changing my mind: part 5 of 6

 Part 5:  but the greatest of these is...

I read my little books and lived my little life and I studied my copy of the Bible.  This cocktail of research, study and examination has led me to a point where I have a lot of unanswered questions.  I have met and loved a lot of people who live in certainty.  Some of my best friends from my teenage years are probably praying for me right now because they believe I’ve backslidden or left “the faith”.  I see it differently.  It is true that I have left a belief system that told me I could be sure of lots of things related to God.  However, I am more certain that God is something than I ever was before.  I believe this, in part, because of magic, because of mystery and because I have seen the power of simple love.  I am certain that a life of love is a better way to live.  

Sadly, I’m also certain that the modern American evangelical church is not living a life of love.  Their collective support of multiple politicians who do not demonstrate or promote any of the “fruits of the Spirit” have led them to collectively dehumanize people groups who are different from them and to abandon the needy (the poor, the widow and the stranger).  Whatever theology they’re selling that makes them put on a red hat and cheer for a foreigner to be shot in the street is not a theology I’m interested in believing.  Surely there is no God in that theology.  There’s definitely no love in it and God is love…1 John 4:8.  

If anything, the modern American evangelical church has been my biggest motivator for moving away from a dead, loveless belief system into a life-giving, love-filled belief system.  I have been in the pew for many years of being told that certain politicians were “evil” and “demon possessed” and I was encouraged to vote for a particular candidate simply based on the fact that he was present in the worship service that day and that he claimed to be a “pro-life” Christian.  When I got older, I realized that I knew a lot of terrible people who claimed to be “pro-life” Christians and many of them frequent churches.  Worse, many of them were idiots and the church helped get them elected to public office.  

Perhaps this is tangental but since we are near the topic, one of the most embarrassing things about discovering how Evangelical Christianity was strategically hijacked by politics was realizing how the topic of abortion was weaponized by the political lobby.  This happened during my childhood and I saw it first hand in my home church.  When polls showed that Christians were not voting, political activists intentionally tried to mobilize those Christians by rallying them behind the topic of abortion.  Scripture was used out of context, basic tenants of Judaism were ignored and "Pro-Life" became a thing that all good Christians must vote for.  Literally, nothing else about a politician mattered when I was a teenager and I fear that hasn't changed.  My wife worked in the NICU with premature and very sick babies for over 20 years and what I learned through those stories has helped form my data driven beliefs about abortion.  It is far more complex than you have ever imagined, unless you are a NICU doctor or nurse, and one of the biggest hipocracies of Evangelical Pro-Lifers is that those babies that you say you care so much about become school children, adults and elderly citizens who continue to be worthy of love and support long after many stop caring about them because they get born.  They're so concerned with getting them out of the womb and then they couldn't care less.  Many Christians were used by politicians and that has only multiplied in recent years.  Embarrassing.  Ok, back to the topic...

I was in the pew when I was told, with passion, that I needed to love my neighbor as I love myself.  I was given persuasive illustrations of angels appearing to men and women in need to see how we would respond.  I was told that what I did to the least of those people, I actually did to Jesus himself.  

I was also in the pew when the minister told me that welfare was bad and that “if you don’t work, you don’t eat”.  I was told that some people were taking advantage of the system and that those people should be punished and that they should just go get a job.  I watched from the pew as those seated around me voted to take away free breakfast and lunch from hungry school children.  We love you in the womb, you're on your own after birth.

I was in the pew when I learned that the nation of Israel was told by God to always treat the foreigner and stranger well and to never forget that Israel was once “a stranger in a strange land”.  And then that same church collectively voted for an administration that promised to round up thousands of “illegal immigrants”, put them in cages, and send them back where they came from.  

I was in the pew when they passed out “WWJD” bracelets and told us that in every situation we should ask ourselves “what would Jesus do?”  Actually, I was in a folding metal chair in the gym during a youth group meeting and I was one of the leaders handing them out.  Then I watched as the church collectively supported political and social agendas that were the exact opposite of what Jesus did in the Bible they studied.  

