Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 10:19
To: Carolyn L Burke 
From: mnesbitt@inforamp.net (Mark Nesbitt)
Subject: Re: Carolyn's diary

Thanks!

In checking that the URL worked, I just glanced at an earlier entry in which you voiced your suspicion that most people in church were there for social reasons. Here's a data point, on a subject that is missing good published social/market research.

In '87 I was having a coincident set of crises that, added together like the sine waves of an army marching in unison across an ill-fated bridge, were producing some SERIOUS swings in my inner equilibrium.

In trying to figure out wtf was going on with me, it seemed to me that part of the problem might be bigger than my immediate capacity to comprehend and distill apparent "facts" could digest. (The facts included the death of my father, the miscarriage of a second child, real fractures in my marriage, a move, a big promotion that disrupted my colleagues' relationship with me, etc., etc.).

Like maybe I was straining under some of the big, collective tough human ideas like mortality, Tristan & Iseult myths of romantic love, the quest for identity, etc.

Like maybe I was feeling the effects of an underdeveloped spiritual side.

Maybe I needed to find a way to pursue some sort of personal journey of spiritual discovery. That might have been about "God", but I didn't think so. I thought that the "spiritual" was likely one or both of two things: 1. A cognitive construct for coping with our mortality and other big, shared themes that maybe sat at the unconscious because they were too darn difficult to accept AND think about. So maybe we do spiritual/contemplative things as a way of dealing with this lump of dense heavy matter in our unconscious. 2. A way of getting at stuff that didn't fit in our rational & scientific model of the world. Like connectedness of souls, connections across time, that kind of stuff. Nothing I believed in, just stuff I didn't have proof DIDN'T exist outside our ability to measure/detect it. And maybe it was that sort of stuff that was propelling me to describe huge multiple-standard-deviation arcs in thought and behaviour. I had no way of knowing if such things were true, just that maybe it was time for me to explore.

The question was, how? I didn't think the analytical/logical constructions and deconstruction of philosophers would help much. It seemed I needed a space to let my unconscious connect with these threads, whatever they were, and then if I relaxed, I'd discover whatever I needed.

So I figured one of the groups out there that organized spirituality would be a reasonable place to start.

I am a baptized and confirmed Anglican. My family went to church every Sunday when I was a kid. I attended Sunday school as a preferred alternative to sitting in a pew. I joined the church choir so I could hang out at the front with my friends, rather than sit with the family. When I was 14, my Dad broke with the church (after being parish treasurer, etc.) and I never went back. I never made sense of the church as a spiritual pursuit. It was a family/social obligation, and I coped as best I could. I never had a "religious" thought in my life.

So the Anglican church didn't seem like an obvious answer. At the same time, the Toronto-available alternatives didn't seem so great either. Like I couldn't really feature myself walking into a B'hai place of worship . . . the barriers seemed 'way too high -- that behaviour seemed so inconsistent with my sense of self. I was aware of congregations of people in the US that pursued some sort of secular-christian activities, that seemed like the sort of "easy-entry" groups that appealed, but I couldn't find anything like that here.

Anyway, after a time, it seemed like MAYBE the local Anglican parish was one place to start this quest. The advantages were that (1) it was conveniently located (2) trying it out was "safe", and din't make too much of a statement about who I was/what I was thinking.

It seemed possible that MAYBE I could start there, use the structure of its building and practices to spend some time away from my day-to-day rational self, and see where things led.

At the same time, I felt funny, a bit like an imposter/pretender, in planning to enter/use this "house of worship" for a personal pursuit that was most definitely NOT connected to a belief in "God", Jesus, or any other part of the creed. Was that being disrespectful?

Before going, it seemed to me that maybe the right thing to do would be to check in with the parish minister, explain what I was up to, and ask if it was jake with him to use the facilities this way. On impulse, I called up the parish, asked to speak to the minister, and explained that I sought audience. We scheduled something for a week away.

That felt good at the time, but as the day of this meeting approached, I realized that a whole RANGE of outcomes were possible. I was going to go in, and say something like, "Hi. I'm a reasonable guy, with some ill-defined spiritual questions. I don't believe in your God, it kinda seems to me like He's a useful social/culural invention, a kind of metaphor for the unknown. I'm trying to explore the unknown, and this might be a useful place for me to start. Is that okay with you?"

I could imagine that the minister might say, at one end of a spectrum, "Well, let's just close the door here. Actually, down at the seminary, all of us priestly types recognize that the Holy Trinity is just a metaphor, but it's a traditional and useful shorthand that we've inherited. Heck, yes, by all means, come on in, and here, let me share what I think . . ."

Somewhat more easily, I could imagine him rising up in righteous indignation and casting me out of the Lord's House like the blasphemor that I am. This prospect made me nervous!

In the event, he turned out to be a very reasonable 50-year-old. A pretty good listener and an open thinker. Pretty quickly, he communicated a number of things: "Your quest makes sense, and from my personal perspective, I encourage you. I doubt this is the place to start; I think you'd come in here, and experience something that would be flooded with memories and associations from childhood, which have nothing to do with what you are seeking. But you are completely 100% welcome to come if you'd like--what you are talking about is as valid as anything that anyone else is doing here. I'd suggest you go away, do your own thinking and reflection, and if there seems like maybe there's something useful for you here, my door will always be open to talk."

Cool.

We proceeded to have a wide-ranging conversation, where I finally got to ask him all the questions that had always confused me as a kid, but for which there was no available outlet.

The BIG one was, "What the heck are people doing, when they are praying? As a kid, we were put in a prayer posture and told to pray. There were group-prayer texts that said things like, 'Oh, Lord, we beseech thee' and stuff like that. But what's actually going on, when people are kneeling there, silent?"

His answer was, "Mostly, asking some Santa Claus-in-the-sky image to give them something." He went on to explain, under further questionning, that he himself was largely meditative and contemplative in prayer, unfocused and non-rational. That sounded "in the right direction" to me. He said he thought only a small minority of his flock were doing the same. He agreed that it was rather weird that the Church didn't talk much about this, provide any training or other aids to a different approach.

Cool.

He talked a lot about why people were there. Mostly, he thought people were there for social and affiliative/neighbourhood/habit/tradition reasons. He talked with frustration about people who hadn't found an outlet or power elsewhere in their lives, becoming active in church affairs simply because that was their opportunity. He implied that perhaps, many of the lay leaders were not particularly spiritual (an observation that certainly fit with my childhood experience).

So the data point supports your suspicion.

Like you, this seems just fine with me. Why disturb a system that's working for millions of reasonably-happy consumers, even if they are working under what seems to me like a very limited metaphor? Mostly, I'd LIKE every one of my neighbours to be imbued with a good dose of Judeo-Christian values, and I see useful social value and pay-off to me, in other people doing this kind of stuff.

Carolyn, I'm hoping this exchange is the sort of thing you are seeking with your Web posture. If so, accept these thoughts as a small thanks for sharing your own with me. If not, ooops -- get back to work, knucklehead!

Have a surprising day,

Mark

Mark Nesbitt                                mnesbitt@inforamp.net
President
Vertex Consultants Inc.
(strategy/marketing consulting, non-IT, non-Web)