I had a great moment today. Ethan made his first basket during a game. The league he plays in has always been very accomodating, but he has just not been able to compete with the other kids.
But today, right at the beginning of the game, there was a perfect moment…swoosh, nothing but net.
I am a very lucky man.
Thud!
I start this posting with a quote from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It is written from the perspective of a husband to his wife. But I use it here to describe the next phase of my faith journey.
Day after day, love turns grey
Like the skin of a dying man.
Night after night, we pretend it’s all right
But I have grown older and
You have grown colder and
Nothing is very much fun anymore.
And I can feel one of my turns coming on.
I feel cold as a razor blade,
Tight as a tourniquet,
Dry as a funeral drum.
–One of my Turns, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd
Before it began, my ministry career was over. Try as I might, I could only find two paths.
1. This was a test of my faith. God would provide if I would step out in faith.
2. I was full of shit. There was no God. There was no calling. My relationship with god was just a foolish self-delusion.
I did not have the faith to pursue option #1. Regardless of whether or not it was true, I did not believe enough. Over time, I began to embrace option #2.
As if to confirm my choice, my Emmaus sponsor, my spiritual mentor, the man whose faith I modeled my own after, committed suicide.
Dead
I continued to go to church. At first out of habit, then because my wife got a job at a new church. I went through the motions. But it meant nothing.
Dead
I read a lot of books. I am an atheist.
I am.
No really.
OK, I could be wrong.
I am an agnostic. Maybe there is a god.
Damn it. There is something that connects us. I am not sure what it is. But there IS something.
All of my old tricks no longer work. I need to try something new.
Buddhism?
Nah.
Hinduism?
Nah.
What I need, is to rethink everything.
What I need, is to imagine.
Crash!
I preface this post with a couple of thoughts. It is impossible for me to put into words how much I love my son. He inspires me daily. Let me be clear I do not in any way, shape or form blame him for what happened to me. What follows is purely the result of my ego and a lifetime of bad theology.
My last posting ended with Jenn and me on the road to the hospital to have our son. We were practically giddy with excitement. This was the big day.
We got to the hospital and were put in the pre-surgical ward. Our son was breach and had to be delivered by c-section. We had to wait for a couple of hours because there were some emergencies in front of us. But finally they wheeled her back. I had to wait in the hall until she had the epidural and was prepped.
When they called me into the room, things happened very quickly but I recall them in slow motion. Jenn was draped so that she could not see the incision point. They had me sit in a chair right by her head. I had a greater vantage point, but I could not see the incision either. They started almost the second I took my seat. The first thing that caught my attention was the smell of burning flesh (as they cauterized the wound). I almost hurled because I was not expecting smells. I kind of chuckled to myself and regained my composure.
It took about a minute to free Ethan from the womb. What happened next put me in a state of panic. They silently lifted him into my field of view. I noticed that one leg had no tone and was significantly smaller than the other. He was not breathing and was pale blue. They took him to a nearby table and started CPR. Time stopped. “God let him breath. Please let him breath.” Eternity passed.
…
…
…
And finally he cried. The nurses and doctors examined him. They splayed his butt cheeks and gave each other knowing glances.
My mind was reeling.
They wrapped him (Jenn knew nothing at this point) and brought him for her to see. They congratulated us and said nothing. Ethan and were moved into recovery while Jenn was stitched up.
I robotically called my family. “It’s a boy. Yes, everything was fine. Gotta go.”
They wheeled Jenn back and handed her the baby.
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, problem. Blah blah blah blah no anus. Blah blah blah blah blah Nonnative Intensive Care. Blah blah…can’t come until she can sit in a wheel chair…Blah…sir, follow us.
Tubes…IVs…Monitors…What in the hell just happened. “Dear God, I have the faith. Heal him now…Now…NOW!!!
“Sir we need to do a procedure…come back later…call family…go to wife.”
Dial home. “Mom.” I lost it and cried uncontrollably. This was the first of many loses of composure.
The rest of the story is well documented in the rest of this blog. Fast forward…two weeks.
I met with my mentor. I lost it again. He consoled me. It would be OK. This was our last meeting before I went before the district superintendent. My mentor told me he had met with many candidates over the course of his ministry. Never had he worked with a candidate with so clear a calling. He looked forward to great things.
Fast forward…several weeks later.
I got the hospital bill. It was over $100,000. My insurance had not paid anything. Panic.
Fast forward…weeks.
I got the bill cleared up. Insurance covered it all. I wondered what the Methodist Church’s insurance would have covered. Called my mentor. “Oh, it is a standard 80/20% policy.”
