jesus don’t want me for a sunbeam
so the other day while making that unky tupe’s ashes tape, i was sorting through a bunch of wilco songs & trying to find the best live version i had of “california stars.” and i thought about the probably dozen times i’ve been at a wilco show and heard them play that song. and an odd thought occurred to me: “this is what church is supposed to sound like.”
i was raised catholic, which means church didn’t sound like that. people sang & played music, but not usually in a way that felt joyous. more pious, i guess. the celebration of the epiphany was always the exception, though—every year the music director donned a special cape and played “we three kings” on a gigantic organ with such extraordinary passion that i actually went to that mass because i wanted to, even after i’d long since given up on the Church.
lydia millet kinda talks about this feeling in the interview sam linked to, about that communal experience we can get at a concert which we can’t get from reading a book, or (often enough) from droning the “our father” like we were being forced to eat our vegetables:
you know when you’re at a music event, and you’re dancing around, or maybe you’re not, maybe you’re just still, and you’re loving with this deep love that you can feel for music? i think at those times i’m more aware of myself in space and the rest of the world than at many other times.
when i’m dancing & singing along to “california stars” with two or three thousand other people, i get a whitmanic body-electric kinda feeling, connecting me to all those other concert-goers. it’s awesome. and i know that’s a big part of the reason why i keep going back to concerts—to get that feeling again. i guess that’s the agnostic in me looking for the connection that others find in religion. i don’t fault anyone for finding that sense of community wherever they can. but i guess the thing i don’t get is all the other stuff that can come with giving oneself over to god. i know we’ve got at least a couple of the faithful in bark’s reading audience, so i’m genuinely curious about the ways they celebrate community and react to the rest.
growing up we had a name for people who selectively took what they needed from the Church: cafeteria catholics. it was meant as a somewhat derogatory term, but in retrospect i have a fair amount of respect for that attitude. where i have trouble is when that community allows itself to become exclusionary. anybody can go to a concert. and, theoretically, anyone can go to religious service. but sometimes that’s where the (little “c”) catholicism seems to end.
a friend just told me a story about a mormon woman who let a black woman go ahead of her while waiting in line because “she felt bad for her” (i.e., that the mormon woman believed she was going to heaven, but the black woman wasn’t). in all the many years i went to mass (and our parish was considered to be fairly progressive—at least by white/surburban chicago standards), i saw women do readings from the bible, and administer the eucharist, but obviously never lead the service. these don’t seem like all-welcoming, community-oriented attitudes to me. and when i still cared enough about the Church in my youth to ask about this, it seemed like the answer i was always given was “change comes slowly.” which seemed kinda bullshitty to me. and still does.
i hope i don’t sound condescending when i say this, but so much about religion seems to make more sense to me after having left it behind years ago. the comfort & strength that come with believing in a higher power/plan for existence. i do like that abandoning the idea of everlasting souls and the promise of heaven can force one to focus on the here&now, and trying to create some brotherly love on earth rather than relying on the promise of peace in the afterlife. but i’m also convinced that rejecting that whole “soul” idea can have unintended consequences—especially ones that non-believers may not be fully conscious of, or want to be.
so i’m trying yoga now—seeing what kind of spiritual/intellectual balance i can find there. and i always kinda dug the baha’i—famous to chicagoans & lovers of stuart dybek’s “orchids” (& others, too, obviously) for a universally-oriented attitude infused in everything they do (including the temple they meet in): they accept all comers (in theory, anyway—i’ve not much actual knowledge of their religion). and i can pretty much always count on a good concert from the hold steady to provide a feeling of transcendence. but where do you get yours from? and if it arrives via an institution, what do you do with the rest?
Thanks for posting this, Jason. It’s especially timely since Ash Wednesday was this week, and (at least here in St. Louis) there were lots of people walking around with ash on their foreheads. I heard people mention how they love Ash Wednesday because it reminds them that they aren’t alone in their search for God. I’ve been Catholic for only a few years, but I find that that even when the music is less than joyful (and actually, I’ve been to many parishes that had awesome music), the rites that happen during mass and throughout the year make me feel part of something larger than myself.
As far as the rest goes…Women will probably never be priests, but that doesn’t mean they don’t influence the church. I know several women directors of liturgy and other ministries in the church and in the local communities, and throughout church history there have been women advising and when necessary reprimanding the actions of popes and bishops. I recently attended a talk on the subject of women in the church, and there are many scholars looking into the roles of women in the early catholic church. It will be interesting to see what they find out, and hopefully their findings will foster more discussion and change within the church.
Since I wasn’t raised religious, but I was in band/orchestra for the better half of my youth, I definitely associate music with spirituality.
ps I’ve never heard the song California Stars, but my biased opinion on states makes me want to hear it.
Well, I’m Episcopalian, and we have women priests who do everything the men priests (or gay priests, or lesbian, or everything in between priests) do, which is important to me, and part of the reason I like the Episcopal church. I enjoy the liturgical cycle, and the music, and the sermons (I “shop around” for a church that has both good music and sermons), but when I was living and working in a national park, I couldn’t make it to church, for about a year, and that was fine, too, because I always have felt equally or more spiritual outside, hiking, or reading, or watching or whatever, in nature. So for me, I enjoy aspects of attending a church, and the peace I feel going there while I’m stuck in a city, and can’t escape to the wilderness, but I also am equally or more at peace in nature (far away from cities and people and churches). So basically, church and being outside cultivate similar experiences for me, (except when people sing super off key, or are late repeating words we repeat in unison…). Or maybe they compliment eachother? Or sort of substitute for each other? But I suppose, some of what I think about- appreciation of creation, stems from what I learned early on in church- that God created it all. And that’s wonderful to me- as is evolution, and so many other things.
[...] portland. you’re totally retarded for this band. because they do that thing for you that lydia millet talks about, even if you don’t know [...]