As a kid I had to go to church every sunday. When I was about 12 I finally pushed back and said I didn't want to go any more. My mom being the smart lady she is told me that was fine but that, like all things, I would have to work for what I wanted. For twelve consecutive weeks I had to attend a service at 12 houses of worship. At first they were mostly christian churches, but I also went to mosques, synagogues, temples, and an odd tea ceremony with a wonderful old woman. In this, I found many things, but the one that sticks out to me now was how well the experience worked to help unblur the line between the church, religion, and God. I recommend it to everyone.
I do, but it's difficult so I'm going to be bumbling through it. "Church" is just the language I was given to describe a holy house, I'll be using the language that I was raised in often, sorry if that creates confusion. I went to many of these churches and saw that all of them were made of two parts - the physical location and the congregation. The physical location was a nice space of reverence where you could, in quiet contemplation, consider your relation to God. This is a good thing to have, but is also the far less important of the two. The latter, the congregation, is the treasure of the church. In every building I went to, from impoverished to elaborate, the value always laid in the people. They gave the space words and warmth and music. At the time I didn't understand this, but after I did I was able to minimize the importance of the space and maximize the importance of the people. For a long stretch of my life I was lost, but everywhere I went I was able to find my church. I didn't seek it in a physical location, but in the people who brought me words and warmth and music, and for the people I could always find a space. The religion was simple, it was a prescribed course of actions people took that were known to bring individuals closer to God. Through thousands of years of editing by trial, each path had managed to write a very solid map of the journey to God. If you were new to the path and had no idea what the journey held for you, you could follow the guide to a T and feel safe that you were doing things right. But the longer you walked the path and the more you got to know your church and the many paths each member was taking, the more it was possible to know that a map will never be a journey, only a map. You use a map as a tool, but you still have to take your own personal journey. The map can help you if you get lost or don't know where to go, but you still must take the journey. From this I learned to use the maps. It helped me find my way when I was lost and didn't know what to do. It kept me from falling to a place that I fear I wouldn't have recovered from and gave me rituals to perform when I couldn't bring myself to do anything else. At worst they were superstition, but at best they were a story I could follow when I felt I had no story of my own. Lastly there was God. I cannot tell you what I learned of God except that God is. Anything I could write here would be a crude map, and a pale shadow of the religions that have been honing their cartography for generations. I learned that God is something besides the people, something besides the map, something besides the journey. God is a word we use to talk poorly about a thing that can't be experienced or discussed any better than children can discuss thermodynamics. God is many things to me, just as God is many things to everyone and for that reason God is above all personal. I have learned that everyone has their own God but believe that somehow all of these personal Gods are the same thing. That last bit is part of my personal God, and I have every reason to believe that my relationship with that thing will grow and change with each step I take and each person I met. I learned all of these things at the time and I am still learning to articulate them. Anyone can take the same journey and will learn completely different things, and in this way nothing that I have written holds any real value. The value is only in the Journey.
Thanks for sharing! Personally, I've had a major hate-on for Christianity in specific and organized religion in general for a few years and I'm trying to appreciate the few good bits more, to help balance out some of the acid I still hold for anybody with the gall to say that they have answers. (See what I mean?)
I know what you mean. I have met a lot of people and while some of them were rotten I think most of them were (generally) good. I've also gotten drunk with a few holy men and gotten to see just how human they are. They carry the weight of their church and often find that what their church wants to hear is that someone has the answers. These folks went to seminary and, if they spent their time well, listened people tell them for years that no one has the right answers. Some wrote their thesis around that fact. But when a mother and father whose child died in gasping silence from an asthma attack one room over while they slept soundly and they come to you for comfort, what do you give them? It's a hard world for all of us. I don't mean to preach but I live near a seminary school now and spend a lot of time with them. It's a jarring perspective.