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Between Reddit and Facebook, I’m finding myself reading a lot of complaints and memes from atheists lately. And every time I do, I have one of three reactions:

1. Not ALL Christians believe that – stop generalizing.

2. I love science too, but I still have faith.

3. Stop prooftexting. We get it – the man-eating bear verse is absurd.

 It’s frustrating, because I often agree with the posts, which typically point out the hypocrisy of SOME religious folks in terms of their anti-science stance, their circular logic, or their hypocritical behavior. Yet I don’t know exactly how to tell them that there ARE people of faith – including some who call themselves Christians – who love science, who understand how human logic works, who understand/embrace/work through the many contradictions of sacred texts, who actually behave in the ways their religion tells them to (ie. Christians who follow Jesus’s teachings about the poor). And these are people who believe in something greater than themselves, who find the natural human compulsion to believe in something beyond themselves to be comforting, enlivening, enriching.

What I wish I could tell atheists is that there IS a way to be a person of faith and a lover of reason, to be a theist and a scientist, to profess faith in Jesus and actually work for the betterment of humanity and our home planet.

Yet what I find when I suggest this might be true is a fundamentalism that is as strong as that we find on the Religious Right – fundamentalist atheists who not only insist they have no faith in God but who are hellbent on converting others to their un-faith. They are not happy if someone is a believer; they want to move you off the dime as much as the evangelical wants you to answer the altar call.

So what’s a person to do? What words work? Or is it like trying to teach a pig to sing? (It wastes your time and annoys the pig.)

I wrote this hoping I’d answer my own question, but I find no answers…

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Last Monday evening, I had one of those odd days that ended in tearful,  lamentful, “I am a worm” prayers… long wails about how horrible I am, how no one could love me, how unworthy I am. but as the tears subsided, I was led to find the old Methodist hymnal I have kicking around here. I opened it to find this hymn:

Open my eyes, that I may see
Glimpses of truth Thou hast for me;
Place in my hands the wonderful key
That shall unclasp and set me free.

Refrain

Silently now I wait for Thee,
Ready my God, Thy will to see,
Open my eyes, illumine me,
Spirit divine!

Open my ears, that I may hear
Voices of truth Thou sendest clear;
And while the wave notes fall on my ear,
Everything false will disappear.

Refrain

Open my mouth, and let me bear,
Gladly the warm truth everywhere;
Open my heart and let me prepare
Love with Thy children thus to share.

Refrain

Now for me, this meant I needed to listen, maybe, more than lament. I needed to stop complaining and pleading, and simply contemplate. So I started listening.

Listening led me to realize I had to at the very least explain to my sister what’s going on. So on Tuesday, I told my sister I was considering a formal path to ministry. She was loving and supportive, and it led me to think that I needed to concentrate a day on this.

Wednesday, after assuring myself I had no definite deadlines to meet, no work I HAD to do, I spent the day considering the question of formal pursuit.

I read the websites of several seminaries. I made first steps to actually take a course – online, at Starr-King in Berkeley. I made an appointment to visit Union Theological in Manhattan.

And I prayed… rolling over and over in my head the words “I fear the knowledge that if I romance you / I may lose what I hold dear. Be compassionate with my hesitation / as I measure the cost of loving you.”

What is the cost? Losing my preconceived notions? Losing the beliefs I think I have? Losing love? I did determine that if I lose the man I love over this, he wasn’t the right man at all. I would miss him, but it gave me a bit of solace.

It’s now a week later. A session with my spiritual director leads me to understand that the other lesson in “Open Mine Eyes” may be that God’s pointing me to, at the very least, speak about my faith, speak and share the love I know to be at the heart of it all.

I talked with Carl about the choices before me, and determined that while the decision to go the path of formal ministry is mine alone, where/how/when is a question that involves the people most important to me.

I don’t know what the answer is. I am still searching. I am scared to death, about all I might lose. I am scared that if I don’t do this, I’ll regret it. I am scared on a practical level. And mostly, I am scared of what God might really be calling me to do.