I don’t believe in that kind of religion.  I don’t believe that the God of the Bible would look favorably upon what this country has been doing in the name of “Christianity” over the last couple of decades.  I believe in love.  

Which brings up another biggie.  Anyone on the outside of the echo chamber of the modern American Christian Church may find a more loving and grace-filled way of reading how the Bible talks about salvation.  One academically legitimate way to interpret that is something called “universal salvation”, the idea that all humans have received the love and grace of God whether they want it or not.  I want to believe this because it is the most loving possibility I can imagine.  My desire to believe it is a bias I am working on as I continue to read, study and live.  But wouldn’t that be cool?  

I actually heard an Evangelical argument against universal salvation that essentially boiled down to the idea that “those people” don’t deserve grace because they refuse to give themselves to God during their lifetime.  You know, the exact definition of grace, something that is given that no one deserves.  I also heard a counter argument that gave examples of workers hired at various times during a work day, some right at the very end of the day and they were all paid the same wages by the owner of the farm.  When the workers hired in the morning realized they worked all day for the same wages as those who only worked a few minutes, they were upset.  Oh, wait, that was actually Jesus telling the parable of the workers.  My bad.  (Matthew 20:1-16)

So, at the very least, it’s a possibility.  I love living in possibility.  It’s so much nicer than living in the land of condemnation and judgment.  I mean, regardless of your personal doctrine, wouldn’t you want everyone to have the best possible outcome if there’s an afterlife?  That certainly sounds like “good news” to me.  Sounds a lot like love and God is love, right?  

changing my mind: part 4 of 6

 Part 4:  the magic and the mystery

As a teenager, I was pressured into taking a class at church about how to “witness” to people.  This was a step-by-step program designed to have you meet a stranger and engage them with questions about their personal beliefs about the afterlife in a matter of minutes.  The conversation was invasive, pushy and very uncomfortable for everyone involved.  The class taught any wannabe pushy Christians how to not only engage in a conversation about eternal judgement, but also argue for a belief in God.  The entire premise was that you could learn to prove that Jesus was the only way to Heaven.  We were given talking points and potential arguments so that we could prepare for these conversations.  While I was far too introverted to ever follow any of the class advice, I did come away with the idea that religious beliefs could be argued and proven like a scientific equation.

Later in life, I came to understand that faith is the opposite of proof.  You actually don’t have to have faith if you think you can prove it.  The very nature of faith, at least as the historical Jesus presented it, is that it is magic.  I can’t prove to you that God is real, but I can feel the magic of God in my life.  Sure, I can teach you dogma and doctrine and lay out proof in historical documents about why those beliefs are held by a certain group, but I can’t make you feel God in this Chili’s.  Only God can do that.  Or Chili’s.  I’m honestly not really sure who would be responsible for that.

I believe in magic.  Not the weird guys making the Statue of Liberty disappear, but the gut feeling you have about something without any facts or data.  The coincidence of meeting a specific person at a specific time.  The feeling of a comforting presence in the darkest night of your life.  

If you hold Christian beliefs and believe the Bible, how could you not believe in magic.  What do you think a miracle is anyway?  When water was turned into wine, two guys walked on the surface of the water, thousands of people were fed by a basket of food and a couple of dead guys just got up and walked out of their graves, how is that not magic?  Where’s your data and science in those stories?  You can’t prove those things to anyone, especially when they don’t naturally accept your book and beliefs.  And please stop with the shroud of Turin and Noah’s ark.  No, you can’t prove that cloth was wrapped around the historical Jesus and they didn’t just find Noah’s boat.  Just like you can’t prove the walls fell down in Jericho or that a huge group of people crossed a large body of water and then a desert.  Proof is not why those stories are important.  Proof is not a part of the narrative.  Faith is.  Get yourself comfortable with magic.