Hmmmm…
So if I was a pastor. I would be on the hook for $20,000. This is the first of many many many bills. First year, my salary would be capped at $28,000. What would have happened? What will happen? This is the first of many bills. How will I pay for this?
HOW AM I GOING TO SUPPORT MY FAMILY?
More to come…
TnT, pride before the Called
So after moving to Virginia, we started attending a medium size Methodist Church. It was such an unlikely pairing; formerly hardcore Pentecostals meet the mainline church. But as I mentioned in the previous post, we loved it. I started attending a Bible study. At the time, I had a skater haircut and a goatee. The first night of the Bible study, the lady next to me showed me the index in the Bible so that I could find Revelation. I was polite, but chuckling inside. A year later, I was running the study.
For the first time that I could remember, I enjoyed going to church. Jenn and I both became heavily involved, she in the music, me in Bible study and both of us in youth ministry. Over time, we had our fingers in almost every happening at the church.
Jenn and I were still by far the youngest members of the community. So the Pastor asked us to start a young adult group. We tried twice and it failed miserably. A year after the second failure, the pastor made a big push to have get people to join small groups. They asked us to give it one more try. In our previous attempts, we were never able to get more than 3-4 people to show up. Because the pastor had made such a push from the pulpit, I was hopeful that we could get 8. I figured with 8 we could make a go of it. The first night 20 people showed up. Within a couple of months we had over 40 people on the roster. We had to split the group in half and sometimes thirds. Jenn would take a group, I would take one and later we got others to help out.
Though it started out as a bible study, it quickly evolved into a fully fledged ministry. TnT or Twenties and Thirties was our name. We had our own outreach projects, social outings and the study. We had a party at someone’s house most weekends. We sat together in a section of the church. And I found myself right smack in the middle of it.
I was elected a lay leader in the church. On several occasions, I got to preach. I also lead a couple of retreats. I had found my niche.
It was in the middle of this faith renaissance that one of my church buddies sponsored me for the Emmaus weekend. He was a mentor of sorts to me and I really admired his commitment to Christ and our church. So I thought what the heck; I’ll go.
It was a transformative weekend. Describing it would be its own post. Halfway through the retreat (on steroids), I just started crying. Which was kind of weird. Most of the guys in my group were just coming back to faith. I was firmly established at the time (yeah, right). But I just could not stop crying. Something powerful was happening to me and I could not figure out what it was. It was then that I thought I heard the voice of my childhood (figuratively), saying come home. I thought about it and went for a long walk. Halfway through the walk, I started crying again. And I said to myself, “God, do you want me to serve you in the full time ministry?” It was then that I had the most powerful spiritual experience of my life. It was as though suddenly my entire life had lead me to this moment. I felt a very specific calling to serve as a pastor. As soon as I made that connection, I felt a wave of contentedness that I have never felt since. I WAS CALLED.
After I got home, I was worried about telling my wife. She had grown up a PK and I was pretty certain she would not be thrilled about my calling to a new vocation. But when I told her, she was surprisingly open to the idea. A short time passed and then I started taking concrete steps towards pursuing my calling. I started looking for seminaries. I shared my calling with my close TnT friends and they all enthusiastically confirmed my vocational plans.
I officially approached my local Methodist district and told them of my calling. They sent me some materials and assigned me a mentor. Being methodical, the Methodist church had a process for pursuing a calling. I met with a local pastor weekly and we reviewed a manual on pursuing a calling.
Normally, it takes about 3 months to complete this phase of the calling. But my mentor and I really hit it off and our 1 hour meetings often went on for 2 hours or more. It took us nearly 9 months to get through all of the materials.
Meanwhile we had other happy news in our life. My wife was pregnant with our first child. We were ecstatic. My job was going gangbusters and my TnT group was thriving.
Near the end of my candidacy exploration, my mentor and I began putting together a plan. I applied to and was accepted at two seminaries. I had a plan and a backup plan. Plan one was to go to Asbury seminary in Kentucky and work in their financial aid office (I still had skillzzzz). Asbury was my first choice, but I knew it might be rough on my wife to move to a strange place again. So I formulated plan 2, which was to go to the local seminary, Wesleyan. If I went this route, I could only go part time while I kept my day job. The nice thing about this option was that my work at the time had a benefit that would pay for schooling at any school for any major (that has since been cut back).
My mentor and I completed the exploration process and he strongly endorsed my candidacy. The next step was to meet with the district superintendant and become a certified candidate through my local church. These two things were going to be a snap. I met with the DS and it went well, although he was somewhat suspicious of my Pentecostal background. It was the spring of 2001.
