Why don't I go more? That's a question I've debated all my adult life. As a youth, I would walk with my sister Peg to our church, four blocks away for Sunday school and then Church services. I really had the passion to go each Sunday. I especially enjoyed going with my grandmother to German services, held in her church on the other side of Staten Island. I was so captured by the wholeness of the "Church" experience I even thought about being a minister. I studied for 1 1/2 years for the Lutheran Ministry until there was a "parting of the philosophical way."
Church services were really special things, I thought. Everyone was there. People were dressed in their best clothes. The women and girls wore hats and gloves. The minister in his vestments had a regal and noble air about him. He always had a kind word, spoken in a low, metered tone that instilled hope, compassion, reverence and authority.
Sunday mornings we had sometimes three services. The pews were always packed. The organist or musical director was always on cue and filled the church with a sound that reached deep down into your soul and brought it out for all to see. The minister would dazzle us kids with his "Fire and Brimstone" oratory. He had a knack of looking us all in the eye yet watched the congregants with the sharp eye of a modern day surveillance system. His sermons and readings of the gospel would leave us kids so scared to do anything wrong, lest we be "smote by the hand of God!" Whatever that meant! It just sounded down right scary, until about Tuesday when life returned to normal and us kids would be getting into trouble all over again.
Christmas Eve service was always a grand occasion. The Church was festooned with all kinds of Christmas decorations, evergreens, candles, bows, pointsettas and other decorations. The place smelled of pine. (You would think the Pine Sol lady was cleaning the floors.) And right there in the center of the Church, by the altar, was the manger, with the baby Jesus. A sacred location. No one ever dared to approach the manger while it was there. It was also revered when it was stored in the closet of the Sunday school auditorium.
Church service was always at midnight on Christmas Eve. By rights I should have been tired and cranky, but the adrenaline was flowing. The count down clock was on. Minutes dragged slowly. First there was dinner with the relatives, then Christmas cookies. Cookies that my mother thought she had hidden out of my reach. Never underestimate the power of a kid! (I learned to scale vertical objects at an early age and find the treasure that was hidden!) A quick car ride to Church, the service then it was home for PRESENTS!!!! That's how I saw the world on Christmas.
Easter was a similar production, only the time slots were different. We got up before the sun. No breakfast. Got dressed. In the car and a quick ride to Church before the sun rose. Once through the doors to the Church, the dark cool night exploded with light, sound and fragrance and all the majesty that could be crammed into the four walls of the Church. The Church was wall to wall flowers. It was like going with my father to the nursery to buy flowers for the graves. Only the dirt smell of the geraniums was missing. Walking into Church made it seem like we walked out of Winter and right into Spring! It was a true sign that Spring had now arrived and bloomed in the Church since Friday at noon time, when all the windows were covered with dark heavy purple drapes shutting out all the light.
Easter service, called sunrise, was a spectacular event. It seemed the choir was really more into the spirit of singing, the organist played louder and longer. And it was like a great play performed before an obliging and participating audience working at a fevered pitch to an absolute climax! A climax of such proportion that as a kid you would expect Jesus to descend slowly out of the eaves of the Church right on cue onto the alter. That climax, of song, music and pontificated religious oratory hit a fevered pitch just as the mornings first rays of sunlight exploded into this packed gathering of the faithful! It would make me tingle all over!
I don't know what changed when we moved to New Jersey but it seemed a lot of the magic was lost. Yea, the services were the same, to a degree, but the setting seemed more sterile and bland. Maybe it was the newer built church? Our old church was one of those end of the 19th century Victorian Churches with a vast array of stained glass windows that illustrated various scenes of the life of Christ in vivid detail as opposed to the newer church and it's modernistic interpretation of the Savior.
I knew my father and mother missed the grandeur of the Church we left behind, for we went to many different churches in Jersey over several years before settling where we did.
