I’ll let you in on a secret. I am a very envious person.
It is not something I am proud of. It is not something I even like all that much about myself. But it’s there none-the-less, and it dates back a long time from the very material to the most ethereal- including religions.
A quick example.
When I was a little girl I had a best friend who had a beautiful bright pink canopy bed. Imagine Barbie Dream House meets the Pepto-Bismol-pink doll-aisle at Toys ‘R Us to get the flavor of how “girlie” this bed was (and the bed set to go with it!).
I LOVED it.
When I would go to my friend’s house to visit or sleepover, I couldn’t understand why my friend would ever want to play anywhere but in her room, and more specifically, right on that pink canopy bed.
For me, the pink canopy bed was the antithesis of my highly-feminist 1980’s home environment where photo albums are filled with me as a little girl wearing blue t-shirts that read “Her-story, Not History.”
Not that I entirely minded.
I actually loved the story of Atalantis "who could run as fast as the wind" on the Free to be You and Me record album that played over and over in our house. I loved trying new activities and sports. I loved taking chances and being daring. I loved challenging the status quo of society, and all of this was encouraged in my pro-feminist childhood home.
Except, that is, when it wasn’t…
Like when I decided to be a cheerleader. Or when I wanted to wear certain clothes and shop at certain stores. Or when I was scared or sad and wanted to hide instead of speak up. Or, when my best friend got the girliest pink canopy bed set one could possibly imagine.
Everything has its advantages and disadvantages, and long ago I learned the dangers of romanticizing anything. Nothing is entirely black or white.
Having said that, I do get swallowed up by the green goo of envy, and this includes my spiritual and religious life.
Two weeks ago I wrote a blog entry called “Reclaiming Religion” that included a nod toward what I am grateful for in the general beliefs of the Unitarian Universalist religion (e.g. respect for the worth and dignity of every human life).
However, or maybe in addition to that, I can sometimes get caught up in envy of specific aspects of the many other religious traditions (e.g. Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Native Spirituality) that have stories, rituals, holidays and/or prophets that I covet for my very own.
I try to be careful though. There is great danger in spiritual materialism and in taking that which is not freely given or available for one’s own consumption. I recognize this- very deeply.
And yet, in the near reaches of my heart-mind, I find myself salivating when I encounter god in the story, ritual, holiday and/or prophet of a religion that is not my own.
I recently re-read my ol’ beat-up paperback of the very first spiritual memoir I ever read: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott, and when I reached the memorable scene when the author described her first encounter with Jesus Christ I was moved (and envious) all over again.
She writes:
I didn’t go to the flea market the week of my abortion. I stayed home, and smoked dope, and got drunk, and tried to write a little. On the seventh night, though, very drunk and just about to take a sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding heavily. It did not stop over the next hour. I thought I should call a doctor, but I was so disgusted that I had gotten so drunk one week after an abortion that I just couldn’t wake someone up and ask for help. Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad. After awhile, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there – of course, there wasn’t. But after awhile, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.
And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends. I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”
I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with. Finally, I fell asleep and in the morning, he was gone.
The experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my house door whenever I entered or left.
And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling – and it washed over me.
I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along me heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my house, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “[Okay,]. I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.” So this is my beautiful moment of conversion.
Always willing to try to stay open to mystery, I try to never say never, but, just as I tell my 26.2 mile marathon-running-friend that I do not believe a marathon will ever be in my future, I am just as sure a conversion to Christianity and a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of god is not in my future either.
And yet, I am deeply envious of that little cat…
Earlier this month I was listening to a series of interviews on NPR with Muslims who were sharing their very personal, anecdotal, experiences of past Ramadans- the worldwide Islamic holiday that commemorates the revelation of the verses of Quran to the prophet Mohammad by fasting sun-up to sun-down for one month.
As I listened to each person speak (old and young, male and female, white, Arabic and black, immigrant and citizen), what caught me, against this backdrop of vast diversity, was a theme of elegant devotion. A devotion that is as foreign and delicious to me as a new food in a distant land that I want to scoop up and bring home in my pocket.
Oh, there was envy to be sure.
Particularly of a gentleman who shared this:
“Well, first off, my faith, what I enjoy about it and what I have always treasured about it, is that I saw it as a personal faith. In other words, there was nothing between me and my God, and so it allowed me to interpret certain things. It allowed me a greater freedom in my understanding of my God. And, so as I try to practice my faith in praying five times a day, it constantly in a sense keeps me as a reminder and in contact with my faith and my God, and therefore I try to remain humble.”
