Margaret's Bench
(…a continuation of thoughts from Margaret’s
Bench of
April,
June,
July/August,
September
’07 and June '08.)
At some point during my youth, while I was
still attending church because my parents made me do it, I grew
at first uncomfortable, then puzzled and put off, and finally
disbelieving at all that LOVE stuff thrown at us pew-sitters,
from hymns to prayers to Bible readings to sermons.
God made me and all the rest of the world.
God loves the world so much that, a long time ago, His son Jesus
came down from heaven to save me and everybody else from our
sins. Jesus died and then rose from the dead and went back to
heaven. Jesus loves me right now. This I know because the Bible
tells me so.
The bumpy motivations and circular proofs did not trouble my
seven-year-old mind. But as I grew into adolescence and young
adulthood, the whole LOVE thing, at least when applied to God
and religion, just stopped making sense. The world as I saw it
did not appear to have sprung from the act of a purposeful,
powerful, loving Creator.
On the one hand, the cosmos was too orderly for love. Love was
soft and mushy, difficult to define, impossible to quantify. In
contrast, the real world abounded in hard numbers. Wonderful
numbers. The intricate repeating patterns in the petals of a
dahlia. The coiled compartments of a Nautilus shell. The
six-sided design of a beehive’s storage unit. The statistical
underpinnings of the periodic table. From these cool and
beautiful algorithms, I found the phrase “God loves math” much
more convincing than “God loves me.”
And what does math have to do with love?
On the other hand, the cosmos was too chaotic for love. A large
meteor strikes the earth, atomizing tons of terrain. Entire
species and ecosystems are wiped out. Millions of living beings
meet terrifyingly sudden or agonizingly prolonged deaths. It’s
happened before, it could happen again, and it’s nobody’s fault,
unless it’s God’s fault, because that’s the way the cosmos
works.
Or how about this one, from the daily news? A motorist makes a
familiar left turn, not noticing a bicyclist cresting the rise
ahead and speeding down the slope. Without enough time to swerve
or brake, the bicyclist smashes into the side of the car. Killed
on impact. The motorist, unharmed, will live haunted by this one
momentary distraction, by a perfectly normal blip in awareness.
Human beings are not capable of perfect attention at every
moment. We aren’t made that way. Couldn’t a Creator who loved us
take a little more time and do a little better job in the
creation?
And what did the whole Jesus story have to do with love? Or with
me, for that matter? If God’s son came to save the world from
sin, then again, it appeared to me, just looking around, that
the whole enterprise had been badly mismanaged.
As I entered my tough, clear-thinking late teens and early
twenties, all that emphasis on LOVE in church just felt soppy to
me, along with all the other soppy expressions of love
everywhere around.
A classmate dotted her i’s with little hearts, and I mentally
rolled my eyes.
In Disney’s Fantasia, the cupids’ naked little butts formed
hearts, while pairs of youthful centaurs galloped off to smootch
in the pastoral countryside.
Ick, ick, ick! Soppy!
And this attitude thrived, strong and comfortable, in the very
same young woman who sat at her school desk and quietly drew
hearts, over and over, in her own private, secret notebook. Who
fell in love, again and again, with one unsuspecting boy after
another. Just smile at me—that’s all it took—and I’m yours, my
heart in flames fanned by every prayerful breath.
I had no respect for love, so how could I worship a loving God?
At the same time, love was my god, and I was in constant
thrall to it.
More on this subject at another time…
-- Margaret
Archives: Margaret's Bench
June 2008 --
Three separate times, a love without bounds showed
itself to me so that I looked and paid attention, so
that I could see.
more...
May 2008 --
Last December, in an effort to bring abundant life into
our home, David and I got a puppy. We named him Bingo.
If abundant life involves sleep deprivation and
obsessive interest in someone else’s bathroom habits,
then Bingo brought it, right away.
more...
April 2008 --
Every Sunday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Port
Townsend, we stand and say the Nicene Creed together. It
is my least favorite part of the service.
more...
March 2008 --
"“These are the first two poems I’ve ever written
in my life,” said Jeff. As the class instructor, I was
glad to hear both surprise and pleasure in his voice.
more...
February 2008 --
"Today I'm going to talk about feet and pee, in stories
of attention and change..." — From a talk delivered at
the Quimper Universalist Unitarian Fellowship's Sunday
services, January 13, 2008.
more...
January 2008 --
Our first dog, Jackie, was a tri-color basset hound
named in honor of Jack Benny, one of David’s all-time
favorite show biz personalities...
more...
December 2007 --
Happy birthday to the Courtyard—one year old this
month...
more...
November 2007 --
I’m deeply attached to my “To Do” list. How would I live
without it? The tasks swirl around me, and at times I’m
frozen, drowning in a sea of possibilities. I need to
write them down, simply to choose what to do next. And
so the trap quietly closes...
more...
October 2007 --
We adopted Katie from the local animal shelter about
four years ago, just before Thanksgiving in 2003. The
folks at the pound had the phone number of her former
owners, and before signing the papers, I gave them a
call. It was an awkward conversation...
more...
September 2007 --
Three days after my mystical experience in the Safeway
parking lot — three days after I was given a revelation
of the essential, fundamental love-ableness built into
all human beings — I walked into a frightening and
infuriating demonstration of its opposite...
more...
July/August 2007 --
On an October afternoon, Tom Waits’ gravelly voice,
flamboyant lyrics, and diamond revelations in the grit
of city street life felt like perfect accompaniment to
the fir trees, horse barns, and small-town neighborhoods
that I passed in my car...
more...
June 2007 --
You know what drives me nuts about the recent spate of
books begging me to find salvation and give up religion
before it’s too late? Books arguing not only that God
doesn’t exist, but that religion is a greater threat to
humanity than avian flu and reality TV combined?
more...
May 2007 --
This month is the 10-year anniversary of my confirmation
in the Episcopal Church. I had confirmed my baptismal
vows once before, in the Evangelical United Brethren
Church, when I was about 12 years old. Then a few years
later, I took it back.
more...
April 2007 --
It’s April, and the dandelions are popping out
everywhere, shamelessly yellow. If dandelions could
write their own creation story, I wonder if the story
would say that the first dandelion was made in the image
of God.
more...
March 2007 --
The Stations of the Cross didn’t play much part in my
Protestant upbringing. I remember some hair-raising
sermons on the crucifixion itself, but I don’t remember
spending much time on the stages of the journey from the
trial to the tomb, which is what the Stations are all
about.
more...
February 2007 --
The proposal to build a courtyard at my home parish of
St. Paul’s called for sand-set pavers to be laid in the
area between the church building and the parish hall,
and for the pattern of a labyrinth to be inlaid in the
paved floor. Diane, a parish artist, took charge of
designing and making the labyrinth's rosette center.
more...
January 2007 --
In the commercial world, the Christmas season has a long
youth and a short old-age: born in mid-autumn, weaned
the day after Thanksgiving, and dead by the close of the
New Year's Eve sales. In the church calendar, Christmas
is the shortest season of the year.
more...
December 2006 -- I’ve been a writer ever since I could read, and I’ve been a
thief ever since I could write.
In the first grade, I was publicly unmasked as a plagiarist
during show and tell when I tried to pass off a story from Highlights magazine as my own.
more...
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