Abide Baptist Church - June 26th, 2011 - Issaquah, WA

     This is my first faith visit since my friend's funeral and burial...and in it I experienced the best and worst of what religion can bring. Abide Baptist Church is a tiny church near the freeway entrance. It's been around a year less then I've been in Issaquah and follows the Baptist tradition of respect of choice (to believe or not to believe) and separation of Church and State (state cannot enforce on faiths and in theory vise versa). Both of which I think are admirable ideals of the faith.

      The best I experienced was the sense of community with strangers and the reflective nature of the service. It reminded me a little of a Mormon service in that their were hymns but no Christian Rock or Choir music...it was the pastor's wife and the piano with hymns that I've heard play in movies that take place in the south. While I was there it felt like the people I love where there with me, and I felt peace.

     The worst I experienced was prejudice towards people (males specifically) who go outside their supposed masculine roles. The first was the pastor talking about how his school's swim team had become sissy and given people breaks which he never got...and the other was when I talked to his Dad who was ashamed to drive a light colored car during the day when he was driving across the United States.

    The other part was the Theory of Evolution and theology. I understand now why they must have felt threatened...if the Bible is the literal Word of God then Genesis is a fact not a metaphorical story...then the Big Bang, evolution and other theories that contradict these "facts" must be wrong. The pastor it's "Just a theory," disregarding what in science that actually means. Theories only exist due to ample evidence and empirically tested claims. In evolution a large part of this is in the fossil record and our own genetic code in which we can trace our ancestry.

   The misunderstanding science was completed with the "Atheist Checklist," which was a tract that the pastor's father gave to me. The tract is written by Ray Comfort who argues that because a banana is color coded for when it's ripe, spoiled or developing, and can be held in the human hand that clearly it was designed by God. It is like a Coco-Cola can created by humans Ray implies. What he misses though is that bananas were domesticated and evolved to be the way they are by humans. Wild bananas look nothing like the ones Comfort describes. Just to touch on the problems with his hypothesis.That's why they are shaped the way are and edible. The checklist was insulting to science. It ended also with the Ten Commandments and a call to Jesus showing that again, it was apologist work for religion, not science.

    The sermon was about when Jesus told his apostles that he would die and rise again on the third day. The pastor talked about how Jesus made things easy for us, just to accept him into our lives, but we like things difficult. He used the example people who chose not to buy a mix where you just add water, but bought the cooking mix when it required water and an egg. He also brought up faith verse works and that the Bible says it's faith alone but the surveys he said showed most denominations thought good works would get one into heaven. This is an issue for another post the faith verse works ideal in regards to virtue, but I will eventually get to it. Since it deals with the claims of a lot of faiths and human nature.
     
      The service ended with a song we all sang together called "Lean on Jesus" and a final call to Jesus for someone to repent and confess along with the final prayer.

     I'm planning on talking to the pastor about these things at some point. For to bash someone because they are a masculine female or a feminine male isn't virtuous, loving or just, and though Christianity is built on faith, in it's best form, it's about treating others with respect, dignity and love.

     It's good to be visiting faith communities again...and meeting the people who believers of the different faiths and sects within the faiths. It's in these visits and conversations I think come to know God, humanity and myself better in the constant path of learning and growth. 

Memorial of a Friend - Catholic Newman Center Prince of Peace Chapel - Seattle, WA - June 1st, 2011

      Friends and community. Some of you have probably been wondering why I haven't been updating the blog at all. The reason I haven't is because I've been dealing with the death of a friend who was like a sister to me. It's strange really, while there at her memorial, funeral and burial I did feel that connection to her and something more...at times after that, I've wanted to visit churches and keep up the blog, but then I find I can't go.

        Many times it's because I visit communities where I don't know anybody...I'm a stranger. I don't want to bring my vulnerability to strangers, to put it simply. Another reason is I think, is the issue of God and the afterlife for me. At the core, I think I am quite agnostic, I believe in living in the moment and now and in this life, not for a possible next, though I hope for God and an afterlife, and to see all friends, family and community again..I cannot know if God and the Afterlife exist with certainty. 

      I've never had a death hit me like it did that day at the memorial. It was week after she had died, and I arrived early and took the schedule for when she would be buried and when her funeral be, as well as the article in the UW Newspaper about her and sat on the couch to wait for more people to arrive. I looked at the schedule... the surrealness lessened and it really it him that she was gone. That was the first time I've cried in a long time. 

      The memorial was beautiful and powerful. A lot of my friends came, some who knew her, were related to her, or didn't know her at all...but came to support those who did.

     It was being there with my girlfriend and friends that really helped the beginning of moving forward to acceptance and seeing her life in all her wholeness. She lived, and had a profound effect on all of us. The reading that was used to represent her life was the Beatitudes, for they represented who she was very well:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  
 Blessed are those who mourn,
   for they will be comforted.  
Blessed are the meek,
   for they will inherit the earth.  
 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
   for they will be filled.  
Blessed are the merciful,
   for they will be shown mercy.  
 Blessed are the pure in heart,
   for they will see God.  
Blessed are the peacemakers,
   for they will be called children of God.  
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

        She truly did live all these things...

       The sermon was very evangelical in that it was calling everyone there to Christ as well, which I've come to expect from any Trinitarian Church, so it didn't feel completely out of place.This was also her Church speaking, and her Catholic faith meant so much to her.

     I talked to the Priest after, since he's a friend of mine and to my others friends who came that day. We reflected for a while and the conversations helped with accepting her death that day, as did the sermon.

     After talking to friends and the month since that day, I'm still allowing time to heal.

    The sadness has been like water against the land. Sometimes it simply laps the shores. Other times it's stronger and comes in more inland, and at one point I was even it by a tsunami of the grief.

     It's been strange. I've found myself both wanting to be alone and wanting to be with people contradictory more so since her death. I've wanted to reach out to talk about it, but found myself closing up. I think I may be at the place now where I can talk about it, about dealing with the grief of her loss and the joy of her friendship and life.

    She would want me to live, and us to live. It's something that in the grief I've sometimes forgotten.