So I have magic, but I also have mystery.  This may be my favorite part about what I believe now.  

When you hear the word “God”, what do you imagine?  I realize I’m a visual person, but I was conditioned to see a white haired older man, Caucasian, in a white robe.  “He” was usually above me looking down and he never quite seemed happy.  I probably even saw him with a judgy expression on his face.  He was stern and serious.  He didn’t laugh.  If you’re not a visual person, I’m truly interested in what you imagine when you hear the word.  

Church taught me to use words like “Father”.  This meant God was not only some sort of man-like thing, but that he also had a definite form.  A body.  I imagined this large man-like form, very similar to Michelangelo’s God figure floating on clouds and whipping his hands around while casually creating the Universe.  All of this, of course, is nonsense.  

A true God, who was whatever God was before the known Universe was created and is limitless in power, presence and knowledge, will not be contained in anything like a human body.  The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8).  That’s interesting, especially if you choose to take it literally.  Love is a feeling, an emotion and a chosen action.  Does this mean that God is your choice to love others?  The Bible also tells us that God is light (1 John 1:5).  Even more interesting if you choose to take that literally.  What do you know about light?  In the scientific world, there’s been a good bit of talk about photons in recent years.  Photons are light, or, they are the bits and pieces that make up light.  They’re puzzling though, because they sometimes behave as particles and sometimes behave as waves.  Even cooler, repeated experiments using the double slit method have suggested that photons behave differently when they are observed.  Right?  That’s just ridiculous.  How could these atomic level things know they are being watched by humans.  And why would they care?  HOW would they care?  What if it were true that God is light?  Atomic level things beyond description, defying rules and doing whatever they want.

Everything you see as a human is because of light.  Your very existence leans heavily on the presence of light.  What if God is the very presence that allows you to see and experience life on this planet?  

Is this what I believe?  Well, not exactly, but can you even allow yourself to wonder, what if?  You see, I believe that God is not anything we can think or imagine.  Everything about our human experience is limited by the fact that we are human.  We know for a fact that there are things that we cannot see, hear, smell, taste or touch that do, in fact, exist.  There is more to our world than our limited senses.  “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” to quote the Bible, just kidding, that’s Shakespeare.  God, too, is beyond our comprehension.  I don’t know much about spirituality for certain, but I am certain that whatever God is, is something you can’t be certain about.  God is a mystery.  

If you are the kind of person who hates questions and hates mystery, true belief in God may not be for you.  Maybe it’s better if you stay in a subculture that assures you that everything can be proven and everything makes sense.  You’ll enjoy arguing with people and judging them.  I believe magic and mystery is a better, more loving way to live.  

changing my mind: part 3 of 6

 Part 3:  Literally, the Bible (and life)

Outside of my own childhood echo chamber, I had the freedom to read the Bible without bias.  Ok, that’s not completely true, I was definitely still biased.  Twenty or so years of indoctrination is hard to shake.  But as I read the Bible and engaged with the questions, I now had the space to allow that cognitive dissonance to breathe and even expand.  I actually had a funny experience in my final run of teaching Sunday School to adults that became a help to me.  

Somehow I was asked to be a Sunday School teacher on a monthly rotation.  This must have been 15 or more years ago.  I taught one Sunday each month to a married couples’ class.  At this point, I was still on the outskirts of the Baptist echo chamber, but I saw this role as a way to encourage other adults to ask their own questions and perhaps even nudge them towards the outskirts themselves.  I had complete freedom in what I taught and I took full advantage of that.  One particular lesson I taught was about the importance of questions when it comes to faith and how those questions can help you move toward an even stronger faith.  I used the many questions of Jesus to illustrate the value of questions over answers.  

