I wanted to write during holy week, and then I forgot. Instead I had a couple of conversations, which was almost as good. I mean, I actually have no clue if anyone besides me actually reads this, so its not like I'm hoping to communicate or anything.
Ok, so, Holy week - big deal. I mean, maybe not to a lot of UU's, or at least, not in the way its a big deal for the xtians, but still, a big deal, right? On Palm Sunday I played ruthless games of can can with my UU babies and then sat down and talked to them about Easter. You know, like, why is everyone so happy if Jesus died? and why do they call it Good friday? and why are there eggs and bunnies and chocolate? Did Jesus have hard boiled eggs? was it his favorite food?
And it makes me kind of sad when I revert to the staid old answers about metaphors and what other people believe. Cos I bet you money that those kids woke up to giant easter baskets brimming with Ipods and shit like that, and they should know on a deep level why this day is important to so many people. They should know about it in ultural context, you know, the ways in which the holiday was totally lifted from pagan cultures and how easter has provided excuse to be total asshats to each other, but they should also know that its an intense and meaningful story.
I'm trying to balance, right now, the way that I use and understand Christian ritual and tradition as a UU. My social and identity formantion may have happened in YRUU, but my spiritual formation happened at an ecumenical and multi faith (read:UU) campus ministry in college. I did shit during Lent and holy week - went to Ash Wednesday services, went to Easter vigils - because my community did and because ritual is really important to me. One year I went on a silent retreat over Easter, and read the passion in all of the synoptic gospels, and I had crazy dreams about Jesus and me in Jerusalem during Holy week, and it was intense.
I'm not a Christian, though I pseudo-claimed that while I was in college (xtian UU), because I just can't get behind the apostolic creed and there are a lot of days I don't really believe in God, let alone Jesus being God. But there are so many things in that tradition that move and compel me, stories that are crucial to my understanding of the world.
But I don't want to be one of those jerks who just takes what works for me and leaves the rest. I want a more complex understanding of things. But I'm afraid of that too, because my community is pretty anti-xtian and I have problems with wanting everyone to like me all the time. Metaphor is such a modern concept, it's such a surface level thing. Oh, well, this isn't true but its a tool. Fuck that, I mean, fuck truth. why is truth so important?
I've been reading a lot about emergent church communities, and I want in so bad. I want one. All of them are really christian, like either from fundy perspectives or epicopalian/lutheran/catholic - high church stuff. I can't claim the belief systems that make up the foundation of those communities, but there is something about them that makes me ache, that I think would burn a hole in my heart in precisely the way I want it burned.
Im so committed to my UU identity, but right now my best friends in spirituality ways are lutherans and episcopalians. I'm alright with that, but it feels a little unstable and a lot lonely. I just don't want to be another religious fashion victim, you know? Falling prey to what's cool instead of what fills me.
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But HONEY, it's not wrong to claim the liberal Christian tradition that is RIGHTLY yours, and that was theologically worked out by our illustrious forebears. Seriously -- it's not being a jerk and "taking what you want and leaving the rest" -- remember that the history of Xtianity is a long battle about doctrine, and our side lost. Doesn't mean we have to give up the Jeez, or walking the Xtian Path and claiming that identity.
People should read this.
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