I've had several conversations this week about faith. This should probably come as no surprise, given that I work (indirectly) for the Church of England. It did surprise me though. It surprised me for several reasons, the most significant of which was the willingness with which I decided to share beliefs, doubts, and authentic exploration of my own faith as it is right now. It also surprised me to find I said more or less the same thing to my friend, my therapist, my spiritual director and someone I'd met once in my life before at work - and each response confirmed a feeling I had myself, that I had permission to let go of some elements of religious teaching which were doing me harm.
As a child/teenager, I went to a fairly traditional CofE church in the village where I lived, which was full of very pleasant, well-meaning ladies who went to church mostly because that's what you do, and asked me how school was, expressed astonishment that I was not 5 years older than I actually was at any age, and asked me how my mum was doing. I don't doubt that there were people with deep, genuine, meaningful faith - but it didn't find its way into any teaching, and I was given a few stories and set prayers to hang a world-view around, and a concept that people at church were 'nice' and God wanted you to make an effort and turn up wearing a skirt. Actually, I don't think this did any damage, really, it just made me feel I had to profess a Christian faith, and stick to it without too much questioning. I wasn't forced into any image of God though, I had the freedom to take the bits of it that were meaningful, enjoy the comfort of the ritual, and listen for the most part to my own experience of God. It changed when I went to university. I was finally free from my family responsibility, away from everyone who knew the story of the couple of years before, and desperate to shed my former self. I met a wonderful friend, who I thought had it sussed, and I wanted to be her. So I went with her to one of the student-friendly churches in the city, where I was educated in hard-line, conservative evangelical Christianity. You are, from the second you are born, a sinner. Sin is punished by death. Only an unshakeable faith in Jesus can save you, oh, and by the way, if you REALLY love God, you will follow biblical texts to the letter of the law and therefore you cannot be gay/have a church leadership role as a woman/spend the night in your boyfriend's house/allow another person to believe in God in a different way/slaughter your lamb on the wrong date (you get the idea). And if you REALLY love God, you won't worry about anything, you'll go skipping off around the world telling everyone how you were so terribly lost, and now you have been filled with joy so much so that you'll never be fearful again. So I sat, week after week, crying buckets of tears, begging God to forgive me for the same things over and over again, and coming away feeling even more shaken, uncertain, and convinced that I was Doing It Wrong.
Thank God (and I do, almost every day) for the counter-balance of the most genuine place I have ever been in my life, a church on a council estate with a collection of people who were there because they loved God, loved one another, and didn't care where you'd been or what you'd been up to. There was an occasion where there was a full on fist fight at midnight mass, but no one was fazed, and the people involved would have been welcomed back if they'd ever shown up again. They didn't even care about my ridiculous middle class accent, they accepted me as if I knew anything at all about the real world and had never written a pretentious essay on musical analysis in my life.
I have that place to thank for my job, my marriage, my life, and the thread of sanity I think I am now returning to where faith is concerned. Beginning to accept that there are ways to experience God that allow me to reject the rules, the black and white rigidity - I've been gradually moving away from this in the way I work, talk, practise faith over several years - but somehow felt the rules and the judgement still applied to me, if not how I see others. Beginning to understand that trust and forgiveness are not the same thing. Beginning to see that while I had always been conscious of God around and about me, influencing my doing to others (yes, to - crucially - not with, a remnant of the 'save the people' doctrine I never truly believed but attempted insincerely to live), but never within me. I wish I could paint. I would paint the image I described, which is simply myself as a dark shadow, surrounded by ivory and soft yellow light, a warmth and presence of God around me... but never in. Until I open myself, break the rigid line that holds me, my body, my thinking in its trapped place, and allow the light to flood in. There is nowhere for the light to go, without me casting out some old teachings that I have clung to against my own core beliefs. They belong to the person that must be thin at all cost, punish herself, push herself way beyond her own limits to just miss being adequate in the pursuit of perfection. And now, it feels like I have permission to be freed from that. To say no, that is not the God I know, the God that I see in others and in the world. There are other ways to experience the power of His love than to fall on the floor begging the cross of Jesus to spear my own chest to allow me the punishment that I so surely deserve. And living in the world is fucking painful sometimes. It comes with fear, with worries, with questions and doubts, and guess what - God's in that too. But He REALLY loves me. He REALLY cares whether or not I had breakfast this morning (well actually I don't know this for sure, but He definitely cares that I ask His help to do this right thing for myself and love myself in a practical way). And He is there, ready to fill the spaces when I find His grace within myself to truly forgive others and myself based on the acceptability of ME, not the fact that I have beaten myself into submission and decided the people that hurt me are right and I deserve it.
I'm not there yet. There is some actual letting go to do, rather than just sensing that it's the right thing and I have permission to do it. But maybe one of the 'just today's that come along soon will allow me to, and maybe if I keep going, surrendering on the often hourly basis I seem to need to, and reminding myself of God's love, I will be able to do the thing that makes that happen. I just need to make sure I am listening hard enough when the invitation comes.