There were several members of the class who were very supportive of my different approach to these lessons.  A few of them let me know how much they appreciated my perspective that day.  The following Sunday, a different, more conventional teacher in the rotation built a lesson off of my lesson, stressing the importance of “things you should NEVER question”.  I found it pretty hilarious and while I did not agree with this teacher’s take on questions, I did find it interesting that they included “the virgin birth” in their lesson as something we should never question.  I mean, how could you not question that?  That lesson had the opposite intended effect on me as I then began to wonder why the virgin birth was a necessary part of Christian church doctrine.  I don’t have an answer yet, by the way, and that’s ok.  

Not long after that, a new “Minister of Education” came on staff and when he found out our Sunday School class was just doing their own thing without using any of the provided teaching materials, he shut us down and brought in a new teacher.  That's how you keep the echo going.

I read the Bible through way back in the day and then did it again when a church we attended as a family did a shared read-through of the Chronological Bible.  That one really opened some doors of thought for me.  Rethinking the authorship and timeline of the structure of the Bible allowed me to look for outside sources for information.  How old were these texts?  What languages were they originally written in?  What was the intended purpose for writing them down and then eventually choosing them to be a part of the Biblical canon?  

(That pastor did his best to use his Sunday morning sermons to address any cognitive dissonances that arose during the scheduled weekly readings.  Again, this had the opposite intended effect on me as I roundly dismissed his explanations and let my own questions linger.  Angels were having sex with humans and created a race of giants?  Really?  (Genesis 6:2)

Once you begin to see the entire Biblical document as a work of literature instead of a finished book handed from God to Moses (or your local minister) things have the ability to change a bit.  Anything that man is involved in can get tangled.  I remember a youth minister telling me that while the text was written by man, it was inspired by God and God was powerful enough to make sure that the text remained unchanged and pure over the course of time.  That made sense to me as a person who already believed God was much larger and more powerful that we had made him in our heads.  

Then I learned how the King James Version of the Bible was written and translated.  I find it very funny when many small, fire and brimstone churches here in the South talk about the KJV like it was a digital recorder straight from God.  I know people who refuse to go to churches that use other translations.  Sadly, these people haven’t stepped outside of their echo chambers long enough to know that the KJV was actually just a bad combination of the traditional Biblical translations mixed with margin notes from translators and scholars and then put to a nice little Shakespearean accent in a way that was 100% designed to not upset the King of England, who was paying for it.

When I learned this, there was more cognitive dissonance.  How can the Bible be the inspired “Word of God” and be tampered with by man?  How do you figure out which is which, I mean, without having your own certificate of Biblical scholarship from a renowned university?  

And what about that “canon” I mentioned earlier?  Some readers of the Bible are not aware that the books and verses that make up the particular Bible they are holding were chosen from a much larger collection of books and verses that humans had viewed as “the inspired Word of God” for hundreds or thousands of years.  Some dudes got together and decided to evict some of those books.  Some books had chunks of chapters or verses modified or deleted over the years due to discrepancies in different copies of the same text.  I’m not saying the Bible isn’t great or even inspired, I just think it’s important to know something about the origin of a book if you’re going to base your entire belief system and life on it.  

There’s also the thing that is popular here in the South and in Southern Baptist doctrine about the Bible being interpreted literally.  I used to get the gist of what they meant, or I thought I did, but what do you do with literality when you’re dealing with a document that contains a large amount of poetry and stories that are clearly parables or illustrations?  Come on, Solomon, or other ghost writers of the Song of Songs, were her breasts literally two deer in a meadow?  Metaphor is a thing and has been for a long time.

Speaking of the Song of Songs/Solomon, why do we have a bunch of middle eastern erotic poetry in our sacred book if the entire neighborhood of Protestantism is so ashamed of and afraid to talk about sex?  See?  Questions are important.  Questions are a necessary part of education.  Just remember, education is bad because it can make you too liberal.  (Satire for those of you not really paying attention.)

