Community Church Hour

In an effort to take a hiatus from talking about the increasingly frustrating world of politics and the debt ceiling I'd like to talk to you about Jesus- and by Jesus I mean my religious experiences. And by religious experiences I mean my general lack thereof.

My long-time girlfriend is a reform Jew and I am an I-went-to-church-but-didn't-like-it Catholic. For the longest time I have always been repulsed by the idea of organized religion and the idea of belonging to a religious community in which doctrine is taught and discussed. My experiences in church have always been rather dim and feature me sitting in a pew and going along with everything until there's a sudden political charge or quasi-offensive statement made. It all has a way of taking my focus off of thinking about God and the nature of the universe in theological terms and instead makes me think that people have a great way of abusing something really fascinating to forward their own interpretation.

Don't get me wrong here, I fully support peoples' decisions to belong to congregations and communities. I am going to disagree with their interpretations pretty vehemently at times, but on the whole I totally understand the merit of belonging to a church. I actually really got it after I went to synagogue with my girlfriend for Shabbat services this past Friday.

The beginning of the services were framed by a general meeting of people in the front lobby with various snacks being offered. It was amazing to watch my girlfriend's mom greet people and these people in term hugging and talking to my girlfriend as they tried to catch up on her life. See, these were non-relatives who were genuinely invested, in one way or the other, in her life. Coming home really has extra meaning when you belong to such a close community. When services began, I was introduced to the family seated in front of me, and as the Rabbi began to speak the father gave me a light tap on the knee and said "we're glad to have you here." Now, I don't know if he thought I was jewish or was simply happy to have people at temple, but the outward expression of welcoming was certainly a sincere one.

As a whole, I don't find much to disagree with the reform movement's view of God. So the entire service was, as a whole, something that allowed me to reflect on my own personal beliefs. I appreciated that. See, my own view holds that religious texts are not only open to interpretation, but scrutiny, and I like to take times to really think about what I believe in. This service let me do just that. Now, there are some ritualistic things that I don't necessarily see as necessary, but nothing was overtly contentious to me.

After the service there was yet more visiting with people who had known my girlfriend since she was a little girl. The atmosphere, as a whole, was one of the first times I felt a sincere and deep sense of community among members of a congregation. And maybe this was a result of me allowing myself to see it rather than clothing my experience in an anticipatory veil of cynicism. In any event, I really got it and it made me, to a degree, wish I had something like that. Don't get me wrong, I have great friends and the teams I have belonged to have established great senses of community. But this was something all together unique.

I could of course think about the whole thing as an exercise of Durkheim's communal effervescence, but that doesn't quite seem to apply. The whole tenor of the service was a reverence for God through the existence of human life and the community as a whole. The community itself is the subject of worship, in a very large way, and I think that's pretty remarkable.

Now, I wont be in line to convert any time soon- my cynicism for organized religion and my overriding sense of private and personal belief are just too high an obstacle to leap now. But the experience really does get me thinking about the kinds of communities we can belong to, and how genuine they can be. Maybe a little bit of my cynicism about organized faith has taken a hit. I think I "get it" a little bit more.