church – Landing

Wind

June 12, 2016

Maybe you did not go to church because God lets crazy people shoot fifty strangers. I have not been going because God has ruined my life in other ways.

I walked into a church, a church where no one knew me, so maybe I would feel different, and an usher told me not to sit down because they were in the middle of reading the lesson. Wouldn’t it be much less disruptive to let me sit down than to tell me not to? What kind of person tells people not to sit in church? It wasn’t even the gospel. I was going to leave.

I wasn’t going to leave.

The lesson was about Ahab and Jezebel and a garden, a long lesson no one would want to talk about. I had to confirm it was really about Ahab, and I didn’t just have Ahab on my mind, the way I always do when I am downtown, in Melville’s neighborhood.

I sat. On one side of me, a woman who also was doing the whole thing, on the other, a woman who didn’t seem to know the drill. In front of us, three people who were Asian and just sat. It’s a funny phenomena, here where churches are tourist attractions, so that church, and the big cathedrals, are both holy places and places people come to see holiness played out. Through the whole service, there was a group of people in back taking photos. The woman next to me was texting someone.

This is all fine, it’s just weird.

Why were they there? We were animals in the zoo? In Asia, we would go to temples and take photos and not pray. Why was I there? To feel better for a minute, to feel not trapped in being angry the church I had joined, that no one might notice I was gone, so petty. Or I was there because I had several times hit this church after a bad day, it was on my way home from my Manhattan job, and the side chapel is small and sweet and quiet, and the subway is right there, and it was bigger and more fancy town than my church.

The priest had to talk about the shooting. I had heard something bad in a minute of NPR. I am in full self-protection/healing mode, which means No politics, but still I had heard that. I hadn’t heard it was a gay club.

I’ve spent some small happy times in gay bars for the dancing or the singing. The reason a gay bar feels so safe is that I figure everyone there is at peace with him/herself, they had to work harder to become so, and they value tolerance more than other people, so I feel safe.

Like people should feel safe at church, but then, it’s been a year since another lunatic shot up a Bible study.

I got communion. I got to sing. I didn’t feel particularly better about God, in a narrative sense, but I did feel that things that hurt me were like pieces of armor or extra bones that I could shake off, rather than a part of my structure.

I was not feeling brave enough to go to doughnut time afterward.

I went down to the water. I am preparing this costume for the Mermaid Parade next week. I am going as The Sea. So it was research. What is water? It has four or five inch ruffles of white foam from the wind and the passings of the jet skis and the ferry and the Statue cruise boats, which could be rendered with white acrylic paint and dabbing with a bristly brush. I was watching the happy painter earlier in the week. His technique could help me.

Monday I went to the East River and looked out at it for a while. My anxiety brain cloud has been reactivating ferociously, so I was looking at the East River and waiting for my good drugs to take effect. It was windy that day, walking out on a pier to be surrounded by water.

It was so windy today, I lay back on a bench, with the Statue of Liberty to my left, and even though I was holding it down, the wind was so strong, my skirt a sail, it blew up and I was glad I wore clean and uninteresting underwear.

I don’t think a single soul noticed.

The priest said we can’t let people who use freedom another way take it away from us. What freedom really means. FDR’s four freedoms: of speech, of worship, from want, from fear. Why does God let people do that, frighten us for their freedom. Why do we let them?

I am used to wind. I don’t know why now I need water, water does scare me, big quantities of it seem like too much, for this midwesterner. It never scares me as much as buildings too big or too much sky, though. I was always a good swimmer, in my dreams, I can always breathe underwater.

Image: “Evening Wind,” Edward Hopper, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Patience

November 9, 2015

temp29552 Although I was in a neighborhood that is that supercool Brooklyn, I entered none of the charming places, instead I went into Dunkin Donuts.

Although it was a full sunny day and I had had a perfectly restful and productive morning, I hated everyone and everything, and I had decided the only thing that would make me feel better was a blueberry doughnut. I walked up to the counter and I said, “I’d like a blueberry doughnut, please.” I added, “If you have one,” and this jinxed me, as the woman said, “We don’t have any blueberry,” and I thought a beat, about not looking like the kind of person who can only eat one kind of doughnut, or eating a doughnut that was not really what I wanted, if I was going to eat a doughnut, I want to enjoy it like a little pig in mud.

I swept everything off the counter with one foul swept and I said “Yes, you do! Go get it!”

No, I just said, “Okay, thanks,” and walked out and told this lady who asked me where the subway was where it was and went down the stairs and waited for the train while someone played the banjo and I hated him for playing the banjo, what kind of hipster nonsense was that, the fucking banjo.

I couldn’t wait to get to Manhattan where everyone wasn’t trying so hard, we were just going about our business.

(Right.)

I was reading about the bombing of Berlin, and it should have cheered me either that my city was not being bombed to kingdom come, or that the Nazis were about to be defeated in my book.

I considered going on a hunger strike to prove how angry I was at life, but then I decided I should go to Chipotle like a reasonable human being, and just eat another burrito even though all I ever eat is burritos, half of them from Chipotle, $9 at a time, an outrageous price for beans, rice, and a tortilla that costs the corporation 78 cents. A guy was standing in front of Chipotle’s door. “I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re closed. We’re having trouble with some of our equipment.”

I was denied a blueberry bagel for my heart, and a burrito for my body.

