Good God, ya'll

I recently moved in next door to a small Southern Methodist church. To keep in the spirit of things, I decided to do a religious themed bathroom. My tiny bathroom resembles a confessional anyway with just barely enough room for the needed fixtures, a bottle of shampoo and one mid-sized adult.

On Sunday mornings, I can hear the church members singing hymns as I brush my teeth. Somehow it makes me feel a part of things to have the painting of Jesus watching me as I move from shower to sink as old time gospel hymns seep through the cracks around my window sill. He really does watch me too - his big, sympathetic eyes framed by locks of honey waved hair follow me everywhere that I go. I must admit that it sometimes makes me wrap the towel around me just a bit tighter. On the back of the toilet, prayer candles steam up with each shower. Mother Mary stares down from above in gilded frame with hot-glued and glitter embellishments. On the wall, I have a framed pamphlet on how to win a sinner over to the Lord.

My favorite part: " Here's how to press for the decision...Lay your hand firmly on the subject's arm or shoulder and with a commanding tone of voice say, "BOW YOUR HEAD WITH ME". Do not look at him when you say this, but bow your own head first. Out of the corner of your eye you will see him hesitate at first, and then as his resistance weakens, his head will come down. Bowing your head first causes deep psychological pressure."

Ahh...nothing says the path to goodness and light like "deep psychological pressure".

I've talked to lots of my friends about religion lately. I've found a common thread of disenchantment and disappointment in the people my age. They all seem to believe in living good lives and treating others as they would want to be treated. But when it comes to religion, or an "organized religion", most of them have severe reservations. I've found that these reservations are often backed up by stories of childhoods spent in churches. Funny stories and sad stories. Stories of confusion and sometimes even humiliation and fear. Stories of being left out or seeing other people left out because of their skin color, sex or lifestyle choices.

My first memory of church is of me in Vacation Bible School with sweaty palms, standing in front of the pastor as I tried to recite learned bible verses for shiny colored ribbons and trinket prizes. I remember moments before - the taste of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on tongue as I read the little torn slip of paper that the teacher had given me to memorize...over and over...repeating, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you....Do unto others as you would have them do unto you..." My little kid heart beat so fast as I worried that I wouldn't remember the verse or what chapter or book it was taken from. To this very day, I can't eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches without thinking about those Vacation Bible School days and how nervous I was each day before my recitation. I feared embarrassment and scorn. Those bible verses are still burned into my brain. Someone says, "John 3:16" and I get chills.

I remember being baptized in a white sateen robe along with my brother and our friend, Jeff. I also remember a few weeks before that when I went up to the altar call with them because I didn't want to stand by myself in the church. I got caught up in the wave of Salvation and couldn't get out of it. Before I knew it, I was baptized I remember how cold and deep the water was and being afraid that I might drown as my ears filled up with liquid and I pinched my nose tightly and prepared for the dunk below then surfaced with a gasp for air. I remember wondering if I was really saved since I didn't really receive a message from the lord to go up to altar call that day. Was this version just as good?

Then there was the era when our church was sent a new pastor and most of our activities were outlawed. Aerobics classes were banned because the leotards were too sensual. Roller skating was forbidden because.....okay....I still can't figure out why roller skating would be forbidden but it was. Records were burned to protest rock music. When I was a cheerleader for our church basketball team, all of our cheers had to be approved. Once a cheer that had the words "toilet paper" in it was changed to "tissue paper" as not to offend. It seemed that everything was suspect. As kids, we were taught to look for the sin in common things. All we wanted to do was couple skate and wear leg warmers and read Judy Blume books.

My brother likes to tell of the time that the "Sunshine Group", a group of retarded children and teens were moved to the back of the church from their usual front row because their joy and enthusiasm for the services made the deacons nervous. Banned to the back for being too happy to be in church.