In addition to the Bible, I also absorbed a lot of other written thoughts on spirituality and religion.  My bookshelf would have you believe I’m an ordained minister.  Which is funny, because I actually am, we just don’t talk about that unless you want me to officiate your wedding.  Donald Miller was an early favorite as a spiritual writer.  His book “Blue Like Jazz” woke up a part of my recovering Southern Baptist brain forever.  Before podcasts were really a thing, I downloaded and listened to sermons by Rob Bell and devoured his books.  If you’re still living inside the echo chamber, you might see those names and say, “well, of course, you have terrible beliefs, those are liberal people”, but I also read Francis Chan and other hardcore conservative writers.  And, as a good Southern Baptist youth, I grew up on a healthy diet of James Dobson, Tim LaHaye and Philip Yancey so I definitely needed some free-thinkers to balance that out.  

So I read both the Bible and other spiritually themed books but I will argue that my more recent thoughts and beliefs about the Bible did not come solely from the questions raised by those.  Some of what I currently believe comes from the experience of living life.  I’m not sure I can explain this well, but let’s give it a try.  

As I have lived through a lot of Mondays and Thursdays and Saturday mornings as a human, I have felt a lot of emotions and had a lot of thoughts.  I’ve interacted with other humans and enjoyed friendships, benefitted from community and I’ve also seen some really bad behavior.  I’ve had brushes with narcissists, ego-maniacs and people who were just plain mean for no reason.  Having to learn how to safely interact with these people while also understanding that some of those negative qualities will certainly sometimes surface in my own actions, forces me to consider how my life is a part of a larger society and human experience.  I have felt, for lack of a better example, that I am working as a small part in a much larger human machine, seemingly for some larger purpose.  Some of these feelings align perfectly in my head with a few of the teachings of Jesus that are recorded in the Bible.  

In my highest highs and lowest lows as a human, I have never felt alone.  Lived experience has convinced me of a presence that feels like warmth and softness and love.  I have no historical documents or scientific data to prove that presence to you, and I very much do not need the proof because I have felt it.  I realize how unspecific this description may be, but feeling that very real presence in the world is the best reason I have found to date, to believe that God exists.  And that’s where magic comes into my worldview.

changing my mind: part 2 of 6

 Part 2:  The question is coming from inside the house

My life as an academic started after I broke ties with my childhood church.  I have a distinct memory of sitting in a deacon’s meeting at that church and listening to a discussion about whether or not the church should continue to give a small amount of money to a church member and college student who was studying Theology at the college level.  The student had chosen to go to a “liberal” university and was going to a church where there was a (go ahead and clutch your pearls) woman minister on staff!  The church had been providing a few hundred dollars each academic year to cover the cost of “books” but we needed to see if everyone was still ok with supporting this cause because they didn’t want to support a “liberal” education.

In that discussion and in several other discussions I was present for in that church, I heard the warning that we needed to be careful about people becoming “too educated”.  There were direct warnings given to college students to be wary of liberal college professors who might question their beliefs.  If you sit in one of their classes, you might lose your faith!  I remember being cautioned about one of the universities I was interested in attending for art because the school had a reputation of being “too liberal” on religious topics.  

When you’re in your first half of life and you’re neck-deep in doctrine, warnings like this seem helpful.  I didn’t even waste the money to apply to the liberal school and I thought I was making a moral decision at the time.  When you’re in the second half of life, it’s so much easier to see that kind of warning as cult behavior.  Young people are taught to be fearful of education.  They are encouraged to learn within the institution, not outside of it.  We were supposed to learn the Bible from our pastors, not actual Bible scholars.  Isn’t that odd?  It definitely begs the question of why the church organization would be fearful of data.

When you’re not filling cognitive dissonance with doctrine, your questions might even lead to more questions.  Why did I believe I had to interpret the Bible or a specific verse a certain way?  I believed that because I had a succession of pastors in my early life that all basically taught the same thing - one way of interpreting the Bible.  But where did they learn that specific interpretation?  

