April 21, 2003.
Why Easter is not an option


It's safe to bet that if you have all three verses of the hymn "Up From the Grave He Arose" memorized by the time you are six years old, you are probably going to be a religious person for the rest of your life.

Going to church was not an option for me when I was growing up. I spent almost every Sunday morning of the first 18 years of my life with my butt glued to the pew. My father was the pastor of the church we attended, and it just wouldn't be right to not come to church on Sunday mornings.

I loved God, but by the time I got to college, I was really sick of church. And I found that my most meaningful experiences of God didn't tend to happen within the four walls of the church. Sometimes that happened, but more often I felt closest to God when I was contradancing, or gardening, or walking aimlessly in a field.

So I spent many, many Sunday mornings during my college days avoiding church. I still feel a twinge of guilt admitting that it was a nice break to spend a Sunday morning sleeping in, or gazing lovingly into a cup of coffee, or curled up with a volume of poetry. When I graduated from college, I talked myself into going back to church for a lot of reasons. I felt like it would be a good idea, and that it would also please my parents, who still held enormous sway over me. I hooked up with church again, but the two of us made an uneasy pair.

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My parents' life still centers around the life of the church. My father has been preaching before the same congregation for more than 30 years. He's still going strong.

Being a pastor's kid, I grew up seeing the "business end" of church. I knew which church members were the worrywarts and grumblers. I knew before anybody else which marriages were in the process of falling apart. I contemplated the church budget as a child. I pondered my mother's faithful attempts to turn economic sow's ears into silk purses.

It's only recently that I've begun to detect how deeply my father's unbelievably rational, businesslike approach to his faith has influenced my own. Though a very gentle and quiet man, my father is like the Jack Welch of church. He's up before dawn every morning, conducting his own personal Bible study, planning next week's sermon, setting his agenda for the next elders' meeting. When it comes to God, he's all business.

And as much as I love my father, I find his approach to church truly frustrating. It's great for him, but awful for me. If my dad is sitting in a coffee shop having a friendly, brisk chit-chat with God, I'm out in the field in a rainstorm, hoping He'll strike me with lightning. And the problem I'm discovering — a bigger one than you'd think — is that I don't really know how to get away from that incredibly systematic approach to faith, and how to let myself find God on my own.

I don't mean that I want to just create my own self-styled faith ("35% Zen, 45% Catholic, and a dash of the Friends Meeting thrown in for good measure"). I discovered some real treasures during those years of sitting in church, bits and pieces that I intend to keep with me forever (including the lyrics of "Up From the Grave He Arose"). I don't want a faith without Good Friday or a faith without Easter. I just don't quite know where to begin my process of re-assimilation. I suppose I'm saying that I'm not really sure how to be a grown-up.

(I told a friend that I feel like a tiny bird in a junkyard, trying to scrape together a nest out of the ruins.)

So I do feel a really peculiar conviction lately that I am at the very beginning of a lengthy process of trying to really re-define my approach to faith. Laying aside some of the baggage out of my past (really, there's no reason for me to hate going to church, becuase it's full of good stuff), forgiving those that have hurt me without intending (including my parents), seeking what I believe to be those things that draw me in closer and closer to the God I love.

(This is heady, lofty language, isn't it? I feel a bit foolish even writing this stuff down here.)

I admit that this thought and this entry are really only about half-cooked, but I wanted to say something about it anyway. Because it's who I am and it's where I am.

Happy Easter to you, wherever you are.



(My older brother and me, on Easter Sunday somewhere around 1978.)