Life could not be any more perfect. I was happily married. I had managed to build some equity in a house. I led a successful small group ministry. I was called into the full time ministry. I had started pursuing my goal with great success. And I had a baby, a son that was due in June.
It was all coming together. We would have the baby in June. I would take some time off over the summer. I would pick my seminary. And in early fall I would become a certified candidate at my church’s annual meeting.
Because the baby was breach, we scheduled a C-section on June 12th. On the way to the hospital, I commented to my wife on what a blessed existence we lived. No matter what happened, God had blessed us beyond all of our expectations.
But wait, there’s more…
You may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?” –Talking Heads
So this is the last assignment for my Imagine group. Describe your faith journey as an adult, age 27+. I will break this post into at least two segments.
Well the thing that had the biggest impact on my faith at age 27 was getting married. When I started dating and later married my wife Jenn, I resolved to follow the grin and bear it approach to faith practice. I had been attending church semi-regularly before we started dating, but when things got serious I knew that faith was going to be a central theme in my married life. I did not enjoy church in any way, shape or form. But I did have a somewhat flimsy faith in God.
When we got married, my wife and I started attending a Baptist church near our apartment. It was another mega church, so the quality of the service was high and I could practice my faith in near anonymity.
Halfway through that first year, I got news that my job was being moved from San Jose, CA to Herndon, VA. That was a huge deal. We were moving away from all family and all friends. It was a blank slate.
The Sunday after our arrival, we started church shopping. Oh my, it was painful. When you are in a new environment, you do what you know. We knew AG, Baptist and non-denominational. Every week was a new freak show. Either the people were dancing in the aisles or they were saying things like, “no good church music has been written since the 1950s.” That last one really won over my wife, the musician.
We were really struggling to find a church that we did not hate, little lone one we liked. Then there was an interesting twist of fate. One of my coworkers who knew I was a Christian asked to go to church with Jenn and me. At first I freaked out because she was very liberal and all of the churches we had visited were right wing bible thumpers. I had no clue where to take her.
It is important to know, that after moving, I was constantly getting lost. I found a route to work and I did not stray from my path. Well, on the way to work every day, I passed a picturesque little Methodist church, Floris UMC. One day on the way to work, I thought…hmmm, Methodist, that should be mostly harmless. I’ll take my coworker there.
We checked out the churches website and found that they had a Saturday evening “contemporary service.” We took my friend. Contemporary it turns out meant 1970s Maranatha choruses sang to the organ. The music was truly awful. But the pastor sermon was passable. It wasn’t a fantastic service, but it did not hit any of my “red alert” triggers.
My coworker hated it. She swiftly converted to Buddhism (where she remains happy to this day).
Jenn and I on the other hand did not have a visceral reaction and decided to try out the traditional service. So the next Sunday, we came back. We were easily the youngest people in the service by at least a decade. The music was traditional hymns and the service was semi-liturgical. We absolutely LOVED IT!
More to come…
On three: One, Three, Two…
I know, I know, I already published part 3. I winged part 2 at the meeting, but I want a complete set so here goes
Paradise Lost
So purely from a faith standpoint, I had a pretty great early childhood. But unfortunately as I got older, the adults around me felt the need to teach me theology and religious polity.
But in addition to my wholesome religious education, they threw in some crazy wing nut theology. Looking back, some of this was the religious equivalent of pornography. It was designed to scare the bejeebus out of me, so that I would not stray far from the straight and narrow. Worked like a charm.
I have dozens of examples of religious abuse, but here are two that forever scarred my psyche. In 1972 a movie took the evangelical movement by storm. The name of that movie was “A Thief in the Night.” This little cinematic gem was shown in my home church shortly after it was released. I would have been the ripe age of 5-6. And for reasons that are unclear to me to this day, my parents thought it was a good idea for me to see the film.
Here is the basic premise of the flick: Jesus has returned to Earth in the “rapture” and taken all the good Christians to heaven. Those who were left had to endure the “tribulation.” Worst of all, in order to function in the tribulation economy, everyone had to be ID’d with “The Mark of the Beast” (represented with a barcode tattoo). Here is the thing, if you took the mark; it was a one way ticket to hell. There was no chance of redemption once a person took the mark. At the end of the movie, the main protagonist is forced to jump off a damn in order to avoid damnation (genius!).
