A place to start
A few letters I wrote this weekend
10/28
I was high when I got baptized this summer. That's the G*d's honest truth. I had no expectation of being baptized or becoming involved with the Church that I moved my Buddhist-based sound therapy practice into. The building is an old movie theatre and no one wanted to set up shop in the old manager's office upstairs. They said it's because there's no windows up there, but it also has to do with the fact that one of the old pastors used to cast out demons in the closet. Now I sit in that closet in the rare gift of total silence and face my own demons. One of those demons has been the "spirit" of addiction. I use quotes because I'm still struggling with some of the spiritual language, somehow it seems to cheapen the experience instead of bring it to life. I started smoking pot 8 years ago when my cousin Joseph died suddenly. I needed something to soften the edges of life, and I will always have the deepest gratitude and reverence for cannabis and all she taught me. Namely, slooooooooow down! A few years ago I started to feel like I was stuck using weed (although I don't like to call it that...) to cope and escape and then quite frankly the effects began to turn negative. Even after a series of panic attacks, mania, and a few strange medical episodes where I genuinely thought I was dying, I still couldn't resist certain opportunities to get high.
(I asked my friends to take a picture of me in the “holistic dab bar” bathroom where I spent an hour trying to figure out if I was dying haha…ha)
I wanted G*d to dance and sing and move through my mind with ecstasy. Yes, but what goes up must come down and I'm finding these days that for me a calm and balanced life can't include this particular plant helper, at least until the relationship has been allowed to heal. Cannabis has such a deep feminine magic. One of the things that is really drawing me back to Christianity is the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels, the secret teachings of Jesus. If you don't know about them, basically it's a collection of texts that were intentionally left out of the canonized Bible due to their mystical and unruly nature. Jesus did not come to establish law and order it seems. They were discovered in a pot in 1945 (good timing!) and are still slowly coming to acceptance as authentic Christian scripture. In my very humble opinion (I skim through the scholarly books on the subject but again...I was a stoner for 8 years! haha) they definitely deserve our attention and really help to make sense of why the "Christian" world is the way it is. Start then with the Gospel of Mary. Not Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene who is called in the text Christ's most beloved disciple. What? I thought it was just 12 dudes? What little we have of this account (there are pages and pages missing) tells a story of Mary asking the Savior (space-maker) of the nature of spirit and soul. She is asking for clarification about where visions come from. She's trying to make sense of the religious experience. Jesus responds eloquently about the mind as the bridge between the two worlds and Mary seems to understand this as an invitation to silence. Jesus was a meditation teacher, he was free of the reactive mind. Ok so after that he ascends and we're left to witness the disciples arguing amongst themselves and trying to silence Mary's side of the story. You can read between the lines and see that what Christianity sorely lacks in the modern world is the feminine perspective. It's not a modern monstrosity, it's baked right into the bread (Lord help us to break it).
I wasn't really sure why I was getting baptized. I asked Bobby to explain it to me, and he did over a 7 hour canoe trip. I like the idea that we can be more casual with our reverence in the modern world, that we could be baptized simply because we want to wash ourselves clean of the need to understand. We were at Peacock springs, a truly magical place that I'm sure has had sacred and ceremonial use for 1000s of years. The peacock held deep mythos to early christians, they believed that their feathers were made bright in proportion to the poison of the snakes they ate. I'm a very unlikely pastor, but I'm starting to see what my role is in this crazy drama, I'm starting to get what the mind of Christ is about, and I suspect that it's going to require me to be unflinchingly honest about all the little things that have lead me here.
10/29
Ok, the "secret" is out! I don't know why exactly I felt the need to embark on most of this journey in privacy. There was a good bit of personal work I had to do to make sure I was even willing to put on the clothes. Part of that was dealing with deep spiritual classics like Nacho Libre and the Righteous Gemstones, while other parts was diving into the lighter-hearted works of the Gnostic Gospels, Martin Laird, and a handful of other wonderful Christian texts. I think now the best thing I could do would be expose every secret part of the process for what it is. To be radically honest about everything that lead me here, and to listen to anyone and everyone who wants to talk me out of this. I hope to build trust with anyone who will listen…that every drop of rage and hatred felt toward G*d or the church is valid, and actually a very necessary part of the process of finding freedom. I read somewhere that a man can learn more about G*d by hating him/her for 2 years than he can by loving him/her for 20. I certainly traveled through my season of total disdain for all things “spiritual” and am still prone to flickering moments of cynicism. I've found now that the tough exterior of that anger is the exact place where the medicine of contemplative practice can crack the armor, and beneath that armor is a beautiful, endless ocean of sadness. Joy comes too, but I grow weary of trying to articulate to myself the difference. I actually used to day dream about pretending to become a worship leader again so I could infiltrate some megachurch and take it down from the inside! Haha. I joke with Bobby that the reason I'm hanging around is to somehow dismantle Planningcenter (if you don't know what that is....you are blessed). But the real reason I'm here is to help with the sweet little gifts I've been given, to make amends for the several 1000 years of agony the "church" has caused, and to help offer some ideas about how we might do things differently. I'm not an expert on anything, you may say I'm a dreamer. I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one. Until then, we have some work to do and the most appropriate place to start is by shining light on the perspectives of the marginalized. Christianity lost its balance a very long time ago, when it silenced the voice of women. Let us learn to listen like Christ.
Thank you for reading.
From silence to silence, with great joy:
Corey
“... that we could be baptized simply because we want to wash ourselves clean of the need to understand.”
I love this perspective. I have waffled in my faith for a third of my life now (Doubter’s Prayer was a rope that I clung to during a particularly rough go; I’m a doubter by nature) and never felt worthy enough--or certain enough--to be Baptized. I want to believe, but have always felt like an imposter during any Christianity schtick. It’s hard to speak that language and not feel like a fraud. After all, how could one just DECIDE to dump all the eggs into the supernatural basket upon which your eternal soul rests without a mountain of evidence?
But simplifying it like you did, accepting uncertainty as one of the only certainties, is such a beautiful possibility. Perhaps the first step toward clarity.
Thank you for sharing this.
Would so love if you share readings related to feminine perspective in Christianity - agree that it has been missing and this is something that drew me further into spirituality/ oneness concept of God and a bit away from Christianity as I saw it presented, especially while I was in college years. Though, while I was at Duke, a Divinity professor told me that some Episcopalian theologians consider Mary (Mother) as the fourth and feminine aspect of triune god.. and that strikes as interesting. Regardless, I don't see much use in assigning gender to aspects of god, but like thinking of god generally as embodying both masculine and feminine energies in divine balance. Still, very interested in seeing more feminine influence in Christianity.