Ecstatic

Snowy nighttime street from inside a bus stop, Montreal

"Feeling down? Look up! -love, God." So read the sign-on-wheels outside Praise Chapel last night. I laughed and shook my head, as I usually do when I read those messages - is there a book somewhere, or a website, that has weekly suggestions for public Praise signage? They're clever, simplistic, and so totally non-Episcopalian.

I've been spending a lot of my own time lately writing about evangelical opposition to homosexuality, based on strict biblical literalism. And then there was that night at the Pentecostal church, and teju cole's recent comments about religion in Nigeria. My patience for the Jesus crowd has worn fairly thin, but I do see why people gravitate that way. Lots of people want simple answers, and this is a big one, in eight-inch letters. Praise Jesus. Amen, Jesus. He will wipe every tear from your eye.

John Fortunato, a gay therapist who wrote a book back in the 80s about gays, emotional health, and spirituality called Embracing the Exile (unfortunately out of print), had quite a bit to say about why we feel spiritual hunger. He was a Christian, not a Buddhist, but he talks a lot about ego and attachment, and how they bind us to a cycle of anxiety.

We begin by clinging tenaciously to our egos. We are in control. Then we create in our world systems and structures that we can manipulate and control to somehow bury the reality that we truly control nothing.

…whether or not (we) consciously grasp (our) yearning as a need for spiritual grounding, the cry into the abyss is an acknowledgment that the only way out is deeper.

That sounds familiar to me. But a lot of folks aren't headed into the deep water. They are safely splashing, it seems to me, in the wading pool. I went to a musical play at Praise Chapel one time; the pastor, who I know, had invited the community and I felt like I should go. Different people from the congregation played the various parts. The story, a sort of Nutcracker spin-off, was about toys who came to life at Christmas and were able to talk. One was a broken doll, very beautiful, who had only one arm. She prayed to Jesus, and all the other dolls prayed with her, and a miracle happened - a new arm appeared and she was whole and healed! The Praise congregation clapped and cried at that point in the story; this was how it worked, it was how it was going to work for them. Their faces glowed with happiness.

There's a school associated with this chapel, and the students, like the congregation, include many people who are the rejects of society, as well as kids from broken families with innumerable problems. I admire the dedication of the teachers and the pastor; they are living their faith in a real way and they are helping people feel loved as well as building community. How can I criticize that? It just astounds me that the hook is this promise of healing, of wealth, of you-name-the-miracle -- and that it can be believed by so many people. Yet, looking around at today's world and our lack of control and the anxiety it generates, I can see the attraction.

For the person, though, whose mind has been sufficiently changed by education and experience and thought about how the world actually works, the only choices are stoic self-sufficiency, or plunging ever deeper. Feeling down? Look. Keep looking into the dark and listening to silence. Not, as they say, for the faint of heart.

Comments

[dale]

O yes. Beautifully said.

[Soen Joon]

Wonderful. That will go over my doorway: liminal words for liminal spaces.

[Lorianne]

That photo is perfect! It strikes me that just as the billboard you quote gives a simplistic view of God, that ad gives a simplistic view of sexuality. They say that sex sells, but I'd say that Simplistic Sentiment sells. Not true simplicity, mind you: there's nothing more simple than looking. But folks seem to crave simplistic answers. If X is wrong, simply do Y. So, if your sex life is lacking, buy this cologne. If your spiritual life is lacking, attend this church. In either way, the allure is the Instant Fix.

It's never, of course, quite that simple.

[zhoen]

Magic Jesus, say the word and you get a miracle!

Love the wading pool metaphor, perfect.

[butuki]

I just can't understand why anyone would want such a simple answer to life and the way the world works. Sure, life can be harsh and unfair and painful, but that is what life is, isn't it? What else could it be? It's why life struggles the way it does and why biologically all creatures find some way to adapt themselves to the reality. Isn't a way of life and a philosophy that celebrates strength and dignity in the face of hardship, along with an acceptance that the struggle is the point of living, the most realistic and effective antidote to despair? Doesn't the very act of living and the ability to feel pain defy the great slide of entropy? I feel pain! I live despite disease and bad luck and heartbreak! I breathe! I wake up and there shines the sun! How unlikely! What wonder! What joy!

[Teju Cole]

Dark? Silence?

You people obviously need the wonder-working name of Jesus.

[P.]

I think this might be the time to mention this site and the Ohio phenomenon it applies to ...

http://www.jeeeb.us/

[Dave]

*Feeling down? Look. Keep looking into the dark and listening to silence.*
What are you saying - some people wouldn't find that kind of advice uplifting? I do! (And it resonates much more clearly with two millennia of Christian tradition than the cheery slogan about looking up - ugh.)

[Dave]

(Hmm, I am guilty of leaving a comment before reading what others had to say. Sorry for the redundancy. Lorianne and butuki in particular say things I strongly agree with.)

[Natalie]

Beth, sadness is always going to be necessary. So much of life is sad.
"Keep looking into the dark and listening to silence."
Yes.
But I would add the other side of that coin:
Keep looking into the light and singing.

And keep flipping that coin.
If you flip it fast enough, head-or- tail merges into one.