a visit home

This weekend I traveled to the wide spot in the road called Otwell where much of my family lives, and where I lived for many of my kid years. Every Sunday, for a hundred years or so, I occupied a pew at the Otwell United Methodist church, sitting next to my beloved grandma Taylor.  I spent what sometimes felt like endless hours staring at the stained glass window in the picture above. The sermon would get boring, I would get twitchy, my grandma would give me half a stick of juicy fruit gum and something to draw on. Sometimes I would fall asleep against her, and sometimes I would just look at the window. It became as familiar to me, in every detail, as the cracks in my bedroom wall. I especially loved the colors of the sky and rocks and water. My adult brand of spirituality was sending out shoots and roots, even then. There were certain hymns, too, that echoed the picture in the window and spoke deeply to me.

This is my father's world, I rest me in the thought,
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas,
His hands the wonders wrought.
and,

When through the woods and forest glades I wander
I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze;
Then sings my sooooooul...........

I would really belt out these parts, no doubt entertaining every person around me with my seven year old gusto.  I can still hear my grandmother singing them next to me, or singing them quietly as she worked at home. I didn't yet wrestle with the idea of god as a father rather than a mother, god as a man up in the sky versus god as...everything.  I understood why we were singing about rocks and trees and mountain grandeur because I loved the outdoors.  I am still happiest when I'm in a woods or sitting on the side of a mountain or high up in a fire tower looking out over the rolling hills.  As an adult, I've thought many times, that *this* is where I feel closest to whatever spirit dust or star stuff we are made of.  Our childhood, for the most part, was spent in the outdoors, on a very loose tether. Lots of freedom, running wild like dirty, little, barefoot animals. Even reading, which I loved, was done mostly outdoors, under a tree on a blanket spread on the ground, on a porch swing, or on one of my grandmas red metal porch chairs that I could make gently, meditatively bounce.

In any case, I could believe in a god who created the grasses of the field and the birds of the sky, the water and the rocks and the wind.  I could relate to those songs and understand the feeling of god whispering to me through the leaves of the trees. Even at a young age, though, I got really stuck on the idea of a wrathful god who killed babies and sent plagues and destined people to burn in hell for all eternity for some screw up here or there. What kid wanted to think about a god who wanted people to kill a lamb in sacrifice, much less one's kid?  Yuck.  The stained-glass version of Jesus gently carrying the baby lamb and enjoying the slippery feeling of bare feet on mossy rocks seemed more likely.

As an adult, I have been told that I cannot pick and choose the parts I like in a religious belief, and toss the rest. And yet I see no compelling reason why I shouldn't listen to my heart when it comes to what seems loving and Christlike or Buddhalike or Mohammed-like.  Why I shouldn't accept the parts that are echoed in the beauty and sense of all of the natural world--not all things fair, but all things in balance-- and reject the things that seem hateful and dark. I've never found a convincing reason why I cannot embrace the gentle (albeit overly caucasion) Jesus in the window,  and still reject the dogma and ritual and judgment and hellfire.