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.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Sunday, April 8, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Riverside Baptist, Halleluah!
I was stunned by the sheer size of it. Oh sure, the Catholic cathedral was immense, too, but it had the good grace to stand empty. The Baptists still fill their church; nearly every seat was occupied. The balconies ringing the ground floor seating weren't open today, but after seeing how full it was on this ordinary Sunday, when the minister was preaching about that most alienating concept of tithing, I am absolutely certain the balconies, come Easter, would be sagging under the weight of so many exalting believers.
In this church, they get right down to it. The congregation is instructed to meet and greet each other before the preaching even begins, ensuring I would feel fully uncomfortable for the rest of the service. Touch is a big part of this church. They lay their hands on. The penitent, the holy, the seeker and the sought approach the stage humbly and place their hands on each other as with bowed heads they praise Jesus. I could not help but reflect how much my own Dad would like this, as it is only with the blessing of the church he feels free to transcend the cold teachings of his stolid Germanic nature.
This Baptist church service is very much "I'm a Believer: The Musical." They have no liturgy but song. The lyrics roll by on teleprompters to each side of the stage, and no one needs to worry about reading music; the choir is intended to lead the congregation's voices. The choir is right up on stage. The choir master is also the cantor is also the acolyte. He is apparently getting some sort of cosmic revenge on the Lord and his individual fate for not letting him win the audition for a role in "Rent" when he was young and attempting to achieve stardom on Broadway. Now he contents himself with reaching for the stars of a bright, lovely, and altogether certain Heaven. The choir, incidentally, was horrible, off-key and incoherent. No amount of hand waving or occasionally strewn "Amens!" can make up for a choir that sings off-key. And that brings us around to the hand waving.
A fluttering of hands here, another there. Apparently, the spirit of white Baptists has been taught moderation. I was disappointed, I have to admit, at the lack of spirit, along with the lack of African Americans. For this was not lily-white Boulder, after all; this was the center of Denver. Apparently, the African Americans have another Baptist church. I would rather have been there. I distrust the friendliness of any church in the middle of a poor neighborhood whose residents are mostly minorities if those minorities are not evident in the congregation. The only Hispanic we notice has a whole different posture and demeanor than that of the straight and holy white worshippers. He and his wife shuffle to the altar, their shoulders bowed with sorrow and/or hard labor, looking for all the world like they are not so much part of this well-heeled congregation as perhaps its custodians, looking to keep their jobs secure. Is it only me who thinks it significant that he is called to the front in recognition of his work with men incarcerated in Colorado prisons?
Here, as in every other residence of American Protestantism I've known, money's the thing. Tithing. Giving the Lord the (minimum) ten percent of one's gross income not because the Church needs it, but because "God deserves it." In this church, where every Sunday an average of over 1,000 souls and a few well-placed heathens gather, money is the issue. The pastor was sure to point out that tithing, while mandated only in the Old Testament along with discarded notions like shunning pork or working on the Sabbath, was certainly not intended to be repudiated by the fulfillment of the Law, with Jesus's birth and death and resurrection, although somehow all the other admonitions of the Old Testament were nicely discarded. And that brings me to something I find far more interesting--the recent discovery of bones in a cave that are purportedly those of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and some small boy: their only begotten son, to be sure. Bones are effectively the end of the resurrection myth. No wonder we haven't been reading much about this discovery since the first stories. Hush hush sweet Charlotte; Charlotte, don't you cry...
In this Baptist church, there is no ornamentation on the stage, nor even an altar. There are no thrones for the priests, no robes or neck stoles, either. There are no servants or small boys for the priest. He wears a simple gray suit. His haircut is as plain and all-American as his square-ish jawline. He quotes himself as an authority to back up the "facts" of what he posits as the truth about tithing, and to make his words more authoritative, has them broadcast on the enormous AV screens mounted high to the left and right of the staging area, like a rock n roll concert. I am struck by the amount of preparation and staging that must go into each Sunday's production. A cameraman sits high above the congregation in the centermost aisle, filming it all on a camera a network news crew would envy. These people need to tithe. Not be cause the church needs it, but because Jesus deserves it. Wow.
I recognize only one of the many songs of their service, so I sing it extra loudly. Ben is with us this week, and the three of us enter into the spirit of the service with far more energy than the small contingent of Jews in the back row, made obvious only in part by the yamulka on the man's head. We do our best not to gawk or giggle, and that is the best we can do. What are these people doing here? What ecstatic union are they seeking? Why don't they just go home and have really good sex with the person they love instead of wasting it on the plain, pasty, square jawed man with the bad haircut who reminds them that Jesus is the one who deserves it.
