Unity

Perhaps other people felt a sense of unity. As we sat in the sea of churchgoers, I was vaguely aware that these people still dressed as if their mothers came over in the morning to choose their outfits. It was Easter Sunday. A cold and possibly the most dreary Easter Sunday I have witnessed. Outside, the pink decorations looked serene in the disuse of this day. Either that or tacky, and this was how I was inclined to feel sitting in that pew drinking my coffee with people aspiring to pretend it was spring outside and staring eerily through the back of my head. (Particulary this one woman in a very thick white turtleneck.) I distinctly remember starting to feel creeped out and having to physically hold onto my mom to keep the idea at bay that this was some sort of a conspiracy church and the congregation was waiting to jump on me and brainwash me.

Eventually, I managed to relax with the notion that these people were harmless to me.

The premise of this church is that they had to acknowledge the "theatrics" of church, and so they let it be just that. However, when putting on a play every week, no week can be that extraordinary, and the result was a group of maybe 20 middle aged people, probably parents, who, while not altogether untalented came off as being stuck in high school and still wanting one last chance to be somebody.

I couldn't help but visualize practically all of the actors at home in front of their mirrors practicing their parts. Jesus, who was probably 55, extremely overweight and balding; the strangely sexual dancer who almost seemed to be coming onto Jesus in a very arcing movements kind of way; the overzealous minister's wife (one of those women who thinks long flowy skirts = creativity/divinity and who I am so glad is not my mother); Judas, whom you knew all the girls thought was so funny but whom I could only laugh at and not with; the nerdy overgrown kid who stands in the front row with constant fists at his side. Also the minister, who randomly stopped the show to call for collection time and the other random man with long curly hair who couldn't keep it out of his eyes--admittedly but decidedly pretty ringlets . There was not an ounce of professionalism, dedication or critical thought, even the brochures had been made in Print Shop Deluxe, the '98 edition, the alignment off, pinker text on a light pink background. I never understood why they had classes in these kinds of things, but now I do. Out front they had literature on helping various random people in random cultures, perhaps with a picture of a little Peruvian boy on it, or a girl wearing a veil whose eyes were just showing, as if the problems they alluded to were really as simple as hunger and a scarf.

I guess I just expected more of them. It was a kind of annoyance that they would take the time to get themselves up on the stage and then not have much to give except for a story that everyone already knows. What if this was all you knew? What if you grew up here? A real culture has a few people who you can look at as examples or the greats. Unity church seems not to.

The Passive Passion of New Age Christianity

There's a line in the book I'm reading, Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium, in which a policeman pleads with the appropriately named central character, Mr. Blank, to reveal the content of a dream. "Without that dream," he pleads, "I'm nothing, literally nothing." Today, Easter Sunday, sitting passively in the veritable audience at Boulder's Unity Church, a congregation become absolutely that, a passive audience, no longer participating in community, no longer sharing a creed or a tradition or a liturgy for this is, after all, modern day Christianity, New Age faith as practiced on Sundays by people of short attention span and little or no intellect, I was reminded of that pathetic plea. Mady and I sat in rapt and occasionally terrified attention as we listened to a stageful of performers doing an Easter cantata, "No Greater Love."

It was the Baptists, gone to further extremes of whiteness, like the teeth of Americans, beyond white all the way to a gleaming and scary parody of white. Here, the singers were schooled; you felt that each one of them had, at some prior high point of their life, won a talent show, a ribbon, gone to state with their choir and done well in a momentary solo. And now here they have been reborn. Jesus, on stage today, a fat, elderly and altogether middle class white man who reminded me precisely of the choir director at Ben's high school. His wife also had a leading role, though in the male-dominated saga that is the life of Christ, all women are relegated to decidedly more peripheral roles. Hers was tacked on at the cantata's end, an obvious concession to the church's second Power Couple. Power Couple Number One consisted of the minister and his wife, he a greasy looking, surprisingly seedy seeming for swank and monied Boulder man in a white suit and slicked back hair who did nothing more than welcome the audience and solicit the offering; she a wild, leaping conductor of the choir on stage, sometimes menacing the audience with her spirit-possessed arm wavings and skirt spinnings. They, too, got to join the ensemble on stage at show's end, stars all.

"I'm literally nothing without that dream." All these people coming to this church to feel like someone, some thing. The dreams haven't panned out all that well. The job's boring, the kids have left home, flatulence is common. Only here, with a nice little microphone hooked over the left ear, a soft chiffon scarf drizzled with sequins sparkling in the spotlight, are their dreams of importance and aspirations to stardom acknowledged. I have never been privy to a church service where my role was to applaud. Here, American Christianity seems reduced to its essentials. A performance. You do nothing but watch and applaud. A standing ovation for Jesus, and what the heck, one for Judas as well. Oddly perhaps, I found myself happy for all these people that they had found some place that appreciated them, some place they actually did matter, somewhere to be a star. Maybe that's what going to church does for people. Assures them that yes, they're each significant. Jesus loves them, and each hair on their head matters and is counted, even as old age claims a few additional strands daily. I think it's nice they can feel this way; I hope it, the feeling loved and all, makes them nicer to their dogs when they go home. Give your dog a bone.

I watched Scorsese and Shrader's film of the Nikos Kazantakis novel The Last Temptation of Christ last night. There, Dafoe's tortured, frightened Jesus vacillated between the misery of cowardice and the majesty of lunacy. There is no happy ending to a crucifixion, not really. But here, in the American church, all hint of suffering is gone from the story of the Passion. In fact, all the passion is gone. There's just this fat ole fellow name of Jesus who leads the crowds and fulfills all our promises. Yep. You got it. One size fits all. Faith as a great big mum-mu we all can wear without worrying how we look. Since Jesus saved us, that's right, we have a right and a reason to go to church and become a star in God's wide firmament. Given that, why should we not sing mightily. We're the annointed. Nothing else really matters.

Exiting the church, we get favors, like we've just been to a birthday party. Pluck a cheerful silk and plastic flower from the ushers' basket and read the morsel of wisdom attached to its stem. Wisdom to go. I, a fan of fortune cookies from way back, love this idea and reach in eagerly. My flower, Mady points out, is pathetic, a lopsided purple pansy that looks like it was beat up by the unseasonable winter we are re-experiencing this week of April. But my fortune is good, and I'm ready to enlist. To Thomas Edison they give the credit for my little bit of wisdom: "If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves."

All those singers on stage, doing the things they're capable of doing. A community of believers in the infinite power of Self. I'll leave is to Mady to tell you about the dancer.