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A theme in my prayers and laments of late has been about how/why/whether God loves me. I’ve spent years certain I was his favorite punching bag, of little consequence. How could it be that after all I’ve gone through, I should know that I am loved? Why would a deity who supposedly love me treat me this way? And… if I am being called to something greater, why? Is it because I’m a sucker? Because I’ve proven to be good at being used? If this is how god shows love, then we need to talk.

What I have NOT considered – until last night – is that part of the problem is that I don’t love God.

Carl and I have been reading CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity (and yes, there have been many parts at which I’ve been ready to hurl the book across the room with great force – a topic I’ll address at some point). Last night, we read his chapter on Charity, aka Christian love. He wrote…

Some writers use the word charity to describe not only Christian love beween human beings, but also God’s love for man and man’s love for God. About the second of these two, people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? … Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, “if I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?” When you have found the answer, go and do it.

I had never considered, for one moment, this idea. I’ve been so busy waiting for God to love me, to show me God loves me, to prove God’s love through signs and hints and bounty and direction…. and it never once crossed my mind that my angry prayers and laments might not be enough. I’ve shown God plenty of frustration, anger, annoyance, even snarkiness. But I don’t know that I’ve shown God any love.

And I don’t know that I love God. I AM angry. I AM frustrated. I DO feel shat upon. I don’t mean to act the victim – that’s not my point. My point is this – I don’t know that I know HOW to act as if I loved God. I don’t have the answer yet.

But I’m willing to work on it.

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So many things I wonder…

 I wonder about Union Theological – here’s a link to the tour video; it’s in the first few seconds that I saw in living color the sanctuary I have imagined in decades of dreams and meditations (although on second look, I see this one is enclosed with glass whereas my imagined one isn’t…but the rest of it’s the same).  

I wonder about my thoughts even ten years ago, when I said “if I didn’t get an MFA, I might get a masters in something like religion or theology.” I didn’t see myself in any type of ministry before, but I definitely had the thoughts about furthering my education in religion.

I wonder if I’m insightful enough; I am constantly amazed at how good the ministers in my life are at deep thoughts, compassion, saying the right things, etc. I fear my gifts in that are haphazard at best.

I wonder about my business – will there be any meaningful work after this current project is complete? I don’t see anything on the immediate horizon and that scares the hell out of me.

I wonder if this is just another in a long line of attempts at making meaning. You look at my resume, and I have done a bunch of very different things – and whether they lasted a year or five, I haven’t seemed to stay with any one thing for very long. If I turn away from publishing, after realizing how much I love it, am I just continuing my fickle ways? And what happens in five years after I try ministry? Do I walk away from that for the next cool ‘calling’?

I wonder, if I’m not meant to go into traditional ministry, what my path would be, given what I know, what I love, what I appear to be good at. And more to the point, how will I figure it out? Do I make it up as I go along? That’s not exactly been working out well for me so far…

 I wonder if I will ever figure this out or if I’m (frustratingly) meant to always been in nomad mode – wandering, waiting, wondering, never truly finding home – and of all the thoughts I wonder, this is the one that makes me the saddest and angriest. I’m tired. So tired. I’m tired of wandering in the desert. It hasn’t been 40 years…yet…but we’re nearing that. How long, oh lord, how long? What other mistakes do I have to pay for before I finally get to rest? How much more penance must I do? What else do I have to do to satisfy God? What else do I have to do before I get a little relief? One little answer? One hint that maybe there is a home somewhere for me? I’m so tired of wondering and wandering and worrying and waiting…so tired…

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I feel unsettled today… wondering which way to go, how to proceed, how to parse the publishing business with the sense of call to ministry, and how/if this relationship will both grow and fit into whatever the choice is.

Of course, there’s the possibility that a choice never needs to be made – that I can sustain both a thriving business and some form of lay ministry that doesn’t require I give up anything.

But I get the sense that that is serving two masters… and I don’t know if I have it in me to do that.