After the service, the minister hopes to lure the misbegotten to the path of righteousness by the sugary path of doughnuts--"Take the doors to the right and be saved"--and Mady and Ben insist we must have our share, so we go the path of the godly, but the minister is waiting there, right beside the doughnuts, all carefully roped off lest the undeserving apply. Will you choose the lion or the lady and, really, which side ARE you on?
We are clearly the undeserving and the markedly unholy, so we leave it all to Jesus and run for our sweet lives. Out in the parking lot, we feel like we've escaped, and we grin like the fools that we are happy and grateful to be.
In this church, they get right down to it. The congregation is instructed to meet and greet each other before the preaching even begins, ensuring I would feel fully uncomfortable for the rest of the service. Touch is a big part of this church. They lay their hands on. The penitent, the holy, the seeker and the sought approach the stage humbly and place their hands on each other as with bowed heads they praise Jesus. I could not help but reflect how much my own Dad would like this, as it is only with the blessing of the church he feels free to transcend the cold teachings of his stolid Germanic nature.
This Baptist church service is very much "I'm a Believer: The Musical." They have no liturgy but song. The lyrics roll by on teleprompters to each side of the stage, and no one needs to worry about reading music; the choir is intended to lead the congregation's voices. The choir is right up on stage. The choir master is also the cantor is also the acolyte. He is apparently getting some sort of cosmic revenge on the Lord and his individual fate for not letting him win the audition for a role in "Rent" when he was young and attempting to achieve stardom on Broadway. Now he contents himself with reaching for the stars of a bright, lovely, and altogether certain Heaven. The choir, incidentally, was horrible, off-key and incoherent. No amount of hand waving or occasionally strewn "Amens!" can make up for a choir that sings off-key. And that brings us around to the hand waving.
A fluttering of hands here, another there. Apparently, the spirit of white Baptists has been taught moderation. I was disappointed, I have to admit, at the lack of spirit, along with the lack of African Americans. For this was not lily-white Boulder, after all; this was the center of Denver. Apparently, the African Americans have another Baptist church. I would rather have been there. I distrust the friendliness of any church in the middle of a poor neighborhood whose residents are mostly minorities if those minorities are not evident in the congregation. The only Hispanic we notice has a whole different posture and demeanor than that of the straight and holy white worshippers. He and his wife shuffle to the altar, their shoulders bowed with sorrow and/or hard labor, looking for all the world like they are not so much part of this well-heeled congregation as perhaps its custodians, looking to keep their jobs secure. Is it only me who thinks it significant that he is called to the front in recognition of his work with men incarcerated in Colorado prisons?
Here, as in every other residence of American Protestantism I've known, money's the thing. Tithing. Giving the Lord the (minimum) ten percent of one's gross income not because the Church needs it, but because "God deserves it." In this church, where every Sunday an average of over 1,000 souls and a few well-placed heathens gather, money is the issue. The pastor was sure to point out that tithing, while mandated only in the Old Testament along with discarded notions like shunning pork or working on the Sabbath, was certainly not intended to be repudiated by the fulfillment of the Law, with Jesus's birth and death and resurrection, although somehow all the other admonitions of the Old Testament were nicely discarded. And that brings me to something I find far more interesting--the recent discovery of bones in a cave that are purportedly those of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and some small boy: their only begotten son, to be sure. Bones are effectively the end of the resurrection myth. No wonder we haven't been reading much about this discovery since the first stories. Hush hush sweet Charlotte; Charlotte, don't you cry...
In this Baptist church, there is no ornamentation on the stage, nor even an altar. There are no thrones for the priests, no robes or neck stoles, either. There are no servants or small boys for the priest. He wears a simple gray suit. His haircut is as plain and all-American as his square-ish jawline. He quotes himself as an authority to back up the "facts" of what he posits as the truth about tithing, and to make his words more authoritative, has them broadcast on the enormous AV screens mounted high to the left and right of the staging area, like a rock n roll concert. I am struck by the amount of preparation and staging that must go into each Sunday's production. A cameraman sits high above the congregation in the centermost aisle, filming it all on a camera a network news crew would envy. These people need to tithe. Not be cause the church needs it, but because Jesus deserves it. Wow.
I recognize only one of the many songs of their service, so I sing it extra loudly. Ben is with us this week, and the three of us enter into the spirit of the service with far more energy than the small contingent of Jews in the back row, made obvious only in part by the yamulka on the man's head. We do our best not to gawk or giggle, and that is the best we can do. What are these people doing here? What ecstatic union are they seeking? Why don't they just go home and have really good sex with the person they love instead of wasting it on the plain, pasty, square jawed man with the bad haircut who reminds them that Jesus is the one who deserves it.