I had taken a cab to my meeting this morning, and the guy drove me through Williamsburg, I was looking at all the Hasidic people who were walking around as if there was God, and I thought, I should really get out of the car and tell them there is no God.

Frequently I find seeing someone who is orthodox or Hasidic gives me a good feeling, like, well, at least someone thinks God (well, G-d) is real and tries to do something about it. It’s not the something I want to do, but, still.

When I went to church on Saturday, I was walking down the beautifully treed and brownstoned street to church thinking, I don’t want to go. Which is a rare thing for me, I pretty much always want to go, whether I’m getting off on the spiritual stuff, or hearing great literature, or seeing everybody there are so few of us, I will be missed, or sitting in the beautiful room with the blue and the gold angels and the dark wood, or just carrying out my routine, which I find so soothing.

Usually it’s enough that I want to say I’m a practicing Christian. I don’t know why I’m practicing, exactly, but I practice.

I believe in commitment, I guess, and practice, I believe in them, I just hate them, too.

I wasn’t mad at God, exactly, that would be cleaner, I was more just so sick of His shit that I was shut down. I listened, I took communion, because you only have to shut up and take it, and it might improve you. I got to hear a baby gurgle through the prayers.

I become sane and sober and mature, but it does not follow that my life is happier or easier. Life always has difficulties and sadnesses. And that pisses me off.

I miss people, it’s been a long time since I’ve been with my family , I feel exhausted from not knowing what’s going to become of me, and maybe mostly, there’s the fact that it is dark at 4:00 now. I really don’t wake up until like 3 pm, so this is bad, bad, bad, I already feel like a vampire.

I was back teaching in the afternoon. Another teacher told me about teaching “Harrison Bergeron” and talking about the Constitution and how fun that was. One of the kids came by and told me the Royals sucked, which was way delayed conversation from when I gave him shit about the Mets last week. Another kid asked me how much money I made, and then we talked about taxes and how they work, and then this:

“I’m never gonna be a teacher.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to be.”

“I could never. I don’t got the patience. Teachers got so much patience, man, I would strangle a kid.”

“Well, you’ll probably get more patience as you get older, if you work on it,” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“You will,” I said.

Image: a portion of “Christ Presenting the Keys to Saint Peter,” made in Cologne, around 1315, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Some Sheep

July 30, 2015

Today at noon mass, our flock was 70% hidden crazies and 30% out of the closet crazies. It was great. One thing I’ve always loved about the cathedral in Kansas City is that, being downtown, it attracts walk-ins. One thing I like about church is it’s almost impossible to get kicked out (witness, sadly, lunatic shooters being welcomed). Without that everyone’s welcome, though, we have nothing. Everyone. Welcome. Seriously.

One sheep piped up before the service, and during the sermon, when us subtler crazies were trying to enjoy being very quiet and listening to our priest talk very seriously about serious things. After church, another lamb insisted on writing down a recipe for me, and telling me how good it would be for me, apropos of absolutely nothing, and reading back the recipe with careful directions and injunctions about how my health would be so improved.

Most of us are so conniving in our ways of getting attention, a kind word, a listen. On occasion it’s a pleasure to interact with people who are completely out in the open. I would like to talk to you about something. Okay.

I know this must be much harder on the clergy, who can attract and maintain a group of people who are practically speaking, unreliable, people who are without resources. In fact, you are not sure their disconnection won’t turn violent or destructive. We never know about any of us.

Anyway that is the church to me, for sure, straight up, crazy, emotionally disturbed people that we all are, welcomed and put up with, we try to figure out what people have to offer our community and use it.

One of our lambs is amazing at prayer. He has no self-consciousness about it. And he requests hugs, which means that I don’t have to wonder, he asks, and I get one. I’m too uptight to ask.

It seems a distinct pleasure to have a moment with crazy people since in New York, there are so many of them, and you encounter them often in places where you are both trapped, i.e., the subway. I am reluctant to engage them in conversation. It breaks the social code of the train which is that we won’t add to the crazy if we don’t have to. I have prayed for them.

My crazy: I have not done enough to get a new job. I won’t get a job. I will get one, it will be awful. I have to go back to New York. No one loves me there. I am never happy there. What will I do in that week before school starts? I’ll have to stay busy. No, it’s not good to stay busy, just take it as it comes. I am never happy here, either, anyway. Why is life so hard. At least I had a fun time last night. That was really fun. I should just have more fun. I need to pay my rent. And that was only while the priest was blessing the communion stuff.

So I knelt an extra moment after I got my bread and wine.

Priest talked about prayer today, that your actions come from prayer. That being a praying person makes good things happen. I would prefer to try to make good things happen on my own, and then complain to God that they are not happening in the way I want.

It’s an interesting thought, though.

I guess when I am at the monastery, as I will be next week, there is a lot of prayer, not like long dialogues, but so much quiet I can hear my thoughts and there is space between them. It’s not always comfortable. One of the great gifts of the place is that it is immediately clear, from how fast I walk from my car to get the keys to my room, that I am the craziest person on the property. The most mixed up, the most unconscious, the most making a scene to hide the fact that I don’t even know how I feel or what I think.

Everything that hurts pops up at some point. At some point, I’ll have a good cry. But I always leave there having my head on straight, my heart turned forward.

Image: Standing Sheep, possibly by Nicola Vassalo, Metropolitan Museum of Art.