Unexpected Religions
My lady and I have continued to attend the church discussed in a couple of previous entries; and meanwhile I've been engaged in an extensive email dialog with the assistant pastor. I cannot fake religion, and therefore felt it best to explicitly out myself as a Very Strange Duck and find out in advance if my approach to Christianity was likely to be met with pitchforks and torches. Between that dialog and our on-going attendance, I've come to the conclusion that this place is sufficiently inclusive that I won't be run out of town, while still being sufficiently conservative that I'm left feeling more than a bit ambivalent -- which is probably exactly the combination I need. Really, the biggest stumbling block I've run into is a tendency for the other church-goers to regard the Bible as the Ultimate Authority In All Things. I credit that level of truth only to the still, small voice within -- although I will do as much as I can, up to and including Biblical research, to try and understand what that voice is saying.
Since it appears that we'll be church-going here for some time, I've offered to volunteer to teach Aikido. The church heavily emphasizes service (I approve of this) and that's one of fairly few services I can offer at the moment. But teaching a class requires approval by the church elders, and there are several previous steps that must be taken, among them baptism-by-immersion. Needless to say, this led to a lot of soul-searching. I love the symbolism of baptism -- the water of death, the water of life -- and I take rituals like that very seriously. As earlier noted, I will not fake religion.
One of the things I watch for in life is synchronicity -- things that happen in ways that suggest a hint of Providence. Sometimes those hints get pretty blunt. I was pondering baptism on the drive into Aikido class one week in late December and decided to shelve the matter and listen to music instead. The first channel I landed on was a jazz station that operates out of a local university. They were playing a very nice piece with several intricate musical layers. It took me a minute before I noticed the chorus that would occasionally appear, and several more rounds before I realized what the lyrics actually were. They were, and I quote: "Let me show you how deep love is / Cherish the day / Don't go astray / Don't be afraid / Don't run away / I'll cherish the day." About the time I actually grasped what I was hearing the song ended, and the station segued into a totally different song, but again it was almost entirely instrumental except for the one occasionally repeated line, "I'm drowning in deep waters." Sometimes, there's nothing one can do but laugh.
On the drive back home, in the happily exhausted haze with which I usually end an Aikido class, I turned the radio on again. I had to flick through a few stations to find something other than a commercial, and landed on the last few lines of an old country song -- "...If they know half the things I've done, they'll never let me in / Then somewhere from the other side, I heard those words again / Let me tell you a secret, about a father's love / A secret that my Daddy said was just between us / Daddies don't just love their children every now and then / It's a love without end, Amen."
A few days after that, a thought came to me. "It may be true," the thought said, "that the shape of the cup is not nearly so important as the water within; still, that shouldn't be an excuse not to drink when a cup is offered." I can be very stubborn; but I like to imagine that I can, at least occasionally, take a hint. So, as of 1/19/14, I have officially been baptized as an adult. We'll see what happens next.
As a seriously odd side-note, I discovered a thing today. The name I use for this journal, "chitherea," is the name given by an otter-spirit I encountered in college, back in the days when I did a lot of internal mindwalking meditation. The spelling has always been a best-guess on my part, as the otter only laughed when I asked for clarification. On a random internet trawl of classical mythology this afternoon, I learned with slack-jawed astonishment that 'Cytherea,' is an alternate name of Aphrodite, she of love and passion, born from the ocean foam. The way the threads of my life weave together never ceases to astonish me.
Since it appears that we'll be church-going here for some time, I've offered to volunteer to teach Aikido. The church heavily emphasizes service (I approve of this) and that's one of fairly few services I can offer at the moment. But teaching a class requires approval by the church elders, and there are several previous steps that must be taken, among them baptism-by-immersion. Needless to say, this led to a lot of soul-searching. I love the symbolism of baptism -- the water of death, the water of life -- and I take rituals like that very seriously. As earlier noted, I will not fake religion.
One of the things I watch for in life is synchronicity -- things that happen in ways that suggest a hint of Providence. Sometimes those hints get pretty blunt. I was pondering baptism on the drive into Aikido class one week in late December and decided to shelve the matter and listen to music instead. The first channel I landed on was a jazz station that operates out of a local university. They were playing a very nice piece with several intricate musical layers. It took me a minute before I noticed the chorus that would occasionally appear, and several more rounds before I realized what the lyrics actually were. They were, and I quote: "Let me show you how deep love is / Cherish the day / Don't go astray / Don't be afraid / Don't run away / I'll cherish the day." About the time I actually grasped what I was hearing the song ended, and the station segued into a totally different song, but again it was almost entirely instrumental except for the one occasionally repeated line, "I'm drowning in deep waters." Sometimes, there's nothing one can do but laugh.
On the drive back home, in the happily exhausted haze with which I usually end an Aikido class, I turned the radio on again. I had to flick through a few stations to find something other than a commercial, and landed on the last few lines of an old country song -- "...If they know half the things I've done, they'll never let me in / Then somewhere from the other side, I heard those words again / Let me tell you a secret, about a father's love / A secret that my Daddy said was just between us / Daddies don't just love their children every now and then / It's a love without end, Amen."
A few days after that, a thought came to me. "It may be true," the thought said, "that the shape of the cup is not nearly so important as the water within; still, that shouldn't be an excuse not to drink when a cup is offered." I can be very stubborn; but I like to imagine that I can, at least occasionally, take a hint. So, as of 1/19/14, I have officially been baptized as an adult. We'll see what happens next.
As a seriously odd side-note, I discovered a thing today. The name I use for this journal, "chitherea," is the name given by an otter-spirit I encountered in college, back in the days when I did a lot of internal mindwalking meditation. The spelling has always been a best-guess on my part, as the otter only laughed when I asked for clarification. On a random internet trawl of classical mythology this afternoon, I learned with slack-jawed astonishment that 'Cytherea,' is an alternate name of Aphrodite, she of love and passion, born from the ocean foam. The way the threads of my life weave together never ceases to astonish me.