After the service, the minister hopes to lure the misbegotten to the path of righteousness by the sugary path of doughnuts--"Take the doors to the right and be saved"--and Mady and Ben insist we must have our share, so we go the path of the godly, but the minister is waiting there, right beside the doughnuts, all carefully roped off lest the undeserving apply. Will you choose the lion or the lady and, really, which side ARE you on?
We are clearly the undeserving and the markedly unholy, so we leave it all to Jesus and run for our sweet lives. Out in the parking lot, we feel like we've escaped, and we grin like the fools that we are happy and grateful to be.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
RIVERSIDE BAPTIST 2007!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are times when you are blown away by the bizarreness of an experience and don't even know how to start processing it. A physical discription could be helpful.
The Riverside Baptist Church is a new arena shaped monument visible from over a mile away on I-25 going into Denver. There are two 15 ft screens on either side of the pulpit/stage which is decorated somewhat like the set of Oprah, except with a gospel choir. There are three cameras with accompanying camera men on platforms throughout the audience. The service is broadcast on the screens, making hymn books obsolete and providing the answers to the fill in the blank questions which appear in the bulletin. For example: Jesus __________ the practice of tithing when He had a perfect opportunity to _________. (Matthew. 5:17; 23:23)
There were three times when I almost lost it and laughed out loud, and my laugh has been compared to a wide range of sounds from seals to broken power tools. This is not the sort of thing you want when trying to be discrete. The first time was during a hymn.
First off, the choir was horrendous. I don't think half of them were singing, and I can't stress enough to you the need for a conductor. They were so bad that at times I thought I was singing the wrong thing because the confusion within the choir made it so muddled that the song had become indistinguishable. Anyway, it was time for a duet and so a man and woman came out front and started singing about the lord's grace and what not, while different members of the partially restarted choir lifted up their hands in silent exclamations of AMEN with a timing that had you wondering if you missed something.
My brother, whose name is Ben, but I call Kerms, came with us this time and was sitting next to me. The woman fared decently with her part. She seemed to be able to "throw her weight around" pretty well (appropriate in more than one sense), however the man had more trouble. His part grew to peak on the word God. Unfortunately for him he was more than a little flat and Kerms, upon hearing the note, somewhat hopefully grimaced the word, "Close." to me. It was too much.
A second part is a matter of mathematical reasoning. The sermon was over the matter of tithing and the preacher spent a long winded half an hour explaining the bizarre timing that God had bestowed upon us. Apparently his omniscience had provided so that the preacher's biblical readings talked about tithing at the uncannily same time the church budget came out! The preacher was explaining how we could all see God's glory and power in sermon attendance. He powerpointed the attendance numbers for the last 4 Sundays; they were something like: 957 , 959, 952, 965. He then highlighted the general increasing trend in attendance, (except for that third Sunday). I'm no statistician but a fluctuation of 13 people over a 4 week period of any voluntarily attending population of near 1000 is more of a sign of God's divinity than it is a sign of a general increasing trend. That would in no way be called a significant result. If just 2 families have a sick child you've essentially reached that fluctuation. Yet some how this became an increasing trend demonstrative of God's greatness.
And then he referenced, to prove his own statements, who else but himself. I'll be honest I didn't really laugh at this, but I did feel mildly naseous. (That could also have been the perfume on the lady next to me.)
The other time that seemed straight out of television was when he (the preacher), as a closing thought,asked for God's blessing on various things, including, this......our beloved.......... CORPORATION. After that everything seemed slightly ludicrous.
People had said verbal and mental halleluah's in their head to his statement. I felt like I was in a futuristic novel telling about the dangers of future societies gone awry.
The Riverside Baptist Church is a new arena shaped monument visible from over a mile away on I-25 going into Denver. There are two 15 ft screens on either side of the pulpit/stage which is decorated somewhat like the set of Oprah, except with a gospel choir. There are three cameras with accompanying camera men on platforms throughout the audience. The service is broadcast on the screens, making hymn books obsolete and providing the answers to the fill in the blank questions which appear in the bulletin. For example: Jesus __________ the practice of tithing when He had a perfect opportunity to _________. (Matthew. 5:17; 23:23)
There were three times when I almost lost it and laughed out loud, and my laugh has been compared to a wide range of sounds from seals to broken power tools. This is not the sort of thing you want when trying to be discrete. The first time was during a hymn.
