issue number one - September, 2000 Nonduality
Salon Magazine
(X)
Why
Now So Moving?
Gloria
Lee
Here's
what it is...what finally busted loose in me surprised
even me. I've been rehearsing with this choral group the
past 6 weeks and last night I started getting too choked
up to sing, then the words just really got to me and
seemed so meaningful. I didn't want to make a scene and
leave and I kept thinking maybe I'd calm down and be able
to sing the next song, but soon as I'd start to sing, the
tears would start again. Its the same music we have been
practicing all this time, mostly based on African
spirituals. At first I thought it was just reminding me
of all the years singing in church choir, which of course
it was and had all along, and the music is great but why
now so moving? It was and wasn't the music. Really I was
just remembering all these good people I had known at
church, sorta one after another coming up... and then
feeling all this gratitude and love that these of course
very ordinary people were so kind.
Like the guy you could call anytime, because he had made
it his business to learn how to coax the old furnace back
to working... and how he always asked after my boys and
made a point of mentioning that he had also been thru a
divorce and how being a step parent was not easy, but his
boys all turned out ok in the end, tho they had their bad
days too, so not to worry about it... and then he'd talk
about his vegetable garden... and I still can't even
remember what his name was, just that he's dead now and I
miss him.
And all those little old ladies who week after week sign
up for nursery care because they don't mind missing
church... and always stick around to clean up the kitchen
after the potlucks... and take food over whenever anyone
has a baby or someone dies, whether they know them well
or not... nameless to me people were coming to mind along
with the ones important to me and close to me.
And I remembered how when the larger church hierarchy was
holding debates about what the church's
"stance" should be towards homosexuals, we just
quietly voted in a lesbian woman for deacon. And the best
part was it had nothing to do with any stance, it was
more because she was already collecting furniture and
stuff to give out to people whose houses burned down and
that's what deacons do is look after other's needs, so
why not make it official.
Back when my first husband simply packed up and went to
California, the minister listened to all my problems week
after week, 'cause I certainly could not afford
"real counseling." No matter how depressed or
angry I got then, he would say, "Well, isn't it okay
to feel like that? If I was in your shoes, I'd be upset,
too. This is not easy." And yet I'd feel better just
being listened to and go back to deal with another week.
He gave me what may be the best compliment I ever got in
my life one day when he said, "What impresses me
most about you is the wide assortment of people you know
from all walks of life." When I stopped to think of
all those people and how everywhere I went in town I'd
see someone I knew, I felt rich in friends and the money
problems I had then seemed a lot less important.
Well, I could on and on and I really don't care how corny
this all must sound, because it was my mistake to think
that it mattered that you can't talk to these people
about chakras or kundalini or Buddhism or esoteric
anything. So it actually does not matter to me if anyone
thinks Christianity is dualistic or even if it basically
really is, intellectually speaking. The entire issue of
beliefs just went poof...gone. I know these people got
the essence of Jesus message was about love and caring
for others. Anyone's ordinary kindness matters just as
much as the Mother Teresa type. And I realize how all
these people are actually so much better than even they
know themselves.
And I remembered that is why I fell in love with Jesus in
the first place back when I was 10 years old and first
heard about him... God is love, love one another. Even
when I later went thru my own atheism, I could not bear
to hear Jesus himself disparaged. Since then I've been
thru all the usual questioning of everything and the
ridiculous theology and thought I was just going to
church for the kids sake or because I just like to sing
the music, and that I needed to work out my own beliefs
anyway and find people who thought like me. No matter
what or how anything really may be, I still love Jesus.
When I finally got out of there, I let it out and cried
all the way home. Here I've stayed away from church the
past two years for many different reasons, but last night
I knew I am just so homesick I want to go back.
(X)
|