30 years ago tonight, I prayed

[vaneramos]

I was alone at home on August 28, 1983, working a summer job while my parents were at the cottage. It was a heavy, saturated night in Essex County, lightning capital of Canada. I was sleeping in a spare room on the ground floor, close to the only window with an air conditioner.

I was 19. First year university had been an emotional roller-coaster. I had a crush on a friend there. It wasn't the first and it wouldn't be the last, but it was one of the most intense.

He had dashing gypsy looks. He was a Christian.

So over the summer I had cracked the cover of the little red Gideon's pocket Bible given to us in grade 6. I was worried about going back to school, worried about the future, worried about feelings inside me that seemed dark and horrible (depression, and attraction to guys). Sometimes life felt unbearable.

The index of the pocket Bible suggested where to look in case of anxiety: Matthew 6.

Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, or the body than raiment?....Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not toil, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

It brought an unfamiliar calm. I looked up more passages. They seemed to speak to me in particular. I started talking to God, and for the first time in my life it seemed like someone was there listening and telling me what I needed to hear.

I was looking for a life line. I wanted to hear that everything would be ok.

Then I happened to turn to the very back of the Bible and found a bunch of verses outlining the idea of salvation through Jesus. Here was what I had been missing all along: eternal life!

I prayed the sinner's prayer, eagerly and with relief.

Hope in desperation characterized my inner life for the next 13 years. In an intensely religious community, I unlocked the secrets of my heart. New friends bolstered my hope that God could fix anything, even me. Vigorous joy often broke through my melancholy, especially at first.

But over time it became apparent that religion does not cure depression, and it certainly does not cure being gay. The promised hope turned out to be tied up somewhere outside space and time.

I usually forget this anniversary.

I came to regret my decision made one lonely August night long ago, but as time passes it begins to fit into something bigger. Church life taught me about the importance of community, and that what I want must be weighed against responsibility to others.

On the other hand religion did not make sense of who I am or enable me to trust myself. It did not teach me the sacredness of the present. Those lessons came along much more slowly, and would free me to find pleasure and meaning amid the unpredictable tragedy of living.

So here's to the wonder of it all, thirty years of maturing, and an air conditioned house.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I am in a Christian Church every Sunday and very, very many of them know that I am gay. They love me as I am. I was the one who took over twenty-five years to finally accept me; the real me - the special Gift I had been given even before I was born. Thank you God!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing your story.

August 28th

[(Anonymous)]

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing. Almost my first year university in a nutshell.

Re: August 28th

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[(Anonymous)]

I learned many things from my religious upbringing, and I would never deny those positives.

I also, however, learned the damage "righteous anger" can cause and how much of an exclusionary social club churches could be -- not to me, but to those who didn't look like the parishioners.

In the end, the moral dilemmas caused by my association with the church outweighed the dilemmas caused by my staying home.

I'm glad you shared, Van.

Stephen Cooper

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, Stephen, and thanks for your words. As you know, the above is only one fragment of my story, righteous anger and all.

[roosterbear.livejournal.com]

I was angry with the Catholic Church for a long time after I left it, because I felt like I wasted a decade hating this basic element of who I am based on their teaching that it was a sin. It took me years to appreciate that this same church also gave me my first taste of the metaphysical, as well as the biggest gulp of unconditional love that I could process or take in at the time. I came to the church a scared, paranoid 14 year old; I shied away from even shaking hands, because I didn't trust even that limited physical contact. I landed in a youth group where they gave the sign of peace in the form of a hug, and a long, delicious hug at that. It took me months to even warm up to that simple gesture, but once I did, that became a kind of lifeline for me. I doubt that I could have taken in the love without those strings attached. The truth is that I hated and feared that corner of myself already, and all the church did was reflect that back to me. As far as churches go, mine focused a lot more on the love of God, rather than the wrath or judgment, so it could have been much worse.

It's great to be able to look back and put the pieces together. For me anyway, it fits the narrative running through my life that when I need help, it appears, and in a form where I can accept it.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That has been true for me, too, Darren. I didn't want to give up, and always found something that enabled me to carry on. Many people survive much worse experiences. And of course, some don't. I'm grateful for many things, even to my young, naive self for making the best of what I had to go on. This is a better attitude than regret.

[inishglora.livejournal.com]

This is a familiar place for me, as well. I excommunicated myself from the RCC some 20+ years ago when my nagging questions about conflicting dogmas were evaded by those who should know the answers (so I thought). I believed there was something wrong with staying in a tradition that could not explain its own endless contradictions, i.e., "Love one another" vs exclusionary, petty hatreds of other beliefs, etc., and later, the endless obsession with controlling people's sexuality.

Andre Gide wrote, "In order to discover new lands, one must consent to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." Well, I have been sailing in one direction or another ever since, looking for that elusive shoreline. I did travel with the United Church of Christ for some years, which is when I met my partner, and met some interesting people. Sadly, human nature being what it is, the church fell into disarray when the pastor's inappropriate personal actions came to light, and many people left, myself among them. I think by that time of my life, I concluded that there is no shoreline, at least not for me.

Then, this past winter, a pleasant individual, recently ordained, appeared in this metro area announcing an intention to start a church, rooted in the North American Old Catholic Church, which is unaffiliated with (and is viewed as heretical by) Rome, and which accepts and ordains GLBT persons fully. In reading about this, I figured it for the shoreline at long last. Thinking about its possibilities even brought me to tears at times. But in attending some of the initial get-to-know-you meetings, in which the plan for the "start" (i.e. getting the local church up and running) was outlined, and tenets of the NAOCC were described, I felt the tide which brought me to land begin to recede, and to my surprise, it took me with it. I can't explain it. Something doesn't feel right... maybe it was the readings from the book that I associate with the feeling of being browbeaten into submission. I missed the third group meeting due to being busy with other projects, and naturally my momentum stalled and that was it.

Recently, the priest ran into me in the community, and asked how I was doing, clearly wondering if it was something he'd said or done. It was discomfiting, and I wished I could avoid him and his questions, but it was rather better because what came out of my mouth was, "I'm just not ready." And I realized how true this is. He accepted it without trying to persuade me otherwise, and appeared to understand that organized religion, no matter the flavor, is just not for all people.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It is interesting how religion offers so many different flavours of oppression. To this day I am far more comfortable around Catholics than evangelical Protestants, but the language is different. Words themselves tend to trigger feelings of anxiety or helplessness.

In my church culture we were encouraged to read and meditate on the Bible daily, which I tended to do religiously. Despite Scripture's obvious untruths and contradictions, I uncovered messages of mercy, healing and even self-worth. Ironically, that led me to realize I would survive without the church. Eventually I realized that a God requiring blind faith was based on the model of human narcissism, and did not make sense.

I think religions grew out of our social nature and need to get along. It's high time we replaced old mythologies with something more appropriate to what we know about the universe, but people don't like to think things through.

I have at times felt attracted to Unitarian Universalism, which eschews dogma and belief in favour of personal spiritual growth. But I'm not convinced spirituality is even the point of whatever journey this is.

[inishglora.livejournal.com]

"...a God requiring blind faith was based on the model of human narcissism..." That's a great way to put it. And there are indeed messages of mercy, healing etc in that book. The positive messages from the Divine are filtered through an imperfect lens and come to us somewhat altered. Maybe that's an interpretation of "pearls among swine."