drive-up window. When she opened the box, there was a whole chicken feather still attached to the breast. She couldn’t eat it. “I felt disgusted,” she says. “Yes, I know where fried chicken comes from, but for some reason having it flutter right there in my meal box churned my stomach . . . At that moment I didn’t realize I was a vegetarian. I just knew I wasn’t finishing THAT feathery chicken meal.”

She wrote her book for those people who have chosen vegetarianism for one reason or another but who aren’t black-and-white fundamentalists about it:

I hate reading vegetarian guides where everyone is all smiles and hugs and boasting about all the good you’ll be doing for your body and the planet.

I’m going to be honest with you and tell you that you will grieve the loss of meat – unless it’s never been a big part of your life in the first place.

Dow describes being “visibly annoyed” seeing other people eating juicy burgers. “[T]hey’d say, ‘What’s wrong?’ and snicker at me (because they knew). I’d tell them, ‘I wish I could eat a burger.’ And then they’d say something that always made me want to smack them: ‘You can.’ That’s what they didn’t understand. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”

I could identify a bit with her journey towards vegetarianism. I too have settled into a vegetarian lifestyle, I who used to stop off for a Quarter Pounder just for a snack now and then.

But in reading her book, I was struck with how familiar this all sounds to me as I open up about my doubts in my faith journey.

I grew up eating dogma. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner – if dogma wasn’t on the plate, it wasn’t a real meal. Our largest family and community celebrations placed dogma at the very center of the table, on a huge platter for all to enjoy.

But in recent years, it’s been getting harder for me to swallow dogma. So much so that at this point, I have cut it out of my diet entirely. It’s okay, though – at any given meal, even in social settings, I can usually find enough other food to nourish me; and I’m not offended when other people chow down on the food I can’t eat.

At first it really was hard to be there at the table and watch others eat what I could no longer stomach but still craved. Even though I couldn’t swallow it, I missed it. It was nostalgic for me. It was a connection to my childhood, to people and times in my life that were meaningful to me – and I could no longer access that connection.

Thankfully, even when I was a child, dogma wasn’t my only experience with my faith tradition. It was never the only thing on the table. However marginalized as side dishes they may have been, things like love, hope, encouragement, thoughtfulness and joy were there too. And they are still there. In my own life, I’m trying to learn how to do more with those things, and I’m finding they provide me with enough nourishment for my health.

In short, while I have stopped eating dogma, I haven’t quit eating. I haven’t even quit eating with other dogma-eaters. We all need to eat, and while we may make different choices about what to eat, we can usually figure out a way to eat together peacefully.

Some people stop eating dogma because they think it is the only right choice. I am not one of those people. I’ve come to recognize that there are complex traditions, experiences, thoughts and feelings that influence each person differently; and the best we can do is honestly and courageously walk the path set before us; patiently, graciously loving both our neighbors and ourselves.

Matters of Life and Death

August 3, 2012 — 7 Comments

I wrote this in my journal a few months ago:

To live, you must die. That’s a central idea to the Christian faith, one I am pondering in a new way as I work through my doubts.

I look in the mirror and see a dying woman. I feel and look so alive – healthy, vibrant, strong. But I know, deeper in my bones than ever, that I will die. I will go the way of all flesh. Ironically, yet so cliche, I face my doubts about immortality at the same time of life when I face the plain truth of my own impending demise.

It’s been weighing on me, pushing me towards despair, though I’ve been standing against it stubbornly, unmoving. But in not moving towards despair, I am also not moving towards life.

And so this “die to live” thing is making a new kind of sense to me. It’s like homeopathy. I can see death coming, inevitable. Instead of fighting it by standing still against the push of despair, I will go with death. I will embrace its truth, let it really sink in, body and soul.

Yes, I will die. Yes, my end is inevitable.

I think as it sinks in, I’ll live more freely. I’ll stop holding everything tight and closed, and let life flow. For all its worth.

A few nights ago my five-year-old son chose the wonderful book John Henry by Julius Lester for his bedtime story, and I read this: “Dying ain’t important. Everybody does that. What matters is how well you do your living.”

And earlier this year I listened more than once to the poignant interview Terry Gross had with author Maurice Sendak, the last she would have with him before he died. “Live your life, live your life, live your life,” were his parting words to her.

Unreasonable as it may be, I do still have faith that somehow I may exist beyond my inevitable end. But that is no longer what drives me to live. Maybe I’m making the reverse of Pascal’s Wager – just in case God does not exist, and this one life is all there is to me, shouldn’t I give it everything I’ve got?

Religion has worked long and hard to remove the fear of death from the human psyche, but the result is often a denial or suppression of that fear rather than a removal of it. And in denying our fear, we forgo the opportunity to face it and grow stronger in our real and present life. We pass up the challenge of summoning the courage and vision to live well even in the blank face of apparent meaninglessness.

One of the most haunting parables of Jesus, for me, is the parable of the talents. A master went away and left his servants in charge of different sums of money. When he returned, two of them had invested the money and made more money, and he rewarded them. The third one had hidden the money to keep it safe until the master returned. The master angrily took the money he had hidden and gave it to the other servants, then threw him out of the house.

Elsewhere Jesus said, if you save your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life you will save it.

These words touch me now, differently than when I heard them preached in church. I’m hearing “risk” and “gamble” and “go big or go home.” I’m looking death right in the face, unable to see past or around that face, aware that with every moment I really live, I step closer to that cold, inscrutable face.

But I know there is no other way. I can live boldly right there in front of death’s face, or I can try to hide from death, but either way, death will find me. And when that finally happens, I want to know in those last moments that I have grown my one life into something richer and fuller than what I started with.