Now let’s break this down in the mind of a six year old. My best friend, who I carried on a constant dialogue with, Jesus, was going to come back to Earth some day and take all the good people away. But if I sinned, which at age 6 could be as simple as a lie or stealing a cookie before dinner, my friend Jesus would leave me…an orphan…I would face starvation or taking the mark…in either case, I would most likely go to hell where I would burn for all eternity. I am sure I was not quite as succinct at age 6, but I did ask questions. The basic answer was yes, if I sinned and had not had the opportunity to tell Jesus that I was sorry, then I would be left behind and possibly burn for all eternity. Good to know!…thanks!
As if this message was not clear enough, my church did a little drama for my benefit. The “drama” was a skit/play about judgment day. I was really excited because my friend Todd was in the production. Todd and his mother were at the “judgment seat.” I don’t remember any of the dialogue, again I was 7 or 8 at the time. The bottom line, Todd got to go to heaven, his mother went to hell. Nice!
So as it turns out, my friend the son of God was kind of a dick! A couple of things changed about my faith. First, I was afraid of God. On numerous occasions, I came home to an empty house and my first thought was that God had rejected me. Second, I started having reoccurring nightmares involving Jesus and the Devil. I will save those little nuggets for a future post.
In spite of all this, I remained a committed Christian. The relationship had changed from innocent love to Stockholm syndrome, but I still “loved” god. I also developed two separate lives. There was the sinful Ben who drank, smoked and shoplifted. And there was the Ben who was a devout little follower of Jesus.
I think I would have gone crazy were it not for the friendships I developed in church. To my knowledge, NONE of them are still members of the Assemblies of God (AG). And only a couple of them would still call themselves Christians.
I wish I could close this posting by saying this kind of abuse no longer occurs. But sadly, it still goes on. My parents to this day attend the church of Keenan Roberts who is best known for his “Hell House” and the “Hell House” kits.
Four Years in the Desert
Young adulthood kicked off with the end of college. By some miracle, I graduated from Bethany on time with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I wanted to go to grad school to become a therapist, but my student loan dept (modest by today’s standards) freaked me out. I needed a job. As luck would have it, my best friend at the time worked in the schools administration and told me about a job in the financial aid office. I did not realize it at the time, but he had just chosen my career.
Over the next couple of years, I would learn a valuable skill and make some of the best friends of my life. My faith walk varied wildly during this time. I no longer felt strong ties to the denomination of my youth, even though it saturated my life. All of my friends were either connected to the college or the local AG churches. I lived in a bubble of sorts. And though I was thoroughly encased, I found a small niche of friends that liked challenging the rules. I was AG, but one if its biggest critics.
When I turned 25, I decided that I wanted to move home. Home meant Arvada, Colorado. I had a plan. I would quit my job, move in with my parents, bet another job and then reestablish myself. I drove the 1000 miles from Scotts Valley to Colorado in two days. I was excited to be going home and living with my family.
I got home and immediately started looking for a job. One week became two weeks and then a month…then three months. It was Christmas and I was going into month 4 of no employment. I started to panic. Then I got a call from that friend of mine that helped me find my first job. He was working at another school in Washington State and as fate would have it, they had an opening in financial aid.
This was not the plan. But I needed work and I was excited to go to a new city. I found myself working just outside of Seattle in Kirkland, Washington at another AG college. This time, I did not drink the Kool-Aid. While I worked at an AG school, I was a perfect heathen. I did not go to church and I did not mix with the locals at work. The only friends I had were friends from my school days at Bethany. It was a very lonely time. With no church and no social life from work, I was very lonely. I came home to an empty house most nights, ate fast food and either watched TV or read until I fell asleep.
Seattle was a beautiful place to live. But ultimately, it was not for me. Nine months after I got hired, I got my dream job.
I got a job at a software company in San Jose, California, just 35 miles away from my old school. It paid twice as much as my old job at Bethany. I had friends. I had secular employment and I was making more money than I knew what to do with. This was the beginning of the best year of my life.
I started off in an apartment in San Jose. I worked just a couple of miles away, near the airport. My job was to give phone support for software that I knew inside and out. From very early on in my career there, I was a rock star. I got to wear jeans and a tee shirt to work. I got to speak to people from all over the country and I got to help them solve interesting problems. On top of that, I got to travel and give workshops all over the US with a generous expense account.
Life was good. I even started attending church again. Out of habit, I attended the local AG mega-church, 4000 members strong. I liked going there because they had excellent music but it was so big that I could be completely anonymous. One of my old professors attended the church and during the sermon, I would play my own version of Where’s Waldo, only I looked for Rich.
Everything was falling into place, with one notable exception. I was alone. I had plenty of friends, but I had not found that special someone.
