Faith

2002-11-05 - 7:15 a.m.

A side effect of not drinking on the weekends is that Pookie and I are now going to church. We've gone twice now, to the MCC in Toronto.

Now, I'm agnostic, but I came to that from a really okay church experience. I was raised in the United Church of Canada, which is about as liberal as you can get and still be Christian. Church can be quite a calming and invigorating (I don't think those words are mutually exclusive) experience for me. I may not strictly believe in God, but I do believe in a lot of what Jesus was supposed tro be preaching: loving your neighbour, accepting and caring for the marginalized, respecting faith and those around you, so sometimes it's nice to be in a place for an hour where all the talk is pretty much devoted to those ideas and ideals.

The MCC, or Metropolitan Community Church, if you didn't know, is a relatively new faith community that has endeavoured to be inclusive and open to everyone. The focus is on the gay community, so that gay people of faith have someplace to go that -won't- try to convert them, but they try to be everything-postive.

I prefer the United Church - the MCC has some strong catholic and evangelical (at least ours does) roots that are unfamiliar to me - but for now this is a good alternative to the actual Catholic church, which isn't the faith for li'l old agnostic me.

My favourite part of church is the ride over to it: the subway cross the Don Valley, which means that you emerge suddenly from a dark tunnel and spread below you is the largest expanse of green space that you will find in Toronto, the largest piece of sky above you. It's easy to forget, when you live in a city, how limitted your world becomes, and so reminders of a wider world are that much more sweet.

I'm glad that we're going to church. For one thing, Pookie needs it. He lives more on a spiritual plane than I do, and his faith is what has given him strength through some of his darkest moments. He needs to touch base with God and ritual and song and prayer every now and then, if only to give him an anchor in the rest of the world.

For another, it's disturbing me...and this is a good thing.

I talked a few days ago about habits, and about how easily I fall into them. They help me get through day-to-day life without going crazy, but they also trap me. I moved from Halifax because I was falling too much into habit, and I think it's good for me to do that. It's a necessity, even. And I think my agnosticism has become a habit.

The first day at church was uncomfortable for me. Not overly so, and I can't explain why, but I felt challenged. Afterwards I was irritable and cranky, and had no reason to be. I think part of it was that the church seems very much a safe place for people to feel good about settling and compromising and closing their eyes to their difficult issues (WASP heaven for fags), but I think a larger part of it was that I was required to think about God, and for that hour I was unable to argue with anyone about it.

I've realised that I've stumbled into the area where it's easier for me to hold on to my agnosticism as a badge, a symbol of my identity, when really it should go the other way around: faith should come -from- my identity, not reinforce it. Does that make sense?

I need to remind myself that calling myself an agnistic is labelling myself. If the label fits there's no problem, but as I change and grow even the most apt label will stop fitting as well as it should. If I call myself agnostic more because it's easy than because it's true, I limit myself, and I close doors that don't need to be closed.

The thing is, I know that I'm a spiritual person. I need to remember that whatever I believe about the afterlife or lack thereof, or of a Creator or lack thereof, I have a spiritual, irrational, deeply caring and intuitive side.

So, it's time for some questioning of myself. I think I'll come out of it pretty much the same as I was before, with no solid answers and a lot more questions, but I think that's how it should be. I think I need questions in my life, even if I've decided I can never answer them. Answers are boring. Questions are alive.

The funniest thing about Church, though, is that our church needs Sunday school teachers, and I'm half toying with the idea of volunteering. I have some experience, despite my Godless existence, and I think it'd be funny to help indoctrinate all those young minds into this quaint monotheistic cult. What would Jesus do?

Cheers,

The Magus

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