Hot Damn

So, I got condemned to hell last Sunday.

This is not the first time that has happened to me, so I guess it shouldn't have been a surprise.  But it was.

Here's the background:  I had never been to church before.  By which I mean I had never been to a regular Sunday church service.  But before I give anyone the wrong impression, let me say upfront that I've had plenty of religion.  I was baptized Catholic and raised Culturally Catholic.  And the rest of my religious upbringing depended on whoever, you know, was in charge of me at the time.  Caregivers sent me to a fundamentalist Baptist summer camp for years, starting when I was just a tiny little baby girl, then later drove me to a Church of Christ summer school every day.  I was placed in the Christian equivalent of the Girl Scouts and memorized bible passages each week.  When I lived with my grandmother when I was an adolescent, she exposed me to the kinder, gentler side of Christianity by sending me to a Methodist Sunday school--although all I really remember from it was that 1.) the teachers were always really pleased that I was there, and 2.) I was the only child ever in attendance.  (It was a really rough neighborhood.)

And of course, with this combination of exposures, I spent my childhood entirely terrified of hell.  Probably until I was around 10 years old, I consistently had nightmares about hell, and when I wasn't sleeping, each waking hour found me positive that every imperfection--spiritual or no--was sending me directly there.  I broke a glass, so clearly I'm going to hell.  My parents are mad at me, so I'm definitely going to hell.  My first grade report card says that I talk too much in class, and obviously girls who talk to much get sent directly to hell.  It was a constant fear of the fiery tortures that awaited me in the afterlife.

Oddly enough, though, I was pretty scared of Jesus, too--what with the Holy Ghost business which is, after all, still a ghost and ghosts are scary to a child.  And also because I kept getting told that Jesus is the one who is going to send me to hell, so it created an atmosphere that was, you know, pretty lose-lose for a child.  In Option A, you're in a place of eternal punishment and suffering, but in Option B, you're face to face with with the one who has the power to send you to the place of eternal punishment and suffering, and who, according to the spiritual leaders of my youth, had a really itchy trigger finger.  With the picture painted for me during childhood, it seemed like Jesus was the last person I'd want to meet in a dark alley.  Or anywhere else, really. You know, since he was constantly poised to kick my ass.

However, that didn't end up turning me away from religion like one might expect.  Once I got older and I freed my psyche from the grips of hell, I was pretty obsessed with religion in general.  I studied different religions--ancient and contemporary.  I read everything I could get my hands on.  I studied and talked and debated, and pretty soon after college, I figured out what was true for me--the spiritual philosophy that not only seemed to be the only logical choice for me, but also the only one that felt right in my soul.  And no matter what challenges I've met about my spiritual beliefs, I haven't waivered from them in the slightest.  Because for me, they're totally true.  My position is the only honest choice for me.

So maybe I was a little complacent when I walked into the church last Sunday?  Or maybe a little naive? I mean, I was excited to go.  Or perhaps more accurately, I was honored to go.  It's not everyday that someone invites you to their church when they know there is absolutely no hope of converting you.  Then the invitation becomes a really intimate gesture--an offering of who they are when you're not looking, or maybe a glimpse into their past so you can see what made them who they are.  And that's a really big deal.  So I didn't take it lightly, and I was concerned about making sure to show respect and observe the correct social form.  Hell, I even thought to wear the only shirt I brought that didn't show any cleavage--now that means something.  And overall, I was open and ready and eager to experience this cultural ritual.

And then the sermon started.  The topic?  Hell.  And I pretty much started to cry instantly.

Now there are a lot of problems I found with the sermon:  cheap rhetorical manipulation, predictable vocal tricks that were supposed to simulate sincerity and religious fervor, the huge logical fallacy that there is such a thing as love under the threat of violence.  (As in, you better accept god's love right now, or he's going to kill your ass later.  Because that's not love--that's domestic abuse.)  There were lots and lots of things that I found unsettling, but the thing that packed the biggest punch for me, the thing that made my soul hurt the worst was the preacher's assertion that every life not lived in the name of Jesus was a life that was selfish and shallow, a life that was all arrogance and greed and ambition and laziness and self-service.  Basically, that every life not lived in the name of Jesus was completely without value.

