subject/object

The question always seems to come up, in conversation, or when getting to know someone. People very quickly ask me why I so obviously have turned away from calling myself a Christian, just as surely as I once earnestly did call myself one.

I was at a party last week, celebrating simultaneously the retirement of two of my peers as well as my own, and the question again came up. I was frustrated at not having a concise answer. There would be nothing I'd like better than to explore that question, but it's not a conversation that is easy across a table at a noisy party!

My little neighbour across the hall asked me yesterday morning what I plan to write about, now that I have retired. To keep it simple, and because I don't know the answer to that either, I told her I might write about my trips to Africa.

The wise advice for writers is that one should write what one knows best. And since it seems that what I know best is my struggle to know anything at all, this is what I'll write about!

Obviously, everybody approaches the world in different ways. Even in my own family, not every one is as curious about the meaning of life as I seem to be. I can't seem to be content with following the path that was prescribed for me.

I soon observed that my teachers of that path were anything but at peace. I observed inconsistencies, human frailty, hypocricy. I saw cruelty and unkindness carried out by those purporting to be acting out a higher purpose.

I also had questions that could not be answered through the very literal interpretation of the Bible as I was taught it. On one hand, I was told the Bible was "inspired", but I was taught it as if it had been dictated by God into the English of King James. And if "not one jot" and "not one title" should be changed, I felt keenly a vast difference in sensibility when I read a French translation, and wondered how that could be. Even my mother commented on the difference in certain Biblical texts as she heard them in Finnish constrasted with English.

The question of language quickly took me to the idea of God contained in a word as being somewhat idolatrous. Poetry, and even beautiful prose, is probably impossible to translate accurately into another language. Surely, God, or the idea of God, would be akin to the best poetry? Therefore, any fixed notion of God in a religion or teaching should always be less than the essence of "god-ness".

But what I saw constantly in the oft-repeated stories and texts of my experience in church was a terrible fixed-ness. We had the Truth in capital letters. We were the Promised People headed for the Promised Land. We should go forth and proselytize.

But, wasn't it possible, I thought, that the "other people" I had been so long protected from, might be further along on the path of Truth than we were? Wasn't it possible that other religions or cultures might even be in the Promised Land, somewhat like Rousseau's Natural Man? (ah! here my most devout friends would exclaim that the only path to salvation is through Christ! again, the literal, historical guy who was nailed to the cross -- never mind, that no such historical evidence has actually been found -- not that it actually matters, really, more than the idea, or the essence of the myth, the underlying truth. )

In some cases I was to become acquainted with while in university, just such "preaching of the blessed gospel" from an arrogant point of view had caused terrible, though unintended consequences (events I've described in other blogs on my other sites) in some African cultural settings, cases which caught my attention because of my ties to my childhood home in Africa. Which of the values I had been taught were universal, then, and which arose out of my culture?

Yeah, I did some reading in university, and afterwards: the usual philosophical pillars that a generally educated person in the West reads. And I've tried to comprehend Eastern philosophies as well. And I've read what we think we know about pre-historical and extra-historical (if you believe that there's a history besides the one written by the victors) cultures and beliefs. I still read constantly, and I'm often thrilled by inspired writers who challenge me to see things in a new way.

And really, I think what matters to me is that I want something that inspires me to live life. Whatever gives my life juice is what gives it meaning. Material possessions, status, accomplishments are only a small part of it. They are not un-important. Ask someone living in poverty and starving, or someone who doesn't have a job. But I lived and worked, every day, with people who were very accomplished, who by any standards enjoyed a wonderful way of life but were profoundly unhappy.

So, last night, while baking some biscotti, I happened to watch a program on a local public television station called Lark Rise to Candleford. In this episode of the series, the Bishop is coming to consecrate the church font and Thomas, a postman and a very pious character, cannot contain his excitement. I was very amused to see his horror and his efforts to contain the mayhem when a Lark Rise tree starts to 'bleed'. The hamlet becomes rife with talk of witchcraft. He takes it to such an extent that he kidnaps a confused old fellow who sees visions of food falling from the sky. Finally in a climactic frenzy, poor Thomas takes an axe to the offending witch tree.

I found it very funny and, I must confess, what quickly came to my mind was pictures of many of my devout Christian friends, the zeal with which they attack other Christians and "heathens", foreigners and other cultures!(nothing like an ex-pat Finn remembering the good old days in the old country, eh? when Sunday meant sitting still as a child and doing nothing more dangerous than reading the Bible!)

So this morning, stopping to enjoy a midmorning coffee and biscotti, I looked at my biscotti and thought to myself, "The angle sloping upwards from the left would feel better in my hand if it sloped down and under instead." (Perhaps only retired persons have thoughts like this?) A thought that took only the barest flicker of a second. I flipped the biscotti around, clockwise, only to have the angle still sloped the same way. That made me laugh. So I experimented a bit more. Rotating the biscotti away from me or towards me along its axis does bring the angle around to its opposite! But it's still a biscotti!

And I realized that in some ways, as I try to flip my biscotti around, I'm like poor old Thomas myself when I go to church and I'm horrified by the hemmed in language and the stultifying sermons (as I see it)! I'm overcome by a vicious urge to take an axe in my hands to hack down this enormous dead tree, a tree people talk of as having magical powers but to which they no longer bring garlands of flowers.

And I remember a student I had, way back ages ago during my teaching days. A lovely child, she seemed to like me and often invited me to attend with her at her Jehovah's Witness meetings. I resisted, of course, thinking I knew better, and asked her instead, to try to put into a nutshell what she believed. I was pretty sure back then, that I could put into a nutshell what I believed. She could not, which to me was proof of the pudding.

Now, I am no longer so sure of myself. I'm not attracted to attend Jehovah's Witness meetings yet, but I am much less inclined to think that what gives my life juice can be described in a "nutshell" as I had demanded of my young student.

Instead, I think it's something beyond words, something that gives me delight, that speaks somehow to my heart, like the stillness of the trees in the quiet of morning, even before the birds have started their song, in the soft light of the moments before dawn. And it's also in the last glimmers of the embers of a dying fire in the dark. To that essence I humbly bring my garlands of flowers.