As I listened to this gentleman speak, I briefly imagined myself as him, wondering what it would be like to speak so freely and devoutly about that which feels unspeakable and private.
And don’t even get me started on the Old & New Testament Parables, the Native Legends, and the Buddhist and Hindu Tales; I could listen to them all day long and wish them to be my own.
I once had a Jewish patient, who happened to be the spouse of a rabbi, who I worked with during the time of her celebration of the Jewish Passover- a holiday in the spring in which Jews around the world celebrate their liberation from slavery in Egypt by the prophet Moses.
Each session my patient would give me progressive daily updates on the process of her preparation and cleaning of her home of all unleavened bread, and then she shared her own reflections and understanding of the Exodus Story.
As I listened intently for themes that may be helpful for her therapy, I was also enraptured with the story, silently wishing I had some ancient biblical tale—full of metaphor and symbol—as a means to reflect on my own life.
Sometimes I think that the 20th century was so damn full of overly-glorified Literature, Film, & Song (particularly in Hollywood!) because all those secularist still craved a place to get their fill of the oh-so-human and oh-so-universal needs met for moral guidance, hope, unconditional love, and inspiration that past generations might have received through religious parable, spiritual prophets and sacred texts.
Sometimes I just wish, when I am really swimming in religious envy, that one of these other religious “packages” (to again borrow a phrase from religious professor and author Reverand Barabara Brown Taylor) would just “fit” me better. Yet, as a UU, I question to what extent I may beg, borrow and steal from other religions in order to cultivate my own spiritual and religious theology?
And when this question starts to get quite confusing and muddy in my head, with no clear answers, I sometimes think: would it be easier and richer to “just” be a converted Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Jew? Even without the cultural heritage to go with it…
But then I am brought back to reality with 3 personal truths.
The first is usually in the form of a dear friend referring to him or herself as a “recovering Catholic” or something of the like. Remember: no romanticizing.
The second is that I truly believe that none of these religious paths are right for me. I think it would feel like a gay person trying to make themselves straight at one of those camps you hear about that try to change someone’s sexual orientation.
And third, I’m in agreement with Iranian-American, religious author and scholar Reza Aslan that, at the end of the day, the majority of world-wide religions (and especially the mystical dimensions of many) are really all a diversity of paths that take you to the same destination.
A car, a train, a hike, a bike, a plane, a swim, a skip. All different means to the same end, yet wonderfully distinctive and idiosyncratic for the vast diversity of this human race.
So with that, I will stay a UU for now, and I will observe my Achilles Heal of envy.
I will also celebrate what is holy and sacred in Unitarian Universalism, like this poem below that was said aloud at the UUA General Assembly in Ohio this past Sunday during the morning service.
The poem was written and shared by Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout, Director of Worship and Music at First Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it is called: “god is no noun.”
god is no noun.
and certainly not an adjective.
god is at least a verb,
and even that shrinks her.
god is not so much a woman
as she resides in the improbable
hope of brown mothers.
god is not so much a man
as he is at work in the memory
of my grandfather’s laugh.
god is not trans.
god swims in the tears
of the one who sees
her real self,
at long last,
in the bathroom mirror.
god is not black; neither is he white.
god is wading in the contradiction of songs
from slave shacks.
and I have seen god in the alabaster smiles
of children at play.
we’re getting michelangelo all wrong.
god is not the bearded one surrounded by angels,
floating over the sistine.
he is not adam with his muscled back pressing the earth.
no.
god is the closing inch of space
between their reaching fingers.
don’t believe for a moment that god is catholic.
for god’s sake, he isn’t even human.
have you heard the wood thrush
when the sun glistens the huron?
can you see the flowers,
how they speak to bees without a word?
still, god is no spring blossom, no wood thrush.
god is neither the sun nor the bee.
god is what you see in the blossom.
god is when you hear the river
and suddenly discover how
much of it is part of you.
to be clear,
god is not you.
god is somewhere in the 14 billion years
which have come to mean that you are.
god is, after all, at least a verb.
she is neither pharaoh’s rod nor moses’ staff.
we must be the ones to cease our slavery.
she is not interested in blame, neither does she offer praise.
truth, gratitude are ours to breathe.
she will not have your answers.
she is too large for answers.
she dances too wildly to be fastened to them,
and answers are nouns anyway.
god is at least a verb,
twirling in the radiant reds of spring
blossoms,
singing in the rare silences between rapid
opinions,
attending the tears of dark-skinned deaths,
learning in tiny, alabaster smiles.
god is waiting in the space between fingers
that might connect.
he is waiting for us
to stop naming her.
she is waiting for us to
see all of him.
god is waiting
to be un-shrunk.
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