First off, the choir was horrendous. I don't think half of them were singing, and I can't stress enough to you the need for a conductor. They were so bad that at times I thought I was singing the wrong thing because the confusion within the choir made it so muddled that the song had become indistinguishable. Anyway, it was time for a duet and so a man and woman came out front and started singing about the lord's grace and what not, while different members of the partially restarted choir lifted up their hands in silent exclamations of AMEN with a timing that had you wondering if you missed something.
My brother, whose name is Ben, but I call Kerms, came with us this time and was sitting next to me. The woman fared decently with her part. She seemed to be able to "throw her weight around" pretty well (appropriate in more than one sense), however the man had more trouble. His part grew to peak on the word God. Unfortunately for him he was more than a little flat and Kerms, upon hearing the note, somewhat hopefully grimaced the word, "Close." to me. It was too much.
A second part is a matter of mathematical reasoning. The sermon was over the matter of tithing and the preacher spent a long winded half an hour explaining the bizarre timing that God had bestowed upon us. Apparently his omniscience had provided so that the preacher's biblical readings talked about tithing at the uncannily same time the church budget came out! The preacher was explaining how we could all see God's glory and power in sermon attendance. He powerpointed the attendance numbers for the last 4 Sundays; they were something like: 957 , 959, 952, 965. He then highlighted the general increasing trend in attendance, (except for that third Sunday). I'm no statistician but a fluctuation of 13 people over a 4 week period of any voluntarily attending population of near 1000 is more of a sign of God's divinity than it is a sign of a general increasing trend. That would in no way be called a significant result. If just 2 families have a sick child you've essentially reached that fluctuation. Yet some how this became an increasing trend demonstrative of God's greatness.
And then he referenced, to prove his own statements, who else but himself. I'll be honest I didn't really laugh at this, but I did feel mildly naseous. (That could also have been the perfume on the lady next to me.)
The other time that seemed straight out of television was when he (the preacher), as a closing thought,asked for God's blessing on various things, including, this......our beloved.......... CORPORATION. After that everything seemed slightly ludicrous.
People had said verbal and mental halleluah's in their head to his statement. I felt like I was in a futuristic novel telling about the dangers of future societies gone awry.
Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Temple
Sunday, February 25, 2007
I usually have negative connotations associated with American Buddhism. They are very different from my Christian connotations or my generalized religion connotations. It is not one of pure estranged awe bordering on disgust, but that of yuppy snobs. I have spent practically the entirety of my life surrounded by a culture of these people, and I feel that I know them closely enough to really despise their existence.
These are the kind of people who believe yoga is a secondary form of Buddhism. Which, hell, as the sensei said in temple, your practice should be whatever floats your boat, but I'm talking about the kind of yogi who spends 400$ on a new meditation cushion or yoga mat and another 1,500 dollars on their yoga clothes. The kind who has designated hiking shorts. They can't just wear normal shorts when it comes to the specific purpose of walking.
The kind of person who buys all their groceries at Whole Foods and looks at you with disgrace when you don't buy Fair Trade coffee, which costs around 12$ for a bag compared to my apparently socially bankrupt coffee at $5.99. I've taken to calling FMV brand reservation food to pay my respect to the severe snobbery of these people. Somehow they think of themselves as the pinnacle of social consciousness as they get into their SUV hybrid and head up to the mountains to buy a piece of nature and apparently according to them inner peace during a ski weekend/meditation retreat in Aspen.
When these people tell you they are Buddhist, it makes you just want to squish a bug in front of them and watch as they don't notice.
The thing about the Jodo Shinshu service that made me doubt its validity as a religion (it often seemed too based on an actual philosophy that acknowledged its' flaws and invited questioning and thought to be a religion) was the negation of this culture.
The sensei seemed real, honest, intelligent and content. It did not bother him that the folding chairs were only 1/5th full. I got the sense that he might actually have some inner peace. And that could be because he didn't tell me he had attained inner peace. He didn't have instructions on how to attain it. Yes, there were rituals and old Asian artifacts, a chant, and meditation. However, he explained that his practice, the Jodo Shinshu practice, was the living practice. It does not need any of those components to be a good practice. The ego (a strangely western term I think for an eastern practice, which brings thoughts of Freud into a place I don't think he belongs, oh well) has no overarching reliance upon these practices and an expensive retreat will likely not help you with anything but fueling the economy.
I could have kissed him when he said that.
Emphasis on could have.......
I usually have negative connotations associated with American Buddhism. They are very different from my Christian connotations or my generalized religion connotations. It is not one of pure estranged awe bordering on disgust, but that of yuppy snobs. I have spent practically the entirety of my life surrounded by a culture of these people, and I feel that I know them closely enough to really despise their existence.
