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The Unexpected Immediacy of God

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Dear Sara,

Thank you for your response. It’s delightful to read about your personal experiences with all of this. You offer a soothing, yet invigorating perspective.

ashleyrosex_ Close Cross

You asked,

“What is contradictory for you personally between Christianity and Paganism…theologically, emotionally?  Does opening the door to Christianity automatically mean shutting the door to Paganism, and if so, why?

Discussing Christian theology feels, at this point, a kind of misplacement of focus. What seems to be happening to me is an emotional and perhaps even metaphysical pull towards Jesus, God and the Gospel. It’s confusing, because I’m so used to parsing out Christianity intellectually. That’s what I did the first time around. I dug in with my head, first, and then listened to my heart.

But this feels so different. It feels as though the heart is leading, and that the heart is also being led.

I can say that I feel the immediacy of God in a new way now, and I’m using language to describe that feeling of immediacy which feels rather foreign to me. I’m saying things like, “I guess God wasn’t done with me,” or “I’m feeling called back to the Church,” or “But I was already claimed by God.” These are not the kinds of things I ever said before as a Christian. These are, in fact, the kinds of statements that would make me a little squeamish when I heard other people say them. But when I say these things now I feel like I’m speaking about something that is actually happening in my life, rather than some abstract concept or idea. It feels as real and ordinary as if I were to say, “I haven’t showered yet this morning,” or “I need to put some socks on because my feet are cold.”

This doesn’t feel like zealotry, either. I feel no compulsion to start “saving” people. Not. at. all. This immediacy feels incredibly personal, and reminds me in some ways of how I’ve heard hard polytheists speak about their Gods. And they used to wig me out a little, too, when they did that. But I don’t have any beef with them now. I actually feel like I understand them in a better way, because I’m having the sense that God is working in my life somehow just as they understand their Gods to be working in theirs.

And see, this is where it gets challenging to parse things out intellectually. I’m feeling a pull to God, a comfort in the Gospel, a challenge from the example of Jesus (all of this in a very short period of time, mind you), while at the same time feeling a deep understanding and appreciation for my polytheist friends in their experience of deity. Certain Christian doctrine and thought would seem to make that impossible or completely incompatible, but not for me.

When I’ve been in church, wrapped up in the movement of the liturgy, or when I’m considering the conciseness of the Nicene Creed and Christian cosmology (at least, the one that’s painted for me in the Episcopal service), I at once recognize that this is complete and incomplete; it is all of what is necessary to inform and enrich my own human experience, and yet it is not anywhere near complete enough to incapsulate all of what is about humanity, or life on Earth, or the Universe, or God.

To try to illustrate what I mean, I’d like to refer to a post I read on Nadia Bolz-Webber’s blog a couple days ago. The post consists of her a sermon from this last Sunday on the Gospel story in Luke about the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14). She illustrates the way in which Jesus flips the whole notion of righteousness on it’s head (which I’m down with). But then at the end of it she concludes the sermon by presenting a somewhat traditional understanding of Jesus as God made flesh/Redeemer/Savior to the sinners. Read it. You’ll see where it happens.

At that point I think: but if Jesus fucks with the paradigm of righteousness, saying that your virtue doesn’t earn you anything in the eyes of God (nor does your humility), isn’t asserting with certainty who Jesus is, or what his role is in relationship to the Human Condition yet another exercise in the righteousness that Jesus was defusing in the parable? Doesn’t defining the mystery destroy it? In the moment that Jesus is presented as the champion of Christianity rather than the One Who Comes to Mindfuck, through Love, the Christian paradigm seems smaller than Jesus, himself. Do you see what I mean?

A part of me would like for all of this to be simple: believe that Jesus is the son of God (or don’t), and believe that that means a very specific thing with very specific consequences and very specific edicts attached to it, and you’ll know how to live your life. But that part of me is minuscule when compared to the sense of God’s immediacy in my life at this moment. And the divine seems to care nothing about what I believe! My ability (or inability) to parse all of this out doesn’t make a difference. I still feel an awareness of God working in my life somehow.

And maybe that’s Grace. Maybe the message isn’t that “It doesn’t matter what you do, Jesus has washed your sin away,” but rather “It doesn’t matter what you do, you are swept up in the current of the Spirit… It is always already working in your life… You do not have to deserve it, or earn it, or justify yourself in the eyes of the divine… you are always already in a state of being loved.”

So I don’t know how to answer your question just yet. I don’t feel like I’m closing the door to Paganism, although I’m sure most Pagans would have a hard time believing that having read what I just wrote. But I feel like my Paganism is informing my reawakening to Christ, just as my time spent in the Church in my early 20’s informed my constant desire to subject all of my experiences in the Pagan community to a close exegesis of their function, meaning and relevance. I was always somewhat of a Christian when I was exploring Paganism, just as I am still somewhat of a Pagan as I respond to what feels like a call to return to the Church.

Sent with love from the inbetween,

Teo

The Kind of Christian I Was

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gaspi_ Chapel Glass

  • I used to sing with my eyes closed. There were a few hymns at Christmas time that really did if for me. I sang harmonies a little louder than good taste would call for. Sometimes the priest would sing the Eucharist, and I knew every melody. I’d sing along quietly to myself, just under my breath.
  • I was the parishioner who showed up early to get a good seat.
  • I was the one who raised his hand in the Adult Forum class and said, “But, wait….”
  • I was the guy doing Morning Prayer alone in the chapel on a Tuesday evening.
  • I didn’t understand why certain biblical passages needed to be read. The church I belonged to, the Episcopal church, organizes its Sunday readings around a rotating three-year liturgical calendar. This insures that every church in the denomination is reading and reflecting on the same passages at roughly the same time. It forges a kind of unity that I was attempting to replicate (albeit loosely) with the formation of the Solitary Druid Fellowship.

My confusion about the passages, though, had more to do with their discontinuity. I felt like the imposition of this liturgical structure forced the priest to take great leaps when making meaning out of the ancient text. Her bias was always present. And some passages simply were impossible to reconcile.

  • I bowed when the cross passed by my pew. I didn’t know why at first, or who I was doing that for (aside from myself).

Acts of reverence like this aren’t always for the benefit of a benevolent god. They’re an extension of practice. They teach you something. They allow you to embody the experiences of respect and humility. There’s great value in that.

  • I spoke the Confession of Sin tentatively at times, and passionately at others. I was never really sold on the idea that my sin was of my birth, or that I was fatally flawed. The transactional savior concept was a little lost on me. But that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the opportunity to own up to all of myself, even the stuff I didn’t want to admit to. The Confession was an invitation into wholeness.
  • I loved picking apart the Gospel of Mark, becuase it rooted the story of Jesus in a specific culture. It broke apart some of the illusion that all of the Bible is essentially “one story”. That’s such a small way of thinking, and it isn’t true.
  • I thought the Historical Jesus was interesting, but I still wanted him to a be a little bit God.
  • I got angry at fundamentalism.
  • I felt angry that there was some expectation that as a gay Christian I had an even greater responsibility to show good face. My gayness was even more political than if I was churchless. That seemed profoundly unfair to me.

I wanted to have sex. I wanted to feel love. I wanted the stories about sex and love to be about me, too.

  • I had a really difficult time during Lent. I felt heavy. Sorrowful. Holy Week was the worst…

But Easter was amazing.

  • I was the kind of Christian who didn’t fit comfortably into any pre-fab molds. At least, it didn’t feel that way. I was always a little on the outside.

That is…except during the Eurcharist.

I knew I was always welcome then.

 

Coming soon: The Kind of Pagan I Am

 

Photo by gaspi *yg