Closeted Christian no longer
Ada Calhoun writes a thought-provoking and quite profound piece in Salon.com about her journey to becoming Christian, and her journey to being able to admit that she is Christian:
I am a closet Christian
At least, I was until now. Because in my circle, nothing is more embarrassing than being religious
By Ada Calhoun in Salon.com
It was Sunday morning in my scruffy Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood, and I was wearing a dress. Walking to the subway, I ran into a friend heading home from yoga class. She wore sweats and carried her mat over her shoulder. "Where are you going so early all dressed up?" she asked, chuckling. "To church?" We shared a laugh at the absurdity of a liberal New Yorker heading off to worship.The real joke? I totally was.
Inside the church, it's cool and quiet. I read the Collect of the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which urges us: "While we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure." My recent layoff no longer seems like the end of the world. I take Communion and exchange the peace and listen to the sermon. As I'm walking back up the aisle, I feel reoriented and calmer, the indignities of the week shift into perspective.
These moments are not only sacred; they are secret. Outside, on the steps of the downtown Manhattan church, I think I see someone familiar coming down the sidewalk, and I bolt in the other direction.
Why am I so paranoid? I'm not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out -- as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.
Read the rest here.
It's on salon.com, not slate. Here's the link:
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/12/21/closet_christian. I make the same mistake all the time.
Alan David Justice
[Thanks. Corrected. - eds.]
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December 24, 2009 2:41 PM
I read Ada Calhoun's story on salon.com and I had to smile from recognition. No, the story was not smiley material, but the experience of rebuff and unholier-than-thouness rang far too distinctly, and with even more viciousness.
In the spring of 2005 a confluence of events was closing in on me. First and most personally, my brother-in-law was in a semi-comatose state following a suicide attempt which was ultimately successful. Second, the old Pope was dying. Finally, there was the appalling media circus surrounding Terri Schiavo.
At the time I was (I actually still am) on a poetry posting and discussion list located in the UK. I posted a poem called "The God Thing."
THE GOD THING
Especially If it happens late in life
you will be cut off
and it will hurt inwardly,
as much and for far longer,
as the suffering of a dismembered traitor,
truly as much if not more,
for now there is no knowledge
of time, of the coming blessed release.
It is the misery of illicit love,
of drinking enough to obliterate
the misery of illicit love,
only you will awaken and the misery
has been cheerlessly resurrected,
you are stuck with the bargain
that--Magic Word time--God
has forced upon you.
To have done this voluntarily
you must be thought quite mad,
mad to inhale the cannibal's banquet
of Real Presence,
the bread deal swiped from the Jew
you used to be,
and slurping blood as though
it's really capital-P Precious
but it still tastes like wine.
You will be glared at,
derided by the gods of Atheism,
family will shrug and say
you were always cracked anyway,
nothing was good enough for you.
Others will cite historical injustice
ask if you think the auto da fe was cool beans
to have with barbecued flesh.
And I know a few as well
but they're not mine and that's
not me, I will sit at table
with George Herbert and eat
because worth does not matter
only calling.
For Mary Karr
KTW/3-15-06
It was not intended as an expression of devotion but as a predictor of how my group of presumed "peers" would view my admission of faith. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I received private email which accused me of harassment (I still don't get that one at all), and a surpassingly vile private message inviting me to take my own life along with my brother-in-law.
It was no mistake I dedicated the poem to Mary Karr, irreverent and reverential. I suppose I was supposed to absorb the lesson that displays of faith are forbidden in the intellectual marketplace, but I wasn't and am still not having any. Ms. Calhoun's story is, I fear, far too common.
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December 27, 2009 1:59 PM