And… there is the question of memory. Do I have the mental ability to go back to school? Can I retain enough to pass tests? And after that – would I have the mental ability to serve people, remember their details, help them?

And of course there is the question of money. I am not making enough now to support myself; how can I possibly expect to have enough to go back to school?

I ask myself, why is this even on the table… there are no practical reasons to think about it. On paper it is a non-starter.

And yet.

Something keeps drawing me to think seriously about it. And then… wanting to find the path that works, maybe in lay ministry of some sort.

I worry that the paths available to me in the UU are limited – ministry, religious education, music, governance. I don’t know that what I want to do fits in anywhere, and that worries me a little too.

I know I want more. I want to serve. I want to preach. I want to heal. I want to answer God’s call.

I just don’t know what that is.

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What is it about the ocean that feeds my soul?

I recently spent several days on the Florida coast, soaking in the sea air, the sand, the surf, the constant and relentless rhythm of the waves, the ebb and flow of the tides. I swam, splashed, gazed, and absorbed.

And in some ways I feel nourished.

Now I’m not, in general, a nature-feeds-me kind of gal. And yet, I can feel my soul soak in divine goodness from the first whiff of salt-steeped air.

I know that I come to the ocean for answers…or at least to explore questions. High on my mind are questions about my future – which path do I take? What do I do with a growing need to serve my religious community, which on one level is in sharp contrast with my growing publishing business? How do they fit together? How do they fit with this growing but still uncertain relationship? Can my spiritual path be in concert with, rather than in opposition with his?

Truth is, I have an incredibly hard time seeing the future. I don’t know what it is I want on a practical level – although I know what the emotional/psychological vision is. I spent a good hour bobbing in the waves, wondering and thinking, and seeing no answers.

Except – I know I am letting go of a fear/belief that I will die early. And that in itself is an answer, I suppose.

But I digress.

I do feel nourished…rested, fed, and at the very least, ready for the next thing. I just wonder what that will be.

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I spent a lot of time last night thinking about my questions on Jesus’ divinity, my problems with The Fall, but mostly my sense that the world demands you make a choice. If I go with the Trinitarians, that feels… not in line with what seems right to me, and it certainly takes me away from the UU faith, which seems to describe my own core beliefs within its principles. If I go with Emerson and the Transcendentalists, it puts Jesus squarely in the past-tense, and that feels somehow too limiting. If I hang with Channing, it brings me back to needing to believe that, like Lewis, the story starts with The Fall. To deny altogether also seems false to me – while there’s no question that Jesus got a lot of good press and good luck in the course of human history (Paul, Constantine, Clovis) – there is still something beyond ‘he was nothing but a teacher.’ And to see him just as another aspect or archetype of the divine is insanely limiting to my mind.

 There seems to be no clear cut answer, no side to choose that satisfies  my conflicting thoughts and searching heart. And it is at this point that I get choked up and tears start to roll.  And I don’t know why. I guess there’s a part of me that feels like I can’t move on until I have settled this question. Who is/was Jesus? How does his life, teachings, state of being relate to mine?

 What surprises me most is that it matters.

 I have spent decades not worried about it, not relating to Jesus in any way. I know I put him out of my mind after I left the pentacostals… and really, never looked back. And there is a part of me that wonders if he would be on my mind if it weren’t for you. If you had been another UU, or pagan, or Jewish – even if you had helped me reconnect to God, would he have come up? Am I a product of influences? Or… in as much as you are a gift from God, is part of that gift raising the question of Jesus? If that’s the case, then I suspect I’m right on track. If not, well, hmmm….

 I suppose part of my crisis is seeking the answer to the question of why he might have existed at all. If you take away The Fall as the raison d’etre, then what is the reason? Love seems too… simple. Forgiveness? Hope? Life? Meaning? I don’t know…maybe that is tonight’s meditation. “Daughter of Israel” feels an apt moniker today.

 Deep thoughts… with an odd melancholy attached…