As soon as the preacher started down this road, I got nervous because I knew it wouldn't end well.  Because there was such hate in his assertion.  I mean, if someone needs to say that everyone who denies Jesus as their savior will go to hell, then sure, go ahead because damnation is an integral part of Christianity.  So fine, damn it up if you need to.  But to say that every life not lived for Jesus is useless and insignificant and self-serving?  That's just pure hate.  And I guess I'm pretty fortunate in that I've constructed a life in which I don't need to stare hate in the face every day, but suddenly there I was, watching this man use clumsy rhetoric to completely discount the lives of millions and millions of people.

It was soul-crushing.  But I didn't know what I could do.  If I got up to leave, everyone in the room would see, and I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself or offend my hosts.  I searched inside for some feeling of righteous indignation, some sense of injustice that might summon Great Big Girl to come help me out, but there were no infringements of social justice, no labor abuses, no feminines that needed avenging.  Great Big Girl had no dog in this fight, so she was nowhere to be found.  Because people have the right to believe whatever they want.

So all I could do was straighten my spine and freeze my face into a mask while the tears rolled down my cheeks unchecked.  All I could do was keep my composure and look the preacher in the eye and listen to every last word he said.  Because if I was brought there to witness, then I was going to witness.  And as he completely discounted the lives of millions and millions of people, I felt the waves of hate crash against me, and I was filled with a profound sorrow the likes of which I had never felt.  I felt sad for each one of the millions of individual lives that were deemed worthless.  I felt sad that such supreme arrogance and presumption exist in the world--an unthinkable degree of arrogance and presumption that would delude a mortal man into thinking he somehow had the right to determine whose lives were valuable and whose were not.  I felt sad that such shameless hate exists in the world, and I felt sad knowing that there were probably people in that room who embraced the preacher's hateful ideas word for word.

But people have the right to believe whatever they like, and I know that.  And I believe that to the core.  So all I could do was compose my body and witness and allow the tears to stream out of my eyes so that the grief didn't tear me in half in front of everyone in the church.  That was all I could do.  I upheld my part of the social contract and made it through the service.

And of all things, I left the church absolutely desperate to touch someone, and I didn't much care in what capacity.  I could have been bracing them up to they could reach something off a high shelf or lying next to them in bed--I didn't care.  I even started thinking that maybe I could just go to the grocery store in town and introduce myself to people until someone shook my hand, because you shake hands when you meet people, right?  Because the only thing I could think of that would remove the film of hate I felt clinging to me, the only thing that could bring me back to what was right and true and good in the world was human contact.  Some kind of touch.  Because at the moment of touch, no matter how brief, you recognize the other person.  You acknowledge that you are both present in that moment, and whatever the context for the touch--a task, an introduction, a kiss--you're both in it together.  You're recognizing that the other person matters.  Because other people do matter.  Even if they don't have Jesus.

However, there was no touch.  And the grocery store introductions probably wouldn't have worked anyway in such a reserved little town.  So instead I sat in the bucket seat of a van and then later in my guest room as solitary as a scarecrow, and the profound sorrow covered me and sunk in bone deep.  It sounds ridiculous, but I tried holding my left hand with my right and stroking it and pretending it belonged to another person.  I tried talking to this imaginary other person in my head, thinking that maybe if I send out a strong enough psychic message, it would reach someone, anyone, and somehow start to restore the balance in the universe.  Because maybe one person whose existence was completely discounted by that sermon would receive the messages that I was sending out:  that she mattered, that her contributions to the world mattered, that her life had such tremendous value, no matter what her faith.

It didn't feel like it worked.

But if the sermon was supposed to send the listeners into a state of deep, solemn reflection, then I suppose it was successful because I spent the rest of the day seriously reflecting on my faith, and here it is almost a week later, and I'm still doing it.  However, all the sermon has done is make me even more certain that the path I've chosen is the right one.  It has made me even more confident that the thing that is bigger than the individual, the thing that can keep us from living selfish and shallow lives is the commitment to human connection.  I don't believe in a god.  The concept of "god" doesn't feel true to me at all.  However, I do believe in making choices big or small that connect us to other people, that make life better for other people, that eliminate human suffering.  To me, that is holy.