I was always a kid who loved the out doors. I never knew why but I always felt being alone in the woods as an almost spiritual experience. The complex underlying and intertwined sounds of the stillness of nature had a narcotic effect and would lull me into a trans like state. The more I sat and listened the more enveloped I became in the grasp of the natural world. A world created by God.
My educational experience in school really bored me to death. My teachers would always point out to my parents that I had such "High capabilities and Intelligence!" But I seriously failed to apply myself. I felt bored and disconnected. The education I was being given did not answer the questions within my mind. Questions I knew I had but couldn't formulate. Things I wanted to learn about but were not taught.
Then one summer I spent a few weeks with my best friend at his Uncle's farm in upstate New York and that's were it started to come together. I was on my own for the first time in my life and I could experience things, explore, investigate and absorb. This is where I felt the hand of God came down and laid on my shoulder and encouraged me to go forward to be a minister. Yet I was not a "Holy Individual". Me a minister? Man that got a lot of laughs then and still does from those who know me. Yet that was the path I choose to take.
Fast forward a few years and I was as disillusioned about organized religion as anyone could be. The politics, the absolute acceptance of the dictum's forced on the students. It was as if they were producing robots to go out and put on the show each and every Sunday. I was devastated!
Here I thought that the minister had all the answers and found him to be as frail and unknowing as I. The only difference I could find that his absolute faith in the religion was his faith in the religion.
Now my faith on the other hand was unshaken. Rock solid in commitment. But I needed to explore why it was and I found no suitable answers. I guess it was the scientific mind at work. For everything there is an answer. I felt and still do in many ways that life is a very big riddle and we have to search for the answer for full satisfaction and understanding of our faith. Unknowingly I set myself down a long road to answer that question and many more. That road was the road of life and the experiences that are set before us.
Some people argue that life is pre-ordained and it is totally God's plan as to how our life unfolds. Others say it is totally happenstance and you take the chips of life where they fall. Others have no clue and don't care and blame others for their lot in life.
It is my feeling that it is a combination of many forces and situations that determine where our lives head. I feel that everyday we are given a choice when we get up as to what is going to happen. The circumstances and choices we take and make each moment change and alter our course in life. This alteration in life is sometime minute or great depending on the choice or choices made. The random happenstance of things and events happening are all part of equation. Let's say the loss of a loved one. It's not our lot in life as to who gets called home to God. He is testing our faith in His decisions as to how we will accept the loss.
I used to be really upset about the loss of a loved one or friend and would question why. I evidenced the loss of children in accidents or fires or by the hands of others for no reason. I couldn't comprehend why God could do such a thing. When I would ask a minister about this they would always say the same thing, "Gods will!" I just couldn't by that simple phrase. They never seemed to go much further than that. I felt almost ashamed that I did not have it within me to be that strong in my faith. I felt my faith was unshakable but there was always something more I wanted something i thought they knew but never said. Was it that I failed to know enough to ask the right questions or was it back to my annoyance with the ministry studies that they never gave us the fundamentals about faith?
But through the years of seeing loved ones called home and the loss of total strangers I slowly began to realize that it is nothing more than God testing our faith and his ultimate will. He is providing us with eternal life after we leave this mortal coil. A gift that many people have a hard time putting their heads and or arms around simply because we fail to grasp the totality of it and the beauty and reward that is within the Divine gift.
Have I sat down and studied the Bible or any other religious text and come up with this conclusion? The answer is no. Have I sat in on study groups and debated this with a room full of theological experts? Still the answer is no.
The way I came to this "Epiphany" was over the last 40 years of my life distilled into the last year where I was truly tested by the loss of my life's work. I had rolled the dice and worked for the last 35 years building a career, a business and what I thought was the best for my family only to have someone yank it out from under me. This put all those life experiences and unanswered questions into a complete and comprehensive thought about life and service to God. But still how did one event become a catalyst for this clarification of Faith? Simply put, my granddaughter.
