Thanksgiving
Sunday, November 25, 2007
It has been almost two years since I set foot
in a church and more than a year since I felt called to give up
my work with what I thought of as "The Underground." I had
hoped when I left that my exile would be temporary. I
had found myself outside the church on a
couple of occasions in the past. Those were temporary respites.... or, perhaps, I was disobedient
and ran away from the Wilderness and back to
the safety of the Church when I shouldn't
have.
The last
time felt different. For one thing, it came at the end of a
long period of discernment and preparation. I had been feeling
"called out" for a long time. I fought it for a
while. Ultimately, I committed myself to obedience, but it
took time for me to extricate myself from the ties that bound me to the
Church. Even after I left, I allowed myself to go back to the
Church for a while at one point to test the call one more time.
When I left again the last time (after Christmas Eve service on
12/24/2005), I told myself that this, too, would be a temporary
separation. I suspected even at the time that was not the
case, but I needed that illusion in order to make it possible for me to
go out alone into the unknown Wilderness of the secular world.
It has now been almost two
years. For a long time I hoped that I was simply waiting to
be called back into service in the Church at some point. I sort
of imagined I would be called back as a part of the search and
rescue operations after the church wars rip the church apart. I
had always been a change agent and a builder-of-new things. It
seemed natural that I would be a part of the rebuilding of the Church
when it came to its senses.
Recent events have caused me to
rethink that, and to finally recognize that my sojourn in the Wilderness
is probably not a temporary thing at all. Moreover, the "secular"
life I feared so much has turned out in many ways to be more sacred than
I could ever have imagined. The "sacred/profane"
duality turned out to be one more dualism to go on the trash heap
of experience. Everything is sacred because Everything is made in
the Image and Likeness of its Creator. All of Creation is holy and
venerable because it came from the Holy and, in some mysterious way we
cannot understand, it moves toward the Holy.
The RC nuns who taught the CCD
classes I attended for 13 years used to warn us of the dangers "Secular
Humanists". They didn't warn us of the dangers of becoming Secular
Humanists; I think they thought that it was utterly unthinkable for
Catholic kids who had already been subjected to a certain amount of
indoctrination to become humanists. They spoke of Secular
Humanists much like parents speak of strangers who try to entice
children into cars with candy or other attractive enducements. The
Secular Humanist, at least in the way the nuns described it, was a
person dedicated to the downfall of religion, and basically the devil's
agent.
I never worried too much
about being seduced away from my spirituality by a Secular
Humanist because I have always lived in such awareness of the
Presence of the Holy in my world, I could not imagine being a humanist
of any kind.
A brief stint in a Unitarian
Universalist church introduced me to people who were humanist but not
secular. They went to church every Sunday and participated in the life
of the church. They were in many ways very religious, typically in
the worst sense of the word. I never could figure out why a
humanist would even care to participate in a religious community, but
they were there.... and they were not very nice to the theists in the
congregation. Moreover, they reserved special scorn for
Christians. That was why I left. I may not have been a
practicing Christian but Christianity is my heritage and all of my
family and most of my best friends have been and still are
practicing Christians. I could not allow myself to stay in a place which
allowed that kind of behavior. It allowed me to split the term.
There were Humanists and there were people living Secular lives.
There may be Secular Humanists, but they do not necessarily have to go
to gether. Somehow I filed that little lesson back in my brain and
did not think about it until recently.
Anyway, I have recently revisited
the whole notion of the secular life now that I am pretty sure it is
where I will be for a while.
The most amazing thing I realized
is that moving out into the spiritual Wilderness, living in a secular
world without any religious community, has been a lot like moving to the
countryside, far away from the bad air and bright lights of the
city. In the daytime, I can breathe more deeply and I have felt my
soul filling with good spiritual air and ridding itself of
the damage done by years of living in toxic
churches. At night, I can lie on my back and see the stars.
Not just the few really bright ones that penetrate even the city lights,
but the huge array of stars that blanket the heavens if we can only step
aside far enough to see them.
I have learned that secular
life is as sacred as the religious life, because all Life
participates in the Holy.
I have learned that my worth as a
human being does not come from my obedience to the rules of any church
or community or society. My worth as a human being is derived from
my participation in the Holiness of Life.
Spiritually I have come full
circle, back to the spirituality I experienced as a child before I
learned the names people had invented for religious experiences or the boxes people
had created to put them in. My very first spiritual experience left
me with an absolute conviction that there is a Presence
in the world that can be felt. It is very powerful and very loving.
It is similar to but much more than what the churches call
God. After more than four decades of trying to fit myself into the
Christian Box, the Holy led me out for my own good. (Not unlike
the parent dishing out punishment with the admonishment that "This hurts
me more than it does you, but it is for your own good." That is a
true statement on both sides of the conjunction.)
And now, on this
Thanksgiving weekend, I find myself to be quite
simply a thankful person. Not for anything in particular. I hate
those counting-your-blessings lists that always come out so lame when you
say them out loud. I reserve counting blessings for times when I
am teetering on the brink of depression. Blessings-counting is a little
like pulling a fire bell; it is to
be reserved for desperate times.
During a time
like this quiet weekend spent with family, I don't feel thankful for
anything in particular. I feel totally, completely, utterly,
helplessly and selflessly thankful, period.
One of my many
favorite hymns starts like this:
Now
thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices,
who wondrous things hath done, in whom this world rejoices,
who from our mothers' arms hath blessed us on our way,with
countless gifts of love, and still is ours
today.
That pretty much sums it up for
me. I think what I like about that verse of the song is that the God
in the song isn't asking us for anything. We are not asking
God for anything. God blesses and Creation
responds in gratitude. That's real Thanks-giving.