These are the kind of people who believe yoga is a secondary form of Buddhism. Which, hell, as the sensei said in temple, your practice should be whatever floats your boat, but I'm talking about the kind of yogi who spends 400$ on a new meditation cushion or yoga mat and another 1,500 dollars on their yoga clothes. The kind who has designated hiking shorts. They can't just wear normal shorts when it comes to the specific purpose of walking.
The kind of person who buys all their groceries at Whole Foods and looks at you with disgrace when you don't buy Fair Trade coffee, which costs around 12$ for a bag compared to my apparently socially bankrupt coffee at $5.99. I've taken to calling FMV brand reservation food to pay my respect to the severe snobbery of these people. Somehow they think of themselves as the pinnacle of social consciousness as they get into their SUV hybrid and head up to the mountains to buy a piece of nature and apparently according to them inner peace during a ski weekend/meditation retreat in Aspen.
When these people tell you they are Buddhist, it makes you just want to squish a bug in front of them and watch as they don't notice.
The thing about the Jodo Shinshu service that made me doubt its validity as a religion (it often seemed too based on an actual philosophy that acknowledged its' flaws and invited questioning and thought to be a religion) was the negation of this culture.
The sensei seemed real, honest, intelligent and content. It did not bother him that the folding chairs were only 1/5th full. I got the sense that he might actually have some inner peace. And that could be because he didn't tell me he had attained inner peace. He didn't have instructions on how to attain it. Yes, there were rituals and old Asian artifacts, a chant, and meditation. However, he explained that his practice, the Jodo Shinshu practice, was the living practice. It does not need any of those components to be a good practice. The ego (a strangely western term I think for an eastern practice, which brings thoughts of Freud into a place I don't think he belongs, oh well) has no overarching reliance upon these practices and an expensive retreat will likely not help you with anything but fueling the economy.
I could have kissed him when he said that.
Emphasis on could have.......
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Buddha in the House
The world is not what it appears to be. The sensei said it so simply, like it's self-evident. I blinked, once, twice, thrice and cast a sideways glance to my right side to see if Mady was similarly blindsided by plainspoken esoterica. She, of course, was not. She swims more steadily in the currents of philosophic oceans than I.
I had never been to a Buddhist religious service, indeed, wasn't sure Buddhists actually had hours of worship on Sunday mornings. But they do, at least in the U.S., where there is little else to do on Sunday mornings before shops open and professional sports teams begin their jostlings for more money and muscle and more muscle for the money. Me, I prefer going to museums early on Sundays. There are never crowds and the smatterings of other pagans is so soothing.
But I wander, as always. Back in the Jodo Shinsu Buddhist Temple, aka for some reason "sig," the sensei is speaking calmly and clearly and utterly without pretension about the unity of thought and feeling in the everyday world, the harkening of dharma in the mundane. This, he says, is the work of the ego, to obliterate itself in what we experience in our living rooms, our streets, our work places and our relationships with family, friends, and strangers.
Actually, he says none of this and maybe all of this. He does not use the word "obliterate." He does not mention our living rooms or streets or work places. He does mention that he can't go on a retreat because he doesn't have enough money. He mentions his home life, his own family. Before the service, I spot him outside the temple, enjoying the final drags off a cigarette before stubbing it out in the sand-filled urn. Enjoying the mundane, perhaps obliterating his ego in the tendrils of smoke that waft into the sullen Denver sky on a brisk gray morning in February. He has no acolytes trailing behind him as the Catholic priests did, but he does hold aloft a large book similarly, paying tribute, I suspect, to the collected wisdom of the Buddha within.
The world, he repeats, is not what it appears to be. Again, I glance sideways. This time Mady meets my look. She looks comfortable with the wisdom. I thrash in the shallows beside her. Whatever helps you to situate your ego in the material and the immaterial world, he suggests, is good. Maybe you chant. Maybe you meditate. Maybe you serve on the Board of your temple. You find some way to escape the limitations of your own ego. To become the Buddha, you see, is to lose your ego, as the Buddha did. I am reminded of my painful adolescent years, when I was utterly distraught with fear because somehow my faith, my Christianity, had fled my soul. And I would not be able to sleep, the little death of sleep, and so I would meditate upon the Greek sign for infinity as if I might transcend the shape to find some sort of understanding that would offer me solace and hope, maybe even save me from eternal damnation and hellfire if only I could grasp the essence of the shape, the sign, the symbol. And then the startling revelation, such as it came to my 14-year-old mind, that if ever I did manage to comprehend eternity I would disappear into it, become one with it.
