Part 1
I started going to church again.
I grew up Episcopalian. We were High Church, if you know what that means. My mother was the director of youth education at our parish, and unless we were out of town, we never missed a Sunday. My father would also come with us on holidays and the odd Sunday, which should surprise you since he is an avowed atheist. Nonetheless, Dad devoted lots of time to the church. He helped repaint the Nave and helped build pews, helped with an altar redesign, worked on upgrades to the Apse and the fireside room, stuff like that. Mostly I think he did all of it for Mom, but he's also one of those kind of men, the kind who come over to fix stuff for you just because you need it.
I think that Mom might not have been quite as involved in church if it hadn't been for Father Webb. Our priest was a very handsome, warm, dynamic presence. I don't think there was a female in the parish over the age of five that didn't entertain an enormous crush on him.
Our parish was located near the wealthier part of North Seattle. Sunday was a contest to see who Dressed For God the best. Black patent leather, cashmere, jewelry, hats, the works. I think my family was the scandal of the parish, we didn't have much money and my mom made most of my clothes, but even so, we went.
I was admitted to the Holy Communion as a child but we moved before I could go through Confirmation classes. I grew up believing in God the Father...but I thought of Him as a father like MY father, who could be really mean and scary sometimes and who was the parent primarily charged with administering corporal punishment. I never had a good sense then of who God really is or had a what one can really term a "relationship" with him, but I believed.
When we moved away, Mom tried the Episcopal church in Port Townsend, but it was a very small church and I don't think she felt as if she fit in there. My brother and I were older then and eventually we became "Chreasters," only attending services on Christmas and Easter, unless Mom felt compelled to go and guilted one or both of us into going with her. Eventually she suffered a crisis of faith and stopped attending altogether.
In college I hung out with some modern Christians. Well, not my freshman year, really, I was more interested that year in beer, boys and tequila than anything else. It was after my friend Kirsten talked me into trying out for the women's crew team that things changed - mostly for the better. By the end of sophomore year I was rowing and one of my friends on the team invited me to go to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting. While for others, the opportunity to deepen their faith might have been the primary impetus for attending, I mainly went because some of the football players and other cute athletes went to these meetings (Bob Rockett, All-American Javelin thrower, Steve Pelleur, by then the Dallas Cowboy's quarterback, but a UW football alum...oooooh, hmmmmm, sigh). It didn't really stick, though. How could it? I was really only in it for the boys. Now, lest you think those Christian boys don't party, let me set you straight. I was groped by as many drunk Christian boys as by drunk Frat boys. In other words, a lot. Not that I was some hot prospect or anything, but college guys don't really care WHO they grope once they've been saturated with enough alcohol.
After college came what I like to think of as my Wasted Years. I fiddled around at this job and that, with my focus on investigating the viability of substance abuse as a career choice. Church and God were far from my mind, except possibly in the twinge of discomfort I felt driving by a place of worship. Fear of being struck by lightning makes you drive faster, did you know that? Eventually, as happens with most twenty-somethings, I eventually matured beyond the dissipation and general wastedness that accompany the magical allure of bars and nightlife. I grew up a little, started focusing on my life a little more, got a real job, got married (ill-advisedly).
I had a friend at work I liked to hang out with. We went to the gym together, got puppies around the same time, eventually became close friends. She was a very bright, driven, aggressive woman in a good-paying job, and I really looked up to her. She was also a born-again Christian, and I guess I figured if someone who was that bright and had it all together believed in God and Jesus, maybe this was something I should check out. She invited me to come to her church.
I will refrain from naming the church, but I can describe it. They had a large campus, a thriving ministry (two Sunday services that filled a large auditorium and Wednesday night as well), separate Youth and Children's ministries, an actual school building with classrooms for Sunday School and adult education, a bookstore, library and two worship bands. They were dynamic, mostly young, fervent and shiny like bright new pennies. I allowed myself to be willingly absorbed into their cult. Its not that I didn't learn more about God going there - I did. But I got stuck somewhere in the rigidity of the rule system that I never really got to know Him. But I was part of a new big clique, one that had its own language. I started dripping scripture with the best of them, talking about my "blessings" and having my "quiet time." I sang in the children's ministry worship band, I went to fellowship groups. I attended the Monday night School of Evangelism classes (because it was STRONGLY ENCOURAGED). It wasn't exactly a cult, but it acted a lot like one, and I wanted so badly to be accepted. I went for all the wrong reasons, and unfortunately I was attending the kind of church that expects you to check your brain at the door and rely on their particular rules for living life. Their God hated all the same people THEY did - gays, pagans, atheists, liberals). They had altar calls every service, but once you were saved you were expected to toe the line. The pastor had a couple of published books and a weekly radio show. He was a STAR, and he acted like one. He was not accessible to us regular people and he was not particularly warm or friendly. Oh, he SOUNDED friendly, up there on stage giving out his message every week. But my impression of him the few times I was ever so privileged as to be spoken to by him was that he was detached, self-absorbed and self-righteous. Do I believe there were some honest, Godly people in that church? Of course. But they were also trying to belong to a community with specific rules, just like I was.
Christians joke sometimes that they tend to "eat their own," and believe me it is true. Things were going just fine for me at that church so long as I was living by their rules. When I hit a crisis in my life and realized that my marriage was not someplace I could be anymore, I discovered with a rude jolt just how cruel Christians can be. If I expected to receive love and support from my Christian brethren and sistren, I was sorely mistaken.
I was shamed. I was shunned. I was lectured at, I was outcast. And so, like many people who get their fingers burned on the hot stove of the modern church, I walked away from it all. I wanted nothing to do with a God who I believed expected his people to act that way.
To be continued...