And I think about all the people I know who are doing this kind of holy work, people who have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place for other people.  I know so many people who work tirelessly for social justice, people who have entered service and healing professions, people who volunteer either formally or informally in their spare time.  I think about the people I know who have sacrificed time and effort and financial wealth to pursue work and causes that help people simply because it is the right thing to do.  People who risk arrest or firing to stand up for causes that will make the world a better place, people who take jobs that put them at the poverty level when they could have alternate employment that would earn them tens (and sometimes hundreds) of thousands more dollars a year because they want to use their skills for good, rather than for gain.  And sure, some of them are Christians, but in my circles, most of them aren't.  And no matter what the preacher says, every last one of them is doing holy work.

And I think about the vast network of women that I know, all of whom are ready at a moment's notice to drop their own concerns and their own lives in order to help a friend in distress.  And sometimes you're trying to ease a friend's heartbreak so you bring the phone to bed with you so that when you get the call at 3am, you can help ease your girl's Dark Night of the Soul.  But other times it's depression or mania, and you're talking your girlfriend down off the ledge and doing it without judgement.  Or you're holding your girlfriend's hand through a pregnancy scare, or you're escorting her to the hospital to get a rape kit done, or you're driving somewhere in the middle of the night to actually, physically rescue her from a bad, bad scene.  And you do it because you know that life as a woman is far, far more dangerous than people like to admit, and because it's your responsibility to make it easier for each other.  You know, and I see the women I know making sacrifices all the time in order to alleviate suffering.  How is that anything less than sacred?

But I think about other--let's say smaller--forms of connection as well, and they don't seem any less sacred to me.  Sex, for example--I think that's sacred, and not in the consummation of marriage sense, or the expression of true love sense at all, but in the sense of pure, honest human connection.  I mean, I'm not saying I think that every sloppy-drunk one night stand in the history of the world is sacred, but thinking about what sex is, the intimacy present there, the vulnerability, the trust necessary between two people in order for it to happen--I think that is anything but profane.  I mean, if you think about the basest, dirtiest sex you've ever had, the times where you unleashed the desires you tend to keep hidden because you think they're too strange or "deviant" or dark or vulnerable-making or whatever--you know, the desires that you maybe don't talk about with your friends, or the ones you don't reveal to your lovers until you've been together for months, or maybe years.  If you think about the times you've actually exposed and indulged in that part of yourself with another person--well, what is that but showing someone who you really are, showing someone your most secret self, and having them not just accept it, but embrace it and celebrate it.  Just because there's pleasure, that doesn't mean it isn't pure.  That type of connection, where you get to see that deeply into someone and you have a chance to celebrate their most private desires and therefore, their most private selves--that doesn't happen all the time, and when it does, it's transcendent.  It's divine.

You know, and all this blah blah isn't me trying to make out like this type of belief system is all unicorns and rainbows and what have you. Because like any system of belief, some parts are easier to live by than others.  For all of my intense belief that we all actually save each other through human connection, there are times when it completely terrifies me and makes me want to run away as far and fast as I can, even though I know that would be the wrong choice.  And yeah, for me this tends to happen when I start getting emotionally intimate with a boy--you know, when it gets to the point where it starts to cross over the line from Just Friends to Something Else.  So when a man loves me, or says he loves me, or acts like he loves me, or says one thing but acts a different way, my knee-jerk reaction is to just head for the hills. Because I get scared of historical hurts repeating themselves.  (See: The Faux-Boyfriend Phenomenon, among other things.)  But the times I've allowed myself to run away out of fear--those are the times I've just felt small and shallow and selfish.  Because it means I've lost faith in humanity.  That I wasn't brave enough to allow someone into my life.  That I was too weak to allow someone to be who he really is, rather than simply a projection of my fears and my past.  But when I can manage to stay open to someone in spite of the fear, that's when I see the sacred connection, and not just to that man, but by extension, to the world.

And the thing is, I feel in my soul that every word of all this is true.  That the only way we access something larger than ourselves is by really seeing other people.  That no matter the end result, no real connection is ever time wasted.  That we've gotta get each other's backs.  And that that's pathway to salvation, or the divine, or whatever language you want to throw on it.

I genuinely believe that if we all embrace human connection in spite of our worries and fears and crises of faith, we will ultimately find that heaven is other people.