As an academic, I am bound by the requirements of my university to conduct academic research on a regular basis.  This means that a certain percentage of my overall workload must be academic research in my area of expertise.  I work at a public institution so I am free to research most topics.  However, those who choose to teach at private religious universities must sign a statement of belief and agree to not conduct research in areas that fall outside the belief system or creed of their university.  One result of such a limitation is that Biblical scholars and others immersed in the world of religious studies at these private institutions may only conduct research that plays well with the belief system of their university.  This limits what they can study, write and publish about in their research.  Once you understand this, it comes as little surprise to find that a particular seminary continues to produce echoing voices in ongoing research.  The echo chamber creates a cycle that remains intact and future generations of pastors and ministers will continue to be educated with the same echoes from the past.  

These echoes are repeated in the sermons and in the educational materials purchased by churches within the same belief system.  The echoes continue as students listen and learn from the echoes and until they eventually become pastors and ministers who are products of the echo chamber, who then pass the echoes along to their congregations, filling any cognitive dissonances with the same familiar echoes.  If your Southern Baptist pastor was educated at Southeastern Seminary or Southwestern Seminary, guess what?  Your Sunday sermons are echoes of that system just like mine were.

Good Christians in my church were encouraged to study the Bible.  Heck, we had Sunday School on Sunday mornings, Discipleship Training on Sunday nights, Bible Study on Wednesday nights and that Sunday morning worship service was the icing on a very big cake of weekly Biblical studies.  However, all of that “education” came from inside the church.  There, it could be monitored and controlled.  No one dared to use those two words, but let’s call it what it was/is.  Remember, when I started to go off script, I was shown the door.  The exit door, apparently not the one Jesus was knocking on during Vacation Bible School.  

In my years of growing up in the church, I saw many potential problem people dealt with quietly.  A teacher or church leader would quietly schedule a meeting with a person who was asking too many questions or teaching something the church didn’t like.  I get it, it’s their club and they get to choose who they play with.  They even had the writings of Paul to back them up when they needed to kick someone out.  If you are still a friend to the system, you may have bristled at my use of the words “monitored” and “controlled” in the previous paragraph.  As a person who was on the inside of many meetings and “talks”, I can assure you those words are accurate.  Echo chambers don’t work unless all the voices are the same.

Each church creates its own subculture and then works really hard to keep everyone in it.  I grew up in the era of churches becoming megachurches.  If you wanted to keep everyone around, you needed to offer more than just services on Sunday.  You needed a gym so the youth can play basketball and maybe they’ll come to the church when they get bored.  You need to have all sorts of classes about finance, budgets, successful marriages, how to raise Godly children and somehow figure out how to use the Bible to teach all that.  You just HAVE to have a coffee shop.  Of course the proceeds will go to the church.  Many churches also starting having “merch”.  You can buy your t-shirts and canvas tote bags with the cool new logo on it in the lobby on your way out.  Don’t forget to pick up the pastor’s latest self-published book while you’re there.  Don't worry, he will be sure to mention his book several times during worship services so you don't forget!

That’s starting to sound cynical, but sadly, it’s also a true depiction of things I’ve experienced many, many times.  All of these things are done to provide all you need within the church.  Many churches offered after-school and daycare, some offered K-12 schools and all offered to provide you all the education you could take, as long as it came from within the echo chamber.  

Here's a true confession:  I chose to pay a crap-ton of money to put both my kids through a private Christian school from Kindergarten through 12th grade.  Why would I do that if I seem to have some sort of beef with churches offering K-12 education?  There’s a really long answer to that if you’re interested, but the short answer is pretty simple.  I was a certified K-12 teacher and I’ve had a LOT of interaction with the public school system.  The particular school my kids attended provided a better quality education in a more love-centered environment.  It’s ok if you think my views are hypocritical.  “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” – Emerson.

changing my mind: part 1 of 6

 Part 1:  Doors and Disonnances

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?  

No, I mean, like, really changed your mind about something big.  Do you know that it’s ok to change your mind, even as an adult?