Rethinking one’s faith often includes the shock of new uncertainties in these matters of life and death. How has it been going for you?

Introductions

July 19, 2012 — 14 Comments

Note: This post was originally on a now-defunct blog of mine, called faithedout. I closed that blog and imported all of the posts to this one.

What’s This Blog?

Some of us know what it’s like to reach out through the darkness at the end of a day, begin a habitual bedtime prayer, and for the first time admit that it’s been a long time since we’ve sensed anyone or anything there.

Some of us have burned with devotion for our particular theological construct, only to watch it irreparably crumble under the weight of reality.

Some of us are hiding our true thoughts and feelings from everyone, including ourselves.

Some of us would rather have a root canal than go (back) to church (and some of us keep doing it every week anyway).

Some of us have been badly bruised by religion. Some of us are tired of theological debates in any shape or form, and yet still drawn to pursue God, whoever or whatever or if-ever that may be.

Some of us are faithed out, and this is a place for us to talk about it, to “out” ourselves, to own both our faith and our doubts.

Only some of us are faithed out. Many – probably most – of the people in my life are confident and fairly certain about their particular take on faith. Many of them are evangelical or post-evangelical Christians, and some are non-religious. They are people I respect and love, and they  inspire, encourage, and teach me, regardless of our agreement on any particular point. They are welcome here.

But I want to be very clear up front that this is not a place for those who feel certain about religion to try to convince the rest of us. I’m speaking to both believers and non-believers. There are plenty of other places for that to happen, and this is not one of them. Honesty and respectful debate are welcome here, but not propaganda or one-sided diatribes. This is a place to think out loud, not shout out loud.

This is a place for those who are worn out on religion, whatever their particular experience has been with it; but who still hope or at least consider that there may yet be some meaning, intelligence, information, being, presence . . . something – beyond, behind, within, underlying, throughout . . . somewhere . . . somehow.

How’s that for a defining statement?

Who’s This Blogger?

My name is Julia, and I grew up a conservative Christian, in independent fundamental Baptist (IFB) churches throughout the Eastern and Midwest United States. My father worked in various pastoral and Bible college positions, while my mother worked office jobs to help fill in the always-meager income of a husband in “full-time Christian ministry.” (Then she steeled herself for the yearly Mother’s Day sermon where she was reminded that truly godly women stayed at home with their children.)

So much about my life at home and in church and Christian schools was very good. I’m grateful for the positive values that were modeled for me, faithfulness to spouse and children being high on that list. I didn’t experience physical, verbal, or sexual abuse; compared with so many people, religious or not, my childhood was truly charmed.

I attended three different Christian colleges and graduated from the last one with a degree in music. I met my husband Nathan in a Bible study and married him in 1998. I’m a singer/songwriter and he’s an engineer and multi-instrumentalist who arranges, produces and records the music we make together. We have two school-age children. Over the course of our 14-year marriage, we have researched and discussed and changed our minds on all sorts of issues, including gender equality, political and economic ideologies, environmental issues, theology, evolution, and gay rights. We don’t agree about everything, but we share a common background in conservative Christianity and a common vision for “human flourishing.” Nathan holds onto a hope in the kingdom of God as ultimately redemptive of all creation, and I have my doubts. (I suppose he does too – they just surface more often for me.)

My adult life has largely been about healing from the major abuse I did suffer in my childhood – what some have labeled “spiritual abuse.” I learned early on that my destiny was in the hands of a “loving” but apparently capricious and violent God, one who loved me so much he killed his son for me (because my sin made me detestable in God’s sight, and only a perfect human sacrifice could appease God’s wrath); and that if I didn’t accept this “free gift” of the dead but risen son, I would suffer in torment in hell for all eternity. I learned that especially as a female, it was important for me to learn and follow the rules in whatever context I happened to be at the moment, to do my best to please everyone around me. I mostly succeeded at doing this, but discovered in my young adult years, especially early in my marriage, that I was miserable, afraid and ashamed of sex, and barely aware of my own personhood. I recognized that it could kill my marriage and maybe me if I continued to live this way.

For most of my life, I’ve held on to a belief in God. The past couple years, I’ve tried to hold my beliefs and ideas with a lighter grip, trusting that the best life will be found in the solid light of reality, not in complicated attempts to deny the plain truth. I am grateful for my current faith community (a small group that honors and draws from the Christian faith tradition), where I can be open with my doubts and questions, and where no one feels compelled to provide solutions or fix me.

I’ve endured some restless dark nights of the soul, but these days I am feeling more at peace with my loss of certainty about God and “eternal life,” and more inspired to live the life I have been given for all its worth. I am still amazed every day by the intensity of beauty and tragedy that exists everywhere life exists. Though I barely resemble the “believer” I was at one time, I often find the teachings of Jesus to resonate more deeply with me than they did in my days of religious fervor.

Some of my evolving faith-and-doubt journey can be traced through the “faith and doubt” blog posts at my other blog, juliabloom.wordpress.com.

Who Are You?

Now, tell us about you. And please, share this blog with others you think may be interested. It’s my hope that we can build a safe place here for conversation. Maybe your story has some commonalities with mine, maybe not (though I come from and know best the conservative Christian tradition, this blog is open to people from any – or no – faith tradition). Maybe you’re at a similar place in your journey, or maybe you’ve arrived at a very different place. It’s your story, and you are welcome here.

If you want to join in but are afraid of “going public,” feel free to make up names and email addresses when you submit comments. This “coming out” process is not easy, I know.

Of course, you’re welcome to simply read and keep your thoughts to yourself, if you prefer.

Peace to you. And thanks for visiting here.