Best tip for crying at church: find a Taize service where there is little if any interacting with your neighbor and plenty of songs that sit in the dark emotions. Also, dim lighting often.
Thank you for your words. Your post has me thinking about two really difficult parts of church: God and other people. When I feel truly connected to either, it feels like the key to life. But both come with let downs and failings. And it’s like a giant group project and we all know group projects are mostly the worst.
Also, I always thought it was super jerky of Jesus to call that one lady a dog. Does the Bible ever say he is perfect or was that projected later? What if God isn’t perfect? Can faith survive?
I'm laughing and nodding vigorously. Love your comment about group projects--very true. I think the first 3 (synoptic) gospels seem to record the more human Jesus, it's mostly John that gets very intensely into his divinity (and I seem to recall) his perfection. Sometimes I think that I see a new Jesus every time I read the Bible. Who was he?
Alienated from my spiritual/religious community...?
I grew up in Northern Ireland. Not only were the communities that surrounded me religious but they were also political and cultural. My family were on the Protestant side of that divide. The Ian Paisley/Unionist/Conservative side, if that means anything. Our music was not the Irish of jigs and reels and Riverdance, the fiddle, the tin whistle and uilleann pipes, but was Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and the rest of Nashville. Our history was not the 1916 Easter Rising but Henry VIII and his six wives. And our religion definitely had nothing to do with the Pope, but was Presbyterianism or extremely low church Anglicanism or Baptist or Plymouth Brethren.
I was not a Unionist or Conservative, and as there was no socialist party, politically homeless. And while I didn't mind a bit of Nashville now and then I did wonder why The Fields of Athenry and Arthur McBride and Raglan Road were so disgusting to anyone I went to school with, worked with or lived amongst. I'm being disingenuous here: I knew perfectly well. Because it was Catholic. Because it was Fenian. Because it was the works of the enemy. As for religion... I thought any religion I knew anything about made completely no sense. It was all unhealthy crazy wishful thinking.
Actually little I could see around me made sense. On all sides were people whose beliefs and preferences and tastes were not mine. Who were, to be kind, just foolish and ill-informed, or to be less kind, bigots.
So where was my community? A stranger and outsider with Catholics, an objectionable oddity with Protestants, and in the climate of 1970s Northern Ireland, in serious physical danger in all.
So... how essential is a spiritual/religious community? What if one does not exist that meets your needs? Can you survive that? I think so.
Wow, I love what you've written here. I can see how growing up with this sectarian strife would make religion seem both absurd and dangerous. The religious and the political were collapsed into one--we see that happening, to a lesser extent, in the US, now. When everything is either/or, there is no room for people who don't fall into one category or the other.
Have you written much on this before? It feels like it could be a book. Or a banger of an essay, if you don't want to spend so much time there.
For me Job was one of the minor deal breakers. Why would an "all powerful" entity, have anything to prove to anyone, especially by torturing its follower. When I wanted to be invited to leave a group, the suggestion that Judas s/b a saint was generally enough to do it. If questioned, as to why, a response that "without him" the would be no christianity ,would render the invitation. Emotional awkwardness is ,oft caused by attempting to read folks minds and control their thinking. I have enough fun working with my own.
Nov 17, 2022·edited Nov 17, 2022Liked by Katharine Strange
To me listening is an art. It involves hearing without thinking about, or developing
response. "Scare Quotes: Also known as air quotes, sneer quotes, or shudder quotes, scare quotes are put around a word or phrase to note atypical usage or disapproval. Oftentimes, scare quotes are used with a negative or sarcastic tone that distances the person using the scare quotes from the person (real or hypothetical) that they’re quoting." In this case it is an atypical usage based on, quite a few folks hearing but not listening. Call it sarcasm.
Best tip for crying at church: find a Taize service where there is little if any interacting with your neighbor and plenty of songs that sit in the dark emotions. Also, dim lighting often.
Thank you for your words. Your post has me thinking about two really difficult parts of church: God and other people. When I feel truly connected to either, it feels like the key to life. But both come with let downs and failings. And it’s like a giant group project and we all know group projects are mostly the worst.
Also, I always thought it was super jerky of Jesus to call that one lady a dog. Does the Bible ever say he is perfect or was that projected later? What if God isn’t perfect? Can faith survive?
I'm laughing and nodding vigorously. Love your comment about group projects--very true. I think the first 3 (synoptic) gospels seem to record the more human Jesus, it's mostly John that gets very intensely into his divinity (and I seem to recall) his perfection. Sometimes I think that I see a new Jesus every time I read the Bible. Who was he?
Alienated from my spiritual/religious community...?
I grew up in Northern Ireland. Not only were the communities that surrounded me religious but they were also political and cultural. My family were on the Protestant side of that divide. The Ian Paisley/Unionist/Conservative side, if that means anything. Our music was not the Irish of jigs and reels and Riverdance, the fiddle, the tin whistle and uilleann pipes, but was Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton and the rest of Nashville. Our history was not the 1916 Easter Rising but Henry VIII and his six wives. And our religion definitely had nothing to do with the Pope, but was Presbyterianism or extremely low church Anglicanism or Baptist or Plymouth Brethren.
I was not a Unionist or Conservative, and as there was no socialist party, politically homeless. And while I didn't mind a bit of Nashville now and then I did wonder why The Fields of Athenry and Arthur McBride and Raglan Road were so disgusting to anyone I went to school with, worked with or lived amongst. I'm being disingenuous here: I knew perfectly well. Because it was Catholic. Because it was Fenian. Because it was the works of the enemy. As for religion... I thought any religion I knew anything about made completely no sense. It was all unhealthy crazy wishful thinking.
Actually little I could see around me made sense. On all sides were people whose beliefs and preferences and tastes were not mine. Who were, to be kind, just foolish and ill-informed, or to be less kind, bigots.
So where was my community? A stranger and outsider with Catholics, an objectionable oddity with Protestants, and in the climate of 1970s Northern Ireland, in serious physical danger in all.
So... how essential is a spiritual/religious community? What if one does not exist that meets your needs? Can you survive that? I think so.
Wow, I love what you've written here. I can see how growing up with this sectarian strife would make religion seem both absurd and dangerous. The religious and the political were collapsed into one--we see that happening, to a lesser extent, in the US, now. When everything is either/or, there is no room for people who don't fall into one category or the other.
Have you written much on this before? It feels like it could be a book. Or a banger of an essay, if you don't want to spend so much time there.
Thanks. That's flattering.
For me Job was one of the minor deal breakers. Why would an "all powerful" entity, have anything to prove to anyone, especially by torturing its follower. When I wanted to be invited to leave a group, the suggestion that Judas s/b a saint was generally enough to do it. If questioned, as to why, a response that "without him" the would be no christianity ,would render the invitation. Emotional awkwardness is ,oft caused by attempting to read folks minds and control their thinking. I have enough fun working with my own.
I love these provocative questions! I wish there were more groups where folks felt comfortable arguing over things like this.
The secret comes not from arguing over it, but in "listening" and responding.
I'm curious about your use of quotes on listening. Care to elaborate?
To me listening is an art. It involves hearing without thinking about, or developing
response. "Scare Quotes: Also known as air quotes, sneer quotes, or shudder quotes, scare quotes are put around a word or phrase to note atypical usage or disapproval. Oftentimes, scare quotes are used with a negative or sarcastic tone that distances the person using the scare quotes from the person (real or hypothetical) that they’re quoting." In this case it is an atypical usage based on, quite a few folks hearing but not listening. Call it sarcasm.