SundAche

Well, I tried again. I tried to go to church again, and it was a spectacular failure.

You have to understand that from 1988 to about 2000, I was incredibly active in the church. This church--the one I went to today. I was on the governing board, I taught Sunday School every week--every age, whatever they needed. I'd drop my nursing baby at the nursery and go teach the youth group. Or the fourth grade. Or the adults. Or stay in the nursery as extra hands. Plus I was on the Christian Education committee for years and years.

We experimented with an arts based non-profit using the church as a historically significant auditorium space, and I ran that non-profit as its incorporating executive director, and then was on the board of it for years. I was at every single event for at least two years.

We tried an alternative worship service for about a year, running from 9:15 to 10:00. Mr. Sweetie and I decorated the space, printed weekly bulletins, chose the music, performed the music, took turns (with others) leading prayers and doing meditations on the lectionary verses. THEN we went to the regular service too.

The congregation went through a convulsion in 1993, which churches often do, and the pastor left. It was hard, because feelings ran high and deep, but a new pastor came in, with the portfolio to close the church down gracefully. The church didn't close, but started to grow. We changed a lot of the staff and started over. Things remained shaky, especially financially, but that wasn't new--we ALWAYS had enough to keep going for "five more years, and that's it." It was never "four more years," or "two more years." Always "five more years."

But things were getting hard for me--1999 may have been the worst year of my life, depression-wise. I am convinced that the pastor at that time was also clinically depressed. I know that I couldn't listen to his sermons, because they were just like listening to myself, only worse because they were coming from the pulpit. I didn't need him to tell me I had failed God and that I was fallen and sinful--I could get that at home by myself, and not have to wear pantyhose to get it. I started to get physically itchy and uncomfortable in services and could not bear to sit through them.

So, I put my energy into the things that gave me joy, which filled my "God shaped hole." That was working with our Christian Education director and the kids. The alternative worship was my effort to fill the adult part of me as well.

Then, one budget season, the pastor panicked, and told the entire staff "There's no money for next year. We'll all have to get new jobs." Of course, we found the money, but not before our CE director, the foundation of my life at that church, had found another job and left.

I don't blame her. She was a single mom who could not afford to go without regular income: that's kind of a deal with church personnel. It's not a high paying, financially rewarding profession. So she was gone, and I had nothing left. So I burned out and stayed away.

Eventually the depressed pastor left, and a new interim pastor came for three years. I met him briefly, but still didn't go. About two years ago now, a new, young, vital and deeply intellectual pastor has come to the church, and cool things are happening. There is a new music director, and she's fabulous. The music is accessible, crisply performed, and varied. There is a new CE director who has a background in stand-up comedy and theater. New and cool people are coming and joining--people who are doctors, international workers, young professionals, immigrants from far away. And they are responding to the vibrancy coming from the pulpit. When the children come forward for the Children's message, only a couple are Caucasian--the wide diversity is amazing.

And I can't go. I can't benefit from this, becuase in the intervening years, something inside me died and I can't really say I'm even a Christian any more.

In trying to survive those horrible years of depression, I tried all kinds of things, and I swear I still have a God shaped hole, but God can't fill it anymore. I just cannot believe in the Christian God as represented in my church. I cannot stand and recite a "Prayer of Confession" because I can't beat myself up for failing any more. I cannot bring myself to say--in a rote, unison fashion--that I have failed God, because my failures are my pain, they are my hurt and suffering, and they belong to me, not to some group read. Some of the things that the church has us "confess" are not my failures, and I cannot stand there and say they are. Nor does the "Assurance of Pardon" help any either. Sure, I can be pardoned for things I haven't done, but that doesn't soothe my soul or bring me any closer to a God I am having trouble believing in anyway.

In the blackness of depression, I looked for God, and didn't find it. What I did find was something larger than my "church God," and much less personal. I came to be highly suspicious of the paternal God, because it was clear that I wanted one so much, I'd even invent one. And really, who is to say that we didn't? Once I started to suspect that I had invented a God that was to me what I needed, I became unable to look at religion as a believer.

Once the foundation of my belief was damaged, it became farcical for me to pretend to believe. The liturgy irritated me; the music was no longer uplifting; the stories of the Bible spoke to me as anthropological and cultural tales of humans seeking for meaning--not stories of revealed meaning. I looked into heaven and saw a void.

And I have made peace with that void. If there is a God, I cannot begin to comprehend its nature, and so I have come to believe that I shouldn't try. I can embrace the not knowing.

So, with this newfound peace so freshly won, I am confronted with a family that misses me at church. And really, how can they not--I was so very present for so long. So, this morning, my family each asked if I would come, and so I did. Because I love my family, and I didn't want to disappoint them over something so doable.

And I found I really didn't want to go. Something in my soul was ruffling up and asserting itself as unwilling to go docilely. Still, I went. And I sat in the pews, and I looked over the bulletin, and it felt wrong to be there. Not just wrong for me, not just some sort of theological purity test, like "I shouldn't be here if I don't believe." More like--this hurts to be here. I managed to stay until the kidlets left for Sunday school, and I went as well.

Heading out to the car, there were tears running down my cheeks. And I realized, with a stab of pain, that I hurt because it was clear to me how much I have lost. I have lost my faith. I have lost that connection with people I love and care for. I have lost that source for comfort and community. I have lost that place as an outlet for my passion and creativity. I have lost the larger community of believers--they can speak to each other in the stories of the bible, and communicate. I am left out. And the loss hurts more than I can bear.

So, I am here, alone, at home, trying to explain myself to myself, and I am crying again. Because I see what it gives my family, the wonderful people who are drawn together through it, and I can't do it--I no longer speak the language. And that makes that God shaped hole hurt.