Burning Alive

            I was disillusioned, perhaps from the day I was born.  From gender roles to politics, I have slowly become disenchanted with the human race.  Hope has vanished like mercury between my fingers.  Pandora’s gift has retreated into the safe darkness of the box.  Religion, in particular, has stuck a thorn in my side from the moment I expressed a desire to be a nun as a child.  I wasn’t baptized nor was I raised to believe in God and yet I, like all humans, was hardwired for faith.  I admired a nun’s dedication and hardcore belief.  They were immoveable in my eyes, solid in their faith and unshakeable.  They took a leap that I longed to take.  But I could not take it blind.

            My first experience in a church was of trepidation and minute hope.  I was looking for “nun-faith”, the immoveable force that would move through me.  I was looking for God.  I squirmed in the pew, uncomfortable from the moment I entered through the large glass doors.  I prepared myself for a secret to be revealed, a grand revelation, a visit from God.  Those beside me chatted about boys and passed notes to each other.  They buzzed like bees in my ears and I could not concentrate on salvation.  The preacher entered with slick hair and shiny teeth.  Oil greased his jaw with a white smile.  He wore a blue-grey suit that bore no trace of a wrinkle or tear.  He moved like a motivational speaker with definite motions and broad body language but spoke like a used car salesman.  I watched, waiting for Truth.  I grew more uncomfortable as if under attack.  He spoke of God and how great He was.  All sins were forgiven and His followers were richly rewarded.  I felt sick.

            I remembered posters requesting missionaries to save the starving indigenous people by bring them to the Lord.  The promise of redemption and salvation from the neglect of the Lord turned sour in my mouth.  I have such distaste for clubs.  I began to feel like I was in an orientation for a Fraternity.  While the hazing was minimal, I felt that God was for everyone, not a select few.  God created man thus every man, woman and child belonged to God.  Why would He discriminate?  Why would He only reward those that believed in Him or believed in Jesus, an incarnation of Him?  Compassion is often perceived as a difficult but noble aspect of the human personality that makes us uniquely human.  And yet we fail by killing others and ourselves, waging war and hypocrisy.  One would come to the conclusion that God would not fail.  God would watch over everyone, Christian or Heathen and care for them all.            He continued to speak, instilling the image of sin among the throngs of believers.  One must follow the way of God in order to be saved.  God was jealous, God was wrathful.  One would be punished if they stray.  As the audience members trembled with God’s rage, I was looking over my shoulder, waiting for God to enter the room but He did not come.

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            A few days ago, I attempted another visit as part of my Humanities essay.  It had been years since I looked for God in church or youth group.  I didn’t like being sold.  I went with cynical expectations.  It would be like any other church.  I would feel uncomfortable and sick, looking for the exit as I plastered a smile on my face.  I entered with trepidation and minute hope.  It was dark and warm with candles casting long shadows against the wall.  A screen showing images of Rudy was centered before rows of folding chairs.  Words flashed on the screen, asking why one takes the way of Yahweh when it is so hard.  Initially I was puzzled.  I had never been confronted with the idea that the way of God was difficult.  I was told that temptation was what made it difficult.  Sin was what created tragedy.  Never in church or in youth group, was I not given a Happy Ending.  Older and burdened with a small degree of wisdom, I sat, waiting for the other foot to drop.

            Stories were retold in the second-person.  One was about a mother whose son dies just as they miraculously survive a drought.  The prophet that has stayed in their home resurrects the boy.  As a mother, I struggled not to weep.  The image of my own son twisted inside.  I remember what it was like to struggle.  I remember what it was like to hunger.  I remember the desperation that comes to keep them from the same fate.  “If it was me, I wouldn’t have mattered if I starved,” I have said.  But a child makes life important as another generation, like a seed, must fight through the soil to find the sky.  The second story was of a widow at the funeral of her son.  A prophet appears, believed to be Jesus, and resurrects her son.  The end of the story is the woman, looking to her sister who has also lost a son that remains lost.

            As I recovered, the husband of a friend of mine performed the ending sermon.  Clad in jeans and a sweatshirt, he drew a striking contrast to the well dressed ministers of my past.  His presence was not imposing as the others that loomed before me.  He surveyed the audience before he spoke, as if unsure.  He spoke of death, the absolute nature of it “that we use to define life”.  Even as the sons are resurrected they will eventually die again, of old age or disease.  The haze of emotion was lifted.  It was true and the strangeness of it surprised me.  I had been taken in.  He continued to say the resurrections were meant to be signs, leading to the great message of God.  They were guiding the way, heralding the beginning of God’s kingdom entering the world.  I felt heavy in my seat as my mind began to click rapidly.

            If Jesus was a prophet, could he proclaim it and be believed without proof?  What proof would one need to be considered a prophet?  It would have to be impossible, a miracle.  Not one would suffice as humans are naturally cynical, eager to disprove and break down all that we know before we accept a Truth.  As he continued his message I was overcome.  The sound soaked into the walls until nothing remained.  Not a whisper could be heard, not a breath, only quiet reverence.  I looked around me, to validate this foreign kind of worship.  From the bowed heads of some and the clinging of hands for others, I began to recognize a spirit of something I had never seen.  It had crept in through the door and taken a seat in the back.  I hadn’t noticed before but could not help but notice now.

            I had given up on finding God or even a piece of God within the confines of a church.  I had grown weary of believers pushing their faith like a drug and making promises to me that they had no power to make.  I was tired of the sickness that comes with Pandora’s Box, the lowest of man, the base instinct.  But as I sat for a moment within those dark walls, I was pleasantly disillusioned.

            Not to say that I have found God within the dark walls of a makeshift church, nor that I claim a “nun-faith”.  But I have seen a glimpse of God.  A lurking vision of what it means to have faith.  The search has not ended but is beginning.  From the depths of Pandora’s Box, I have uncovered hope.  It’s something I cannot hold onto as it moves through my fingers like mercury and yet with hands open it remains.  It is a feeling that faith is not unfounded but moves like water through us and within us.  It’s when we become hard like stones, unmoving with rules and dogma from thousands of years before that we risk losing the meaning behind it all.  When we become pliant like grass, do we feel the wind of God.  As stones we are cracked and broken.  For a moment, in the darkness of church walls, I became yielding.  I was pleasantly disillusioned.