Sunday mornings

Why should she give her bounty to the dead? 
What is divinity if it can come 
Only in silent shadows and in dreams? 
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, 
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else 
In any balm or beauty of the earth, 
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? 
Divinity must live within herself: 
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; 
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued 
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty 
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; 
All pleasures and all pains, remembering 
The bough of summer and the winter branch. 
These are the measures destined for her soul. 

~Wallace Stevens, from "Sunday Morning"

I will never stop being grateful for Sundays.

I never particularly enjoyed church.  As a kid I got some fun out of it, since the '80s evangelical Baptist church in which I spent my childhood Sundays met in the local YMCA, and the small lawless horde of us roamed freely throughout the fitness club climbing on forbidden equipment and belly-flopping onto the small square heavy equipment dollies to see how far we could roll across the basketball court, racing the stumping feet and yelling voice of Martie, self-appointed behavioral enforcer who charged around the "Y" trying to corral us.  (Whenever I imagine her purposeful stocky figure and short, severely parted steel-gray hair and face twisted into a permanent "I'm going to get you kids" scowl, forever in my memory looming over me like a heavy-breasted giant, my adult self still feels a thrill of childlike daring: RUN.)  But as the church relocated, and I grew out of my scampering and scraped-knee days, and we changed churches altogether to find one both closer to home and (as it turned out) less plagued by adultery, I stopped enjoying anything about the Sunday morning ritual.  The frenetic rush to arrive on time.  Boring, predictable sermons.  Troweled-on guilt.  Also -- as the grandiose, orchestrally synthesized, heavy-drummed '80s worship music petered into the two-chord, endlessly repetitious, ham-fistedly emotional love whining of the '90s and early 2000s -- murderously dull music.  And forced association with people I couldn't stand.

Still, as I embarked on my learning career at the tiny, conservative Christian Grove City College, I thought that would all change.  So many Christians in one place!  Surely there would be some amazing church out there.

Nope.

The megachurches with their seas of identical, vapid people and identical, vapid worship services and identical, vapid sermons.  The tiny small-town chapels with their intense participation pressure and strong smells of mildew and varnish, trying to keep up with the times through loud faulty sound systems and electric guitars.  Everyone smiling and grasping, trying to pull you in.

I resisted.  I hate volunteering.  The people were weird.  The songs lost all grammatical, musical and theological integrity, gradually collapsing into tacky pornographic husks of self-indulgence.  The sermons pissed me off, with their rising anti-multicultural, anti-gay, anti-sex, anti-liberal hysteria.  I've never been a morning person, so the early services were sheer torture, and the later services ate up too much of the afternoon.  I didn't fit in -- everyone at these churches effortlessly curled themselves into a bland, safe, prescripted white Christian mold, lots of long skirts and khaki pants and bake sales and saccharine smiles and pearl-clutching and unquestioning obedience to the subcultural dictates, with the absolute assumption that I wanted that mold too.  Sundays began to feel like a whole day spent crammed into the itchy, tiny, short-waisted, uncomfortably hot sweater that the women's honorary society I was inducted into my sophomore year forced me to wear for volunteering events which I detested nearly as much as I detested church.  A whole day wasted.

For awhile I continued to attend church solely for the opportunity to brunch afterward with my churchgoing friends, but as I remained relentlessly single while most of them paired off into careful, restrained, joyless Stepford couples, I began opting to sleep in.  The guilt was worth it, to wake up at 10:00 on a Sunday morning, drink my coffee in a blissfully deserted cafeteria, and stroll the loveliness of the autumnal campus alone soaking in the vibrant hues and the wet-leaf, dry-leaf smells and the creeksong while everyone else shifted uncomfortably on hard pews and dutifully sang their colorless worship to a God I no longer found in a building, a steeple, a sepulchre -- or a people.  I waved off my friends' urgent concerns for my spiritual health.  This was better.  This gave me a deeper communion than any wafer chips and thimblefuls of juice.  This restored my soul.

With my post-graduate relocation to South Bend, however, I heaved a sigh and renewed the search for a "church home."  As I launched a new chapter of my life in a new place far from home, my upbringing told me that finding a good church ensured my social belonging and shored up my faithful lifestyle.

I did try.  I tried a variety of denominations, from Baptist to non-denominational to Unitarian to Methodist to Presbyterian; I tried a variety of sizes, from megachurches whose stadium domes stretched over multitudes to microchurches whose twenty aging congregants flecked the sparse pews like scattered breadcrumbs.  I picked one or two churches and gamely attempted regular attendance.  I went to 20-something Sunday school classes.  I participated in discussions.  I went to brunches and Bible studies.

I hated all of them.  Everything felt as shallow and glassy as a reflecting pool.  Nothing fit, nothing stuck.  I had no shared sympathy with any of the people.  As my theology expanded beyond the confines of evangelicalism, and then Protestantism, the old stuffed-sweater feeling intensified.  It itched, it cut off my circulation, it bulged in weird places.  Finally I went full Catholic, in part because for a time I sincerely believed in the catechism, but also because Catholicism held room within its vastness for the odd liberal, heterodox, academically inclined philosopher, and because in a Catholic church nobody gives a shit about trying to get you to fit in.  They don't assault you every week with creepy welcomes and brightly intrusive personal questions and perky invitations to gatherings that broaden a network but never flower into real friendships.  You go in, sit down, participate in the liturgy, and leave.  I joined the list of cantors, which was perfect because there was never any practice and all the singing was solo.  Best of all, I could go to church on Saturday afternoons and have Sunday mornings to myself.

By the time I realized that I really just hate organized gatherings and regular time commitments beyond work, I no longer had to give any further thought to practicing religion.  Relinquishing an already-dead faith came as both a joy and a profound relief for a number of reasons, not least of which being that I could finally give up church without regret.  While my parents grieved (I was living with them when they found out; it was not our best moment), I moved forward into faithlessness with a quiet exultation.  For the first time in my life, I was totally free, and absolutely everything was unwritten, including how I passed my weekends.

I haven't been a believer in anything supernatural for over six years.  And even now, every week I wake to Sunday with the gladness I never knew in faith.  This day is mine.  This time is mine.  I can spend it as I choose, and I mostly spend it in simple, quiet rest, sleeping in as late as I please, performing mundane tasks around the house, enjoying my solitude and my Simon.  Instead of washing a conscience that is now always clean, I wash my clothes and dishes.  Instead of the Bible I read science books and light fiction.  Science podcasts and jazz albums have layered over the places where I once listened to sermons and worship music, and the spaces previously occupied by crackers and juice have expanded to accommodate homemade bread and a wide variety of wine.  My day.  My body.  My blood.  My time, my mind, my memories: The divinity that lives within myself, the better measures destined for my soul, the bounty I bestow upon this life. This life, this self, and no other.

I will never stop being grateful for Sundays.