(no subject)

[hellebored]

Sometimes I feel nostalgic for the christian music I grew up with. The music wasn’t what caused most of my religious damage; that was books, generally, and the larger christian rhetoric.

But the music– jars of clay, sixpence none the richer, petra, white heart, michael w smith– the stuff that came before the post-9/11 mindless repetitive modern worship music, was good music.

I think…the closest I ever felt to anything– the only truly expansive moments– were in those primeval summer days that dripped with endless hot sunlight, car windows down, my slender hand skimming the airwaves and reedy unabashed voice singing along. There was no hellfire here: that came later, and all I had in those early years were stories about forgiveness (and what did I have to be forgiven for, at eight?) and joy and something so much bigger that loved me. Those were the times a small empathetic child could be moved to the rapture of knowing god.

(I wonder how different things might have been if this hadn’t been the beginning; if the start had been church and obedience rooted in fear. But it wasn’t.)

Can you imagine reading l'engle and then hearing: meanwhile on the shores of parallel / there may be a holy conference held somewhere / discussing all mankind ?

Imagine listening to the story of some young radical Jew, sun-browned and wild-eyed, with weary healing hands: nobody knew his secret ambition / was to give his life away. (And then I read narnia, and there was aslan; then I read lord of the rings, and there was aragorn.)

(And then I grew older, and studied with a Rabbi, and thought: here was a good Jewish boy who loved his people and his way of life enough to die for it under the tyranny of roman rule, and he was co-opted for paul’s agenda, and I can’t forgive that.)

And yet…as much as christianity has destroyed so many lives, shamed my body and shamed my loving and told me I was born broken, driven a wedge between me and my parents and a lot of my extended family, left me so afraid I’m still amazed I had the courage to dig myself out, the first thing it did was fill my heart with music. Music that shaped me.

But it isn’t my music anymore.

In a beautiful essay about walking away from her religion and finding something new, Alison Leigh Lilly writes:

Think of the world’s religions as a kind of landscape, with cities and forests, villages and deserts.

I was born in a city a billion believers strong, a city my family had lived in for several generations. And like most cities, it had its archways and spires and dazzling glass in intricate panes reflecting all shades of the sky, its bustling palatial centers brimming over with the powerful and the connected, and its slums and ghettos and alleyways where the forgotten survived on marrow-deep faith and trembling prayers and broken rules. It had its politicians and its police, its scholars, architects and artists, its beggars, poets, mystics, wanderers, hippies and hipsters, its tourists and its outlying suburbanites who dropped in for some culture on weekends or sat in traffic for the hour-long commute home at the end of a hard day’s work.

You don’t outgrow this kind of religion. You just… grow out of it.

[…] And when I grew up, I went deeper, farther into that city, to understand, to learn about this religion, this place where I was born. And when I was a bit older, I went home again, to learn better who I was. I headed for that old familiar family house on the edge of town… but the edges had changed and the land had shifted. Someone had placed bricks in rows to block off streets, and hung signs saying who was in and who was out — or maybe, no, were these the old walls I had clambered over as a child? — the same graffiti, then only so much slithering, bubbling brilliant color, now worming painful accusations and words of isolation, words like heretic and hell. And I clambered over that wall one last time. Following roads to where I knew they must go, roads from which I had watched lone travelers emerging from the fog, roads that were wet with fallen leaves and studded with moss-covered rocks, following roads like the call of my own soul’s longing.

This isn’t a city you outgrow. I was born here, born knowing all along with the innocent acceptance of a child that I was safe, that I was saved. And I grew up, and I walked with Spirit in my mind and on my lips and in my heart, and when I got to those walls that marked the city limits, I slowed my pace, I read the signs carefully for the first time. And I lingered. And then I walked on.

I walked until I found myself in the wilderness.

[…] Stars spilled through space above the canopy of trees, above the broad turning river cutting through the land, above the highest mountain that rose beside the ocean. More stars than I had ever seen, more stars than I could have dreamed, stars that seemed to leap, birthing themselves from the corners of my eyes, flung out in all directions — each place of darkness I looked, stars were surfacing out of night to fill my vision. And I lay on my back, spine pressed unevenly into the rock and felt the gravity of heaven lift me, lift me and my clumsy trembling body, just a fraction, away from fear.

And people, people who don’t know, sometimes ask me what does the wilderness give, what does the forest offer? What is out there in the wild that you can’t find perfectly well in the teeming, bursting city, this city where you were born? And I know, for I have been there, the city is splendid, full of shouting and music, museums and libraries harboring all the languages of the world, maps of distant galaxies and diagrams of the heart. What can compare to this rich heritage of wisdom and insight blazing brilliant from every street corner?

But in the wilderness, there are forests. In the wild, you can see the stars.

*

(I can’t begin to say how very much I recommend Alison’s entire essay.)

I don’t miss the city, but oh, sometimes I miss its music: and on some rare days I pass by an open window in an older district and stand under the shadowed eaves just to listen.

I can’t stay. I’ve found another way, and isn’t that what the rebellious, anti-authoritarian christian songs I grew up with taught? It wasn’t the music about submitting that shaped me; it was the songs of freedom. Fly, eagle fly / up into the sky / ride the golden wings of morning.