But this Buddhism, this Jodo Shinsu Buddhism at least, is enmeshed and integrated with the concrete, the everyday, everywhere. The ego is in the world. The President is in the house. We transcend our ego by manifesting our ego, passing to the realm of pure consciousness by travelling the necessary path of self-consciousness, the small and rock strewn path gingerly picked over by the barefooted steps, mindfulness, awareness. Breathe deeply and keep your eyes not on the path but on the breath. The feet will find their placement. As Joyce unforgettably put it, "the ineluctable modality of the universe." Daedalus is also in the house, and the ego is in the world, and the world is not, I repeat, not, what it appears to be.
Then what is it. It is all around, ineluctably. The temple is not full, but it does have a full sense of welcome, and the people are so much friendlier and helpful than the Catholics of the great cathedral were. The sounds of children laughing float into the worship room from an adjoining space, where they are readying a feast for us, to be purchased after the service with the profits benefiting a charity of the children's choice. I am grateful that no one turns to me or shares the peace with me. I am left to determine my own place and peace and place of peace and my own ego in the world. I like that.
I could come again here. I could come again here for the thoughtfulness of it and maybe to learn what all the ornate features of the altar area are for. In some regards it is so similar: the written record of the revered one, the differentiation of congregational space and the priest's space, the plain versus the elaborate, the holy and the everyday, the singing and the incense. But here, following the sensei's talk, he opens for discussion and questions. No one speaks. I would like to know if anyone ever does. Or are these people, these congregants, just as passive as the Catholics, waiting for the truth to be told to them, waiting for deliverance, waiting for salvation, waiting for the end of the world...
No. We are waiting in line for the goodies the children in the next room have prepared. Waiting for joy and laughing in line as we do.
I had never been to a Buddhist religious service, indeed, wasn't sure Buddhists actually had hours of worship on Sunday mornings. But they do, at least in the U.S., where there is little else to do on Sunday mornings before shops open and professional sports teams begin their jostlings for more money and muscle and more muscle for the money. Me, I prefer going to museums early on Sundays. There are never crowds and the smatterings of other pagans is so soothing.
But I wander, as always. Back in the Jodo Shinsu Buddhist Temple, aka for some reason "sig," the sensei is speaking calmly and clearly and utterly without pretension about the unity of thought and feeling in the everyday world, the harkening of dharma in the mundane. This, he says, is the work of the ego, to obliterate itself in what we experience in our living rooms, our streets, our work places and our relationships with family, friends, and strangers.
Actually, he says none of this and maybe all of this. He does not use the word "obliterate." He does not mention our living rooms or streets or work places. He does mention that he can't go on a retreat because he doesn't have enough money. He mentions his home life, his own family. Before the service, I spot him outside the temple, enjoying the final drags off a cigarette before stubbing it out in the sand-filled urn. Enjoying the mundane, perhaps obliterating his ego in the tendrils of smoke that waft into the sullen Denver sky on a brisk gray morning in February. He has no acolytes trailing behind him as the Catholic priests did, but he does hold aloft a large book similarly, paying tribute, I suspect, to the collected wisdom of the Buddha within.
The world, he repeats, is not what it appears to be. Again, I glance sideways. This time Mady meets my look. She looks comfortable with the wisdom. I thrash in the shallows beside her. Whatever helps you to situate your ego in the material and the immaterial world, he suggests, is good. Maybe you chant. Maybe you meditate. Maybe you serve on the Board of your temple. You find some way to escape the limitations of your own ego. To become the Buddha, you see, is to lose your ego, as the Buddha did. I am reminded of my painful adolescent years, when I was utterly distraught with fear because somehow my faith, my Christianity, had fled my soul. And I would not be able to sleep, the little death of sleep, and so I would meditate upon the Greek sign for infinity as if I might transcend the shape to find some sort of understanding that would offer me solace and hope, maybe even save me from eternal damnation and hellfire if only I could grasp the essence of the shape, the sign, the symbol. And then the startling revelation, such as it came to my 14-year-old mind, that if ever I did manage to comprehend eternity I would disappear into it, become one with it.
But this Buddhism, this Jodo Shinsu Buddhism at least, is enmeshed and integrated with the concrete, the everyday, everywhere. The ego is in the world. The President is in the house. We transcend our ego by manifesting our ego, passing to the realm of pure consciousness by travelling the necessary path of self-consciousness, the small and rock strewn path gingerly picked over by the barefooted steps, mindfulness, awareness. Breathe deeply and keep your eyes not on the path but on the breath. The feet will find their placement. As Joyce unforgettably put it, "the ineluctable modality of the universe." Daedalus is also in the house, and the ego is in the world, and the world is not, I repeat, not, what it appears to be.
