Cry Like A Baby

Shosha and I did one of our favorites. Plus, you get to hear us fretting in the background. Yay!

Back together again

So I've decided to blog again at least until the break is over...hopefully after. I need to get in the habit of writing again. I seem to have forgotten how. Words don't dance for me like they used to.

Yesterday I went to the Governor's School reunion party. It was fairly overwhelming at first. I had never been to one as I've always been away at school or adventuring or other such nonsense. So I met Mark and Will in the parking lot (I was terrified to go alone) and we went in. I felt so old. The lobby was bursting with a really intense (kinda smelly) energy, and I found myself searching rather dazedly for familiar faces. The only people from our class were me, Mark, Will, Thomasina Sarah, and Jonathan, though we met up later with our juniors, Philipp, Amelia, Rachel, and Anna Kate. And then there were just swarms of other people to wade through.

I saw George. We talked for a bit, but then he was taken off by autograph seekers. Evidently he's written a writer's manual. I talked to Madame Glass and Dana Howard , but mostly just meandered around campus with old friends, thinking of a time when things were simpler.

GS has changed a lot. I hadn't realized how much. Doug (an 03 kid now an RA) said that they'd had to really crack down on kids because of poor grades and insincerity. Perhaps this was inevitable, but I couldn't help but feel guilty as someone led in Dr. Uldrick to the gift unveiling. This may not have been what she meant...just another cool place for rich(ish) folks to send their kids.

It's funny how the memory works. We were allowed to wander around for about an hour before getting spotted by the security people as strangers. I kept smelling things that took me right back. A stairwell that smelled like a crisis. A hallway that smelled like a late evening aimless walk. An office that smelled like acceptance. And get I walked into another hallway that I knew I had passed through a thousand times and had no memory of it, startled to realize where I was.

It used to sort of depress me to know that GS and the life I had there can never be replicated. I am beginning to feel similarly about Bard, though perhaps less so. I thought that I could never go back. Never be that person again. Never be loved in that way again. Never shine like that again. But that's only part of the story. I came into my own in those buildings. I allowed myself to be important in that place. I took such ownership of my existence. After a rather isolated existence at Liberty, I found myself surrounded by friends. And not just everyday friends, but people my own age that held qualities that I didn't know existed. People whose hearts spoke to mine. It may sound horrible, but until I went to GS, I had very few friends that I admired, certainly I was not surrounded. I've never felt at peace with my generation (their music only hurts my ears!), but at GS I was.

But I take some comfort in knowing that who I became there didn't stay there. Maybe there have been times when I forgot that. I stayed out long and late last night with old friends, several of whom I had not seen in 5 or 6 years. And it felt like home. I felt at home in myself. I didn't have to try. I just was. I feel similarly about my time at Bard, but I was older then. GS was my groundswell, where my new life began. Those people I laughed and played with last night...we shared a bit of light...somehow related by a post-genetic imprint. I felt such love for the experience and (most of all) myself.

All in all a good night. I wanted to explain to my friends at W-O. I wanted to share but knew that such things couldn't really be relayed through words.

Sprinkled and Dunked

This is probably one of my favorite hymns of all time, and like most of my favorite hymns, it is a redemption song. It's one of those "come on down to the altar and give your life to Jesus" songs.

Among the favorites:

Great is Thy Faithfulness
Jesus Paid It All
Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross
Abide With Me (not an altar call song, but a funeral one...equally great)
Just a Closer Walk with Thee
Higher Ground
Farther Along
It Is Well With My Soul
In the Garden
Have Thine Own Way
Open My Eyes, That I May See
Take My Life, Lead Me Lord
Old Rugged Cross


I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that I have done the rounds of all the major denominations of Christianity (and been confirmed in two), but I've probably spent the most amount of time in the bosom of the Southern Baptist Church (a bosom from which I have long since self-weaned). It's always a bit of shock when I go to various Baptist functions with family or for students/friends, and I spend most of the time squirming uncomfortably in the pew trying not to look offended. Until they start playing the music, that is. And then I remember that this is my spiritual groundswell. I remember that as a ten-year-old, I walked into my pastor's office and told him that I was ready to accept Jesus into my heart. I wrote a heart-felt testimony and my father read it tearfully at the altar as I waded into the fake river in a white robe and purple swim suit. And because the music meant so much to me even then, My mother and I recorded "I Have Decided To Follow Jesus" in the balcony of the church to be played while I was dunked. I would love to get my hands on that tape.

Recently, we went back to our old Church in Clemson to listen to the wonderful Roger Lovette (most sensible, poetic, liberal-minded Southern Baptist in existence) who had come back to town and out of retirement from Alabama for some anniversary or another. And, by God, if he didn't make me cry. Truth be told, I was in a bit of an emotional pickle. This was only shortly after I came back to South Carolina after my NYC fiasco. I just sat there and sobbed. Roger Lovett isn't as slick as most Baptist preachers, but he knows how to wrap your heart around a story and make it feel like he's just talking to you and no one else. And to top it off, just to make sure I knew my place, we sang "Just as I Am, Without One Plea" and I had I not had some iota of self-dignity, I would have stumbled to the altar right then and there. There I was, wretched and broken and wounded of spirit. And there it was, such easy forgiveness. Thankfully, I stayed in my seat and sang the damn song.

I'm not embarrassed by my faith, if that is what one can call it in its current form. It's real and not fabricated so I don't feel the need to apologize. Maybe it is just self-delusion, but it doesn't feel like it. I could never in good faith go back to any of the churches that sprinkled my childhood and profess to believe what they were selling. The God of my childhood has been unmasked and there isn't really a return to that, though I have to believe that there is a future for my faith. I've searched for many years for a spiritual community that rests easy in both mind and heart with little luck so far. I miss the storytellers and mesmerizers of my childhood, just as I miss their easy answers and security. Liberal Christianity seems cold and sterile, but I suspect I just haven't found the right place yet. It's a problematic place to be.