Just so you know what you’re signing up for with this one, I’m about to share some of my personal spiritual/religious beliefs and questions with you.  If you’re not interested, I totally respect that and I hope you have a good day.  If you’ve always wondered exactly what was wrong with me, well, today may be the day you find out!  Get a beverage and read on.

I was raised in a Southern Baptist church.  Present every Sunday for morning and evening services and very involved in all the things.  I was active as a teenager in Youth Group and as soon as I graduated high school, I was drafted into teaching youth Sunday School.  I was a youth leader and the unofficial youth minister for about a year when our church was between real, paid staff members.  At a certain point in my young adult life, there were only two days each week I wasn’t actively engaged in some church activity.  

As a young child, I heard the Vacation Bible School message of Jesus standing at the door and knocking as a call to salvation.  I was taught about the absolute importance of having a “personal relationship with God”.  I was taught “theology” and Bible stories for as far back as I can remember, including some very formative years when I was preschool age and my mom would give me an offering envelope to scribble on to keep me still and quiet during the sermon.  (I still draw like a madman during worship services to this day.)  It’s an image that lives on in my head.  On the floor on my knees facing the back of the sanctuary.  The rust colored fabric padded pew was my drawing table, the “Baptist Hymnal” was my drawing board.  The envelope, carefully and quietly ripped open gave me much more drawing space.  My mom’s ball point pen was far superior to the tiny mini-golf pencils provided in the pew pockets.  I’d love to have those drawings today.  Sorry, I got distracted.  Where were we?

As a young adult, I thought I had learned the Truth, with a capital T, and it was my responsibility to share it.  I taught what I had learned about the Bible along with what I was strongly encouraged to teach through church provided booklets and study guides, to youth, college aged classes and eventually adult Sunday School classes.  Some of those study materials eventually started begging questions in my brain.  I specifically remember asking the pastor of our church a clarifying question about the words of a popular hymn and asking why the words seemed to call Jesus a metaphorical name that the Bible seems to assign to Satan.  (Those hymn words were “He is the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star, He is the fairest of ten thousand to my soul” if you’re interested in doing a deep dive on the other “Morning Star”.)  The pastor confessed that he had never questioned the words of the hymn.  Then he took one of his really thick books from the shelf behind his desk, flipped through it, read a few things quietly, and then laughed and told me I probably shouldn’t worry about it.  

That question was a turning point for me in a very big way.  Without my knowledge, that question put me at odds with the pastor because he was embarrassed and he labeled me a risk as a question asker.  Within a year, I was no longer teaching Sunday School nor was I affiliated with that church, which, in hindsight, is a turn of events I’m so grateful for.  That question was the moment my eyes started to really open.  Maybe I didn’t know the Truth after all. 

Nearly 30 years later, I have continued to be very interested in spirituality and religion, especially when it comes to the Christian flavor of those things.  I consider myself a Christian, but NOT ONE OF THOSE KIND of Christians.  I’m the kind that looks at the life of Jesus and truly tries to live a life that follows his teachings and his behaviors.  I know that I’m not at the end of an evolution of faith and that I am still curious and still learning every day.  I also know that I do not believe the same things I was taught to believe in that Southern Baptist church.  For me, the Truth has changed.  

In that early religious environment, I was taught that the Bible was God’s holy word, inerrant and quite literally true from cover to cover.  Every argument ended at the Bible back then.  A verse would be brought from memory, a Greek word would be explained and any argument would end abruptly.  If you could not accept that the Bible was the final word of Truth then you were not just wrong, but you were also uneducated on the Bible or perhaps a heretic.  Disagreement was not an option.

I was taught a specific doctrine of belief that indicated that Jesus was God, born of a virgin mother, that he lived a sinless life and that he was tortured to death as an intentional blood sacrifice for my sins (and, of course, the sins of all of humanity).  This doctrine extrapolated that the most important thing I