Did you ever feel yourself screaming to throw off your life like a tight, old skin and come out the other side? Yeah — I feel like that all the time. On “Animal Planet” this week, they talked about how when a snake molts, it takes a while for the new skin to feel comfortable and to get shiny. I’m not sure if I’m at the about to get new skin stage, or, the my new skin is really uncomfortable stage. It would be like me to decide that I’m somewhere in between. That’s less of a commitment.
The “c” word has lots of baggage attached to it. In our culture, commitment is lauded, and a lack or fear of it is seen as a character defect. Of course, during my young adulthood in the 70s and 80s, before AIDS entered our consciousness, lack of commitment was a signal of pride, of possession of one’s own destiny. You were keeping your options open. You didn’t “lack a sense of commitment,” but, you were a free spirit.
It wasn’t just youth. It was the times. Youthful impulses notwithstanding, our culture no longer condones the free spirit lifestyle as it did before Nancy Reagan got ahold of the zeitgeist. There are still some vestiges of those times in our institutions today, probably most notably in our institutions of faith. We are allowed to be free spirits between our two ears. Separation of church and state rocks — enjoy it while it lasts.
I just molted from 6 years of a Unitarian Universalist skin, and I think the final vestiges are falling off. That was a tremendous “palette cleanser” for me after a lifetime of Roman Catholicism and then “keeping my options open” which was characterized as prayer to an amorphous god-thing, throwing the I Ching, reading Pema Chodron books, going to lots of AA meetings, dating a Buddhist guy, and trying to walk the talk of loving thy neighbor.
The UU gave me a Sunday morning place to go where no one challenged me. No one asked me to believe anything. They smiled at me, and we had pleasant conversation, and our kids played together. We met for monthly women’s dinners and gossiped. I could have quietly believed in Santa Ria, killed chickens at the candled altar in my living room, and they still would have offered me cookies and coffee after the service. The last thing you want to talk about at the UU is what you believed in, except at maybe a once a month discussion group that was set up to let folks wail, dropping the names of books they read, having a lively debate, and having cookies and coffee. (AA taught me that cookies and coffee are the holy communion of everday people).
The UU atheist population is aging. At my congregation in Fredericksburg, this was quite pronounced, and you could see the rift between the “organized religion is bad” crowd in their 60s and 70s, and the “pagan circle” crowd in their 20s and 30s. Something is afoot, even in the UU, that has folks longing for more than a lack of dogma, with coffee and cookies. I am one of those people, but find the pagan circle thing to feel utterly silly for me. I just don’t believe that, in a pinch, Demeter or Persephone will really care about me.
But there was a decided taboo in the UU, and it was the taboo of openly exploring Christianity. Yes, there were those who called themselves UU Christians (a sect of sorts), there were Jesus groups, and they were “A Course in Miracles” study groups, but, the overall feeling was that Christianity was synonymous with fundamentalism. And those groups were decidedly marginalized. The current horrible political climate didn’t help.
I thoroughly respect what the UU is trying to do. However, I found myself feeling like it was so much silliness after a while. I do wish I had the ability to see the inherent dignity and worth of every living being (the first UU principle), and living from that, and having that be enough. But, I did that in AA, and I still wanted to know what the God thing was about. I am not strong enough to simply see God in a group of people, and have that be enough. Like those pagan circle folks, I am looking for that which is not seen but which is, at its heart, pure love.
So, am I a Christian yet? Well, if I could be Christian, and still be pro choice, pro gay rights, and against the death penalty then, let’s say, I’ve become open to it. Supposed I’m bamboozled and Jesus never existed (as it says in the classified ads of the Nation every week)? I don’t know. I think I’ll just enjoy the coffee and cookies until I’m sure.