Then what is it. It is all around, ineluctably. The temple is not full, but it does have a full sense of welcome, and the people are so much friendlier and helpful than the Catholics of the great cathedral were. The sounds of children laughing float into the worship room from an adjoining space, where they are readying a feast for us, to be purchased after the service with the profits benefiting a charity of the children's choice. I am grateful that no one turns to me or shares the peace with me. I am left to determine my own place and peace and place of peace and my own ego in the world. I like that.
I could come again here. I could come again here for the thoughtfulness of it and maybe to learn what all the ornate features of the altar area are for. In some regards it is so similar: the written record of the revered one, the differentiation of congregational space and the priest's space, the plain versus the elaborate, the holy and the everyday, the singing and the incense. But here, following the sensei's talk, he opens for discussion and questions. No one speaks. I would like to know if anyone ever does. Or are these people, these congregants, just as passive as the Catholics, waiting for the truth to be told to them, waiting for deliverance, waiting for salvation, waiting for the end of the world...
No. We are waiting in line for the goodies the children in the next room have prepared. Waiting for joy and laughing in line as we do.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception
There are over one billion Catholics in the world today, with a growth rate that is just a little bit ahead of the overall population growth. In the U.S. nearly one-fourth of us identify ourselves as Catholics, over 67 million of us. Small wonder both Mady and I found it natural to begin our explorations of religious experience with a Catholic church. We chose the one with a name that seemed the ultimate in Catholicism: The Basilica of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. It is, in Denver, the home of the Archbishop, about whom I know very little except that his name sounds Spanish (Chaput), fortunately for him, because in German it would mean "Finished!" I have never seen a picture of him in which he was not wearing robes; I have never seen a picture of him laughing. I will take it on my own peculiar faith that he doesn't wear a nightgown to bed and that he laughs when someone tells him a good joke, preferably one about the Rabbi, the priest, and the Unitarian.
He was not there today, but I have a hunch that one of the more elaborate chairs on the "stage" is his and his alone. "Thrones," I think of them, really. It was like the house of the three bears: there were small chairs for small boys in robes, medium chairs for the medium boys in white robes, larger chairs and more ornate, for the two men in green robes. "I'll take the medium boy in white," did one of them ever opine. "He looks JUST RIGHT." There was something creepy about the array of boys on the stage with the priests. Why the heck were they there? Most of the time, they did nothing. Occasionally, one or the other of the five, arranged like a menorah, the tallest in the middle, tapering down like true candles to the small boys on either end ("just right.."), one of the five would rise and walk solemnly to some other place or disappear into a slit in the drapes behind them. Even more occasionally, one or two would fulfill a genuine function, holding a candle, presently the incense burner, following a priest dutifully, with hands piously pressed together in front of them. Where do the Catholics find these boys, who at eight or twelve or even 15 are not embarrassed beyond measure to wear short white frocks and mince across a stage with their hands pressed together in prayer and never a laugh, no, not so much as a twinkle in their eyes.
Indeed, the whole place was utterly without humor. There was no humor in the priest's sermon, no smiles exchanged among parishioners, not even a genuine smile anywhere to be seen during that worst of all modernizations of church ritual: THE SHARING OF THE PEACE. A bunch of robots, acting upon the command of the priest, turning to each other and stiffly shaking hands, "Peace be with you." If that be peace, give me war.
Not surprising to think of war in these reflections, for the whole service pulsed with what I can only typify as repressed violence. The music, changing in one instant from some forgettable lightness of being to crashing chords and frenzied beats that were like Wagner on acid. The incense in what I think is called a censor being swung nonchalantly by the little angel boys initially, then, in the hands of the priest, being swung harder and harder, like a playground bully pushing a girl on the swing until she is terrified and screaming, swing it harder and higher and harder and higher...
It was all very sexual. When the priest reached into what I thought was just a velvet curtain at the back of the stage (I know this is not called a stage, but what IS it called in a cathedral, this sacred stage full of altars and trinkets and statues and gold?), I nearly gasped in fright. He parted the curtains, the soft, velvet, labial curtains with his hands pointed in, arrow like, thrusting and parting and pillaging. And then he pulls out, not a baby, immaculate or otherwise, but a chalice, the symbol of womanhood, the symbol of receptivity. the keeper of the sperm of the holy of holies. And he and the other priest and the angel boys all drink from this, spinning the metal chalice slightly in between tastings, wiping it clean with a white handkerchief. Women are filthy, you know, you know, don't you boys? Men are so much cleaner. Always carry a clean white handkerchief, certainly. Or, failing that, don a white little angel's robe.