My granddaughter Emily has developmental issues. They say she has ADHD and autistic spectrum whatevers. I think a catch all for, "well there's something amiss but we haven't got a clue so let's put her in this group." To look at her and talk with her you'd never know it. But I think that through this child's shortcomings God handed me a tool of unprecedented value. This little girl will sit transfixed and watch that nun on EWTN saying the rosary and Hail Mary's for hours. Her questions about religion are unbelievable! Since I am now driving a school bus I am her day care provider when school is out. It's a great fit! She has such unconditional for her E-Pa and I for her. Because of her issues she will ask questions after questions on a subject. Much like I thought but never had anyone to discuss. She see the world in a much simpler and innocent way that we as adults overlook.
A year ago his past Christmas Eve she lost her other Grandfather. This is where I think the beginning of this religious experience began. I wrote about George in a Blog titled "Good Bye and Good Luck." A piece I never thought I had in me. A piece I wrote about someone who was involved with my daughter but not so much with my life. I person I knew but not closely. I needed a tool in which to explain the death of "Pop Pop's" to Emily. In soothing her emotions I did so to many of my daughter's in-laws with the piece.
It was as if God sat down beside me and placed his hand on my shoulder and said, "Curt, you have the answers you have been seeking all these years now here's how you will see them!" Even as I write this "Novella" I can feel his presence here with me.
He handed me another opportunity last summer, shortly after I lost the bulk of my business when my Father in law passed away. I was the one the police notified and I had to break the news to my wife and family. I could feel his hand on my shoulder again guiding me and giving me the strength to make it through the ordeal and to help console others. A real skill I never could understand how a minister could obtain. It's not something that is taught. It is something that is felt and is deep within. It is like a sleeping part of our psyche that comes to life when we really need it without fail. It is the true believer that can understand this emotional component of ourselves.
Am I a sinner? Yes and will be to the day I die. The last and only person I know of who was so pure and without sin was Christ. We all sin. It's a fact of life and we all must try to avoid the temptation to surrender to the "Dark Side". But succumb we do. Some a little, some a lot. Yet our God is so loving and forgiving that he casts our sins aside when we ask him to. I see into the innocence of the child and I ask why must this child be subjected to the trials and tribulations we as adults must face? Again the answer is faith. Much like some of the moralisms from the George Burns movies "OH God!" We have to have opposites in our life in order to know the right from the wrong, the pleasant from the cruel. How can we know faith without doubt. Our faith is the result of our doubts. It is those very doubts that give us the strength to look for the answers that give us the faith we need and require to become fulfilled.
I remember some Bible passages and one that really sums a lot of this up is that God has created us in His Image. As a kid I always had this image in my mind of this huge bearded entity in the heavens throwing lightening bolts out and looking really pissed off. But the question that really needs to be asked, answered and understood is: "If we are in his image do we all possess God within us?" And if we do possess him within us then why aren't we more like him in our actions? Why do we inflict such hurt and discord on our fellow man? Why can't we live by his simplest rule of life, "Do unto others . . . ." Such a simple statement with profound implications!As many scholars debate and pontificate their positions and interpretations of the theological teachings of all the worlds religions the simplicity of it all becomes hidden like the forest for the trees.
That is why this Easter, I will go into Church with a renewed spirit of my faith. A faith that has not been reborn, remade, repackaged or reconstituted but a faith that is restored with the fullness of it's meaning. As the Easter lesson tells us that "Christ has died!, Christ has risen!, Christ will come again!" It is that last statement of Christ coming again I really think is something more than the old boy showing up in Times Square on New Years Eve and proclaiming the second coming. I think it is something much deeper and exquisite. Like the finding of Christ within us all. And the day that we all can say and truly, truly without hesitation and doubt that we have him deep within our hearts and souls is the day that he will come again to embrace us in his entirety and save us from all temptation and give us the full eternal life without hate and sin.
Happy Easter to all
I'm not a born again. I'm simply a Christian who is deeply connected to God within myself and I feel that while religion and its teachings should be shared religion is still a deeply spiritual thing that is between ones self and the creator.
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