Tuesday, December 09, 2003
(3:02 AM) | Anonymous:
Leading with bodies: Or a bodily confession
This was supposed to be a response to Adam's Happy Immaculate Conception post, but I am not sure what it turned into. Regardless, Adam's post is incredible and you need to read it.
I have no home. At least in the ecclesial sense I have no home. I grew up in an atheist household (I hear my father, Craig Anthony Smith, is still an atheist) during my early childhood, attended a Presbyterian church during the transition from childhood to adolescent and finished up in the Nazarene church during my teenage years. It was in this church that I became a very passionate Evangelical and I even earned the name "Preacher" in my gym class. Before that time I had been a very weak, weepy child and it was this evangelical spirit that gave me strength to stand for something. I traded in my tears for the Book, my Nirvana tapes for Carmen (My God why did you forsake me?). I had always been picked on, I was always a bit too eager to learn at such a young age, I am sure a bit know-it-all and becoming an Evangelical allowed me to see my persecution as part of being a Christian though it was merely mean spirited bullying.
My mother, during my thirteenth year became a pastor which is also the year I remember first becoming conscious of my guilt concerning my sexuality. I spent so many nights masturbating (I had few friends besides my computer) and so many Sundays at the altar trying to pray away my sexuality. The resentment I had with God that he would not give me control over my body and the resentment I had with those around me, especially girls, that I could not have control of their body (the singular "girl") led me to become even more entrenched in my efforts to save souls, to conquer their spirits and eventually control their bodies so they would feel as I did. Please don't misunderstand me, I didn't want to have sex with them, I wanted them to never have sex as I would never have sex (so it seemed to a confused, angry thirteen year-old). To make them feel the same self-hatred at wanting to fuck and not being able to that I did.
God saved me from that. Sort of.
I discovered punk rock. I began to repeat these beautiful lyrics of God and God's love over and over again as I would dance alone in my room, pretending to be a rock star, or as I would dance with other people when I worshiped at the foot of real rock stars. I began to feel that this was the real church. It wasn't dead like our Sunday services were, though I am sure if you ask anyone besides me the "Spirit moved" there all the time. I looked weird, I did discover punk rock afterall, and the looks these old men and their boring wives gave me made me feel as if this couldn't be the church that God wanted and more importantly it wasn’t the church I wanted. I felt that I was a stain on their beautiful church building (though it really wasn't very beautiful, it was Protestant afterall). So I fought against that church trying to get them to become more open, that is to become more like me, to be open to me. Still, I knew that I could do it better. I would have a church of the same. I would make it so I would never have to hear my mother weep over the rumors spread about what she did with her body and the senior pastor’s body, merely because she was a woman pastor. Though, admittedly, I would never know if anything actually did happen.
I gave up on fighting the Nazarene church when I came to college. I had attempted to lead a church the way I would do it after my family took a new church. My mother let me build the youth group in my own image and I failed so miserably that I knew I couldn't fight anymore, what would I do after I won? Craig Keen (partially my father's name) impacted me as he has impacted all those who have studied under him and I loved God deeply. His teachings lead me to put down my sword (the Bible?) and to wait on the Lord. Even though my vulgarly tattooed body was a stumbling block to many of my fellow students, I kept quiet most of the time. I let people say what they will about God and the church and Nietzsche and Arabs and so on and so forth. I had, realistically, given up hope for the Nazarene people and I could only wait even in moments when I didn’t want to.
I did have one moment of hope. After the infamous "movie chapel" I felt like the school would have to respond and would respond intelligently and carefully. I felt revolution in the air, the wait was over. I was crushed when there was no revolution but instead the machinery of the conservative administration moved silently to silence the few good professors at the school and the student body, who are not as deaf as they put on airs about being, sat by and did nothing. There was no revolution. Nothing got better at all, no things got worse. Craig (my fatherly repetition) took his body and moved it to California and I only have his specter in my memory; what a pale specter I have. The one thing standing between my Fr. Craig's atheism and myself was Craig’s fatherly body standing behind his phallic podium, speaking in his deep voice about the Christ's crucifixion/circumcision/castration and the advent of his coming. All the while that image of the crucified one was hanging behind my father and I imagined it crying out, "Father, why have you forsaken me?"
I had no Oedipus complex; I wanted to weep at my father's feet, to serve him only and to have him carry me to the Promised Land. I had been in the Promised Land once, when I first believed in God. At the age of six I jumped out of my mother’s car to give my only dollar to a homeless man walking through the parking lot. I was going to buy candy with it but when I saw God walking there I believed in the Kingdom and I didn't want candy, I wanted him to have my only possession. I have a lot more possession now and Craig didn't lead me back, instead, he left. So I wept at my own feet, by myself, which is to say without a church.
Something about losing Craig's body, losing my father a second time (repetition again) made me long for a church. I needed God (did I need a Father? I hope that’s not all this is!) and if I had to go to a church to be with him, so be it. I wanted to become Catholic, but I couldn't. I felt as if I would be betraying my mother (and maybe my God) and the loving tears she has shed over my faith. So I became Episcopal without actually becoming Episcopal (my membership is still listed in Princeton, IL at my mother's church). I drink blood and eat flesh with people I don't know very well but who are very excited to have my young wife and I in their church. I say thanks to the Virgin Mary. I try to pray the prayer book, though it goes against my anarchistic tendencies. I proclaim the mystery of our faith, and I still shudder sometimes at it. I sing the hymns off pitch because they are too high, and I love how irreverent it makes Hayley and I when we laugh at my poor voice during service. It's not the Promised Land but my body is somewhere besides alone, my tears feel as if they are shed with the church everytime it prays "Lord have mercy" during supplication.
I miss my father though, I miss his body. I wish, desperately, that everyone else did as well. I say all of this, and I apologize for the autobiography, to add one thing to Adam's post. We repeat these prayers (which, as Christians, is always a prayer begging God to come) in our heads, we put our bodies places (which, as Christians, is always in hopes that we run into hers) in hopes that the rest will follow and that rest is God.