There was not a single trace of joy in that whole cathedral that I could see, excepting the baby boy in the pew in front of us, who alternated between his mother's arms and his father's. "Holy infant, so tender and mild." Will he grow up to be an altar boy? He almost certainly will not grow up to become a priest; Americans don't produce priests any more. Like almost any other commodity we value... cars or electronics or priests... we import more than we produce, and we export, effectively, none. We bring them up from Latin America and, increasingly, from Africa now. The priest at the cathedral we visited was definitely Latino. Does that have anything to do with the fact that the biggest, most gorgeous (truly gorgeous!) cathedral in the Rocky Mountain West was nearly empty on a beautiful Sunday morning in February? Or was it the mean street outside, dreary, crime ridden, poverty stricken Colfax?
We would have to think about that over breakfast in the coffeehouse two blocks away, the Bump and Grind. Yeh. Think about such holiness while a drag queen lolled on our table, her knees demurely pressed together in truer piety than I saw anywhere in that damned cathedral.
He was not there today, but I have a hunch that one of the more elaborate chairs on the "stage" is his and his alone. "Thrones," I think of them, really. It was like the house of the three bears: there were small chairs for small boys in robes, medium chairs for the medium boys in white robes, larger chairs and more ornate, for the two men in green robes. "I'll take the medium boy in white," did one of them ever opine. "He looks JUST RIGHT." There was something creepy about the array of boys on the stage with the priests. Why the heck were they there? Most of the time, they did nothing. Occasionally, one or the other of the five, arranged like a menorah, the tallest in the middle, tapering down like true candles to the small boys on either end ("just right.."), one of the five would rise and walk solemnly to some other place or disappear into a slit in the drapes behind them. Even more occasionally, one or two would fulfill a genuine function, holding a candle, presently the incense burner, following a priest dutifully, with hands piously pressed together in front of them. Where do the Catholics find these boys, who at eight or twelve or even 15 are not embarrassed beyond measure to wear short white frocks and mince across a stage with their hands pressed together in prayer and never a laugh, no, not so much as a twinkle in their eyes.
Indeed, the whole place was utterly without humor. There was no humor in the priest's sermon, no smiles exchanged among parishioners, not even a genuine smile anywhere to be seen during that worst of all modernizations of church ritual: THE SHARING OF THE PEACE. A bunch of robots, acting upon the command of the priest, turning to each other and stiffly shaking hands, "Peace be with you." If that be peace, give me war.
Not surprising to think of war in these reflections, for the whole service pulsed with what I can only typify as repressed violence. The music, changing in one instant from some forgettable lightness of being to crashing chords and frenzied beats that were like Wagner on acid. The incense in what I think is called a censor being swung nonchalantly by the little angel boys initially, then, in the hands of the priest, being swung harder and harder, like a playground bully pushing a girl on the swing until she is terrified and screaming, swing it harder and higher and harder and higher...
It was all very sexual. When the priest reached into what I thought was just a velvet curtain at the back of the stage (I know this is not called a stage, but what IS it called in a cathedral, this sacred stage full of altars and trinkets and statues and gold?), I nearly gasped in fright. He parted the curtains, the soft, velvet, labial curtains with his hands pointed in, arrow like, thrusting and parting and pillaging. And then he pulls out, not a baby, immaculate or otherwise, but a chalice, the symbol of womanhood, the symbol of receptivity. the keeper of the sperm of the holy of holies. And he and the other priest and the angel boys all drink from this, spinning the metal chalice slightly in between tastings, wiping it clean with a white handkerchief. Women are filthy, you know, you know, don't you boys? Men are so much cleaner. Always carry a clean white handkerchief, certainly. Or, failing that, don a white little angel's robe.
There was not a single trace of joy in that whole cathedral that I could see, excepting the baby boy in the pew in front of us, who alternated between his mother's arms and his father's. "Holy infant, so tender and mild." Will he grow up to be an altar boy? He almost certainly will not grow up to become a priest; Americans don't produce priests any more. Like almost any other commodity we value... cars or electronics or priests... we import more than we produce, and we export, effectively, none. We bring them up from Latin America and, increasingly, from Africa now. The priest at the cathedral we visited was definitely Latino. Does that have anything to do with the fact that the biggest, most gorgeous (truly gorgeous!) cathedral in the Rocky Mountain West was nearly empty on a beautiful Sunday morning in February? Or was it the mean street outside, dreary, crime ridden, poverty stricken Colfax?
We would have to think about that over breakfast in the coffeehouse two blocks away, the Bump and Grind. Yeh. Think about such holiness while a drag queen lolled on our table, her knees demurely pressed together in truer piety than I saw anywhere in that damned cathedral.
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