On Memorial Day weekend, I went on a road trip with a group of buddies. Before we left town, we stopped to eat. There were four of us. Two of them wanted to go to Burger King. One of them wanted to go to Taco Bell. I am normally a Burger King kind of guy, but I did not want my one friend to be alone. So I went with her to Taco Bell. As we were walking in, I was complaining about my lack of a love life. The words were just coming out of my mouth, “I just can’t meet any nice girls.” And there she was. Standing behind the counter at Taco Bell was my wife. She just did not know it at the time. I leaned over to my friend and said to her, “I am going to marry her.” A little over one year later, I did exactly that.
Last night I dreamt that I was in a dinner with my wife’s grandparents. It was just the three of us. Her grandfather and I were on one side of a booth, her grandmother on the other. There was a TV overhead. They were playing a news story about bullying disabled children. Jenn’s grandmother kicked her grandfather under the table and gave him a knowing nod. I was crying silently.
Let me say up front, that I do not make New Year’s resolutions. I think trying to change your behavior because of an arbitrary date is doomed to failure. Making little changes over time that is eminently doable. So in no particular order, here are some things I would like to improve upon (that is a lie…the order is pretty specific).
Poundage: Let’s get the cliché out of the way. I need to lose 20lbs (100 would be nice…baby steps).
DeSlugify: Yeah, OK I need to walk around a bit (running would result in too much jiggling for me or anyone watching).
More Jekyll less Hyde: Smiles everyone smiles (da plane…da plane)!
Reinvent Faith: Here is the nutmeat of my entry, written in the form of a Christmas Carol.
Ghost of Religion past…I was a true believer. Though I would never have embraced the label of fundamentalist, it would not have been entirely inaccurate to categorize me as such. I believed in the integrity if not inerrancy of scripture. By that I mean, I did not believe every word of the Bible as literally written; nor did I embrace all of its books (Joshua…oh, Joshua). But on the whole, I believed the entire thing. I saw one cohesive narrative that I believed to be true.
Though I no longer embraced the doctrine of the Assemblies of God (the Pentecostal denomination of my childhood), I enthusiastically embraced Methodist doctrine and its core beliefs as put forth in the book of discipline. I had a very intense spiritual encounter in which I felt called into the ministry (three day retreat where I could not stop crying). I had completed the first phase of exploration and was on the brink of starting seminary (I was a year into the “official” process).
Ghost of Religion Present…Two events of the past decade have caused me to question everything and to distance myself from church and faith. First, circumstances changed my “relationship” with Jesus/God. I became unable or unwilling to pursue my calling. Because of family medical issues, I was left with two rather unattractive options. Option A: admit that my “calling” was not authentic and continuing working at a job I hate so that my family could afford medical care and food/shelter. Option B: take consequences be damned approach to pursing my calling. Go to seminary, quit my job and take a job at a church that would pay no more than 30K with less than adequate health insurance. Additionally, trust that Jesus/God will provide. Because of the specific nature of my calling, choosing option A would gradually erode my faith. Option B might work out, but I would be gambling/trusting the wellbeing of not only myself, but my wife and infant son on my faith. I chose option A. And it has been a 10 year slide into faith oblivion.
The second event was the suicide of my Emmaus sponsor, the retreat where I felt God’s calling to become a full time pastor. Long story…but this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Ghost of Religion Future…I know where this road leads. And no, I do not mean hell (well not specifically anyway). I am already paying the price for my semi-apostasy. I no longer belong to a community of faith, my marriage has been strained, I feel increasingly alienated from my family and my son appears to be ambivalent about God.
I am realistic. No hymn, scripture, book, sermon or religious experience is going to suddenly zap me back into the person I was. I have done too much critical thinking to ever return to the faith observed by the ghost of religion past.
But I am unwilling to throw out spirituality altogether. Whether or not faith represents any objective method for measuring the nature of reality, it is a comfort. It does build community. It does give meaning to existence. It does break the myopic focus on self.
So in the upcoming year, I want to get over my aversion to religion and try to build a new theology that is consistent with where I find myself in life.
And if I could do that while losing 20lbs, so much the better!
My mother taught me a lesson that has become part of the core of who I am. It was a very short anecdote from the church she grew up in.
Every Easter at Glad Tidings Assembly of God, the pastor’s wife wore and old and often out of style dress. Why? She did not want any visitors to feel bad; if they could not afford a new Easter outfit.
I can no longer picture Sister Bernadice Glendenning in my head. She passed away when I was about 10. But in my mind she is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met.
