Love (Divine, All Loves Excelling) on the Rocks

I am not, as it turns out, going to be a Buddha-killer. Killing the Buddha thanked me for my submissions and respectfully took a pass. I think I can see why, and I'm secret pleased to have already begun collecting the string of rejections that any writer carries around as a rosary. I have every intention of, someday, collecting the best of this blog (plus some other stuff), scrubbing it behind the ears and putting one of my old party dresses on it to see if I can sell it into prostitution. Here's your one chance, Fancy -- don't let me down.

It's not time for that yet. I am, appropriately, in dissertation mode, adding a few thousand words to my draft week by week and hoping against hope that I'm saying something worthwhile -- or at least worth a nod of approval from my committee. And I keep thinking about what I might write later. I still want to write a book about evangelical praise and worship music -- I think -- and I'm kicking around an idea about apocalyptic and science fiction.

In the meantime, my church gig has finally coming to an official close. The new guy is on the scene and this is my last week. I haven't done much. I had one meeting and one rehearsal, but I didn't have to plan anything or follow up on anything or field any questions except those of the new guy trying to get his bearings. Last Sunday was my last as a worship leader (maybe ever?) and we kicked ass and took names, musically speaking. The band was on, the vocals were tight, and everyone knew what to do. I just strummed my guitar and smiled and connected with the congregation. It wasn't even bittersweet. It was just fun.

Which is not to say it wasn't ironic. These are songs I would not and do not like as listening music. Part of me likes them, and I poured myself into them in a way that would seem to defy all my protestations of unbelief, but it was also like watching Three's Company reruns: it's enjoyable, but you'd be embarrassed if the wrong people walked in.

These are also songs the content of which I often cannot affirm. And it's not even that they invoke God so much as they evince a piety I'm pretty sure is disingenuous coming from me. All the stuff I wrote in "Why Remain?" is true, don't get me wrong, but these songs gush in a way that I don't. Ever. At least not about Jesus. I have no trouble waxing theological, at least partially because I don't think we ever escape the theological, but the language of piety is one that I sing but never speak, like a tenor who can't speak a lick of Italian but can bang out a rousing rendition of "La donna è mobile."

We've thought about where to go from here, church-wise. We could go back to our old church, a much smaller congregation where we still have friends and which, by virtue of some personnel changes, might be a place worth returning to. They dismissed a senior minister who was neither a good pastor nor a good preacher. One of these can usually be overlooked in lieu of the other, but if you don't have either one you probably need a new line of work. And as strange as this may sound, I'm something of a mentor to their youth minister, who is serving as the interim preacher and might end up in the spot for good. I have, at least, been in a position to offer him counsel and advice from time to time and this seems to work better if I'm not, at the same time, a parishioner.

Ditto another minister friend for whom I'm less a counselor than comic relief and a safe place to vent. He's the one whose church thinks he's too "emergent" -- a fear that is as silly as it is unfounded to begin with -- and while I don't think being a parishioner would be an issue, my friend and his family would be the only people we know, and they're Methodists, by which I only mean that they could get shipped off to parts unknown at a moment's notice, or so it seems to me.

Though I joke that I'm a "Freelance Episcopal," and am geekily in love with the Rite I liturgy, being Episcopal is probably the sort of thing I like the idea of more than anything else. My family would hate it, and I'm not sure I'd feel deeply at home anywhere. Besides, the local parish is Rite II anyway. The infidels.

There's always just staying home, giving up the churchgoing enterprise altogether. But our kids are rather deeply invested; all but the youngest are volunteers in some capacity. Simply not showing up while our kids remain involved would invite questions I don't want to field, and a sense of betrayal I don't want to be responsible for evoking in people that I've gotten along with so well. So we'll probably just stay put.

Me and Jesus, we're on the rocks, but we're sticking it out for the kids.