My most vivid religious related memory is of when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I was at a flea market in my home town and read on a bathroom wall, "Forget Jesus. Elvis is King." That one made my little Southern Baptist heart skip a beat as I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the day. I wondered if God would strike me down somewhere amidst a booth of Archie comics or carnival glass just for thinking about it. I tried and tried to get it out of my head but it was stuck. I was convinced that the devil had come into my heart and was trying to get me to accept Elvis as lord. Soon after that, my mom and I were approached in the local mall by someone from a church who wanted us to pray with him. As he prayed, I burst out crying because I thought that I was finally going to be saved from going to hell for the "Elvis is King" incident. I had been delivered from damnation right there in front of the Orange Julius and the Sears and Roebucks. I remember being so thankful for deliverance from my Elvis possession. For a brief while - with this fresh heart and cleansed soul, I thought that I might become a nun and go forth and soothe aching souls, feed the hungry and rescue stranded kittens from trees. I pictured myself wearing a black habit and a headpiece like Sally Field, the flying nun.

I guess I later on realized that it takes more than something like reading bathroom graffiti to send me to eternal damnation - like maybe reading my grandfather's stash of vintage, yellowed Playboy magazines under the mattress (pre-silicone!) or sipping the moonshine hidden behind the good china or pretending to inhale Marlboro cigarettes while my grandmother slept. It seems like a good portion of my childhood was spent asking for forgiveness for things or doing things with this taste of fear in the back of my mouth. Then things shifted.

One Sunday, I went with my grandmother to her little Methodist church. It was so different there! At my regular church, there were hundreds and hundreds of people dressed in their finest clothes and on their best behavior. Here things were different. These were a bunch of country people. Some of the ladies wore their house shoes with their Sunday dresses. Men fell asleep and snored during church and nobody got angry but only nudged each other, pointed and chuckled. Children not only squirmed in the pews but sometimes played up under them or slept on their mother's laps peacefully.

The holy communion that was reserved for only the baptized at my old church was offered up to anyone who wanted to partake of it. Little squares of white sunbeam bread stood in for "the body of Christ" and Welch's grape juice was a fine choice for "his blood which was shed for me". One time when it was my grandmother's turn to clean up after the communion, she let me eat all of the leftover bread and juice. Boy howdy! I felt that I had just guaranteed myself a free ride from sin for the rest of my life as I ate little bites of soft white bread and threw back grape juice from little tiny shot glasses taken from a brass tray adorned with crosses.

The hymns were no longer sung along with a huge, bellowing organ. At my grandmother's church, they had an old upright piano that very well could have been taken straight from a saloon. We followed each clanging note with songs about blessed assurances and peace in the valley. The sermons changed too. There were no sermons about how we were all going to go to hell for watching MTV or having impure thoughts. The pastor was an older gentile man who gave us lessons in parables often comparing us to diamonds in the rough or crops about to be harvested. My heart felt relief. He told us how we were all born sinners. ALL of us. He told us how all that we could do was the best that we could do. Jesus would fix the rest. It was good enough for me.

For varying reasons that I won't go into here, I later left the church....like so many of my friends. But it makes me happy to know that we all share this common bond of wanting to hold onto the common thread that runs through all religions - even those that fight and shed blood over their differences. That common thread is love and kindness. In having these conversations with people, I have found myself exceedingly proud that we can laugh at the awful stories that we have from our church days but at the same time, say that we think that everyone should just look out for each other and love our fellow man. We seem relieved to have made it out of the training grounds of the churches and their watchful eye. We seem peacefully reliant on our consciences to get us by.

I hope that we can raise our children with perhaps a little less fear and a good heaping more of humanity and tolerance. I'll end this with a story I heard today. A friend of mine was telling me about a miniature golf course that he used to go to here in Nashville. It was one with a religious theme and holes decorated with rather tacky biblical toned decorations.At one hole, the ball went through a small building which had a window that you could look through and see little symbols of scary things like Jason's hockey mask, a picture of the devil, etc. all bathed in a black light glow.

He took his young daughter there and she peeked inside the window and said, "Hey dad, check this out. It's coooool." The proprietor of the course walked by and upon overhearing her got angry and yelled, "It ain't supposed to be cool! It's supposed to be HELL!!!" He then stormed off in a self-righteous huff.

The daughter looked up at her dad, shrugged her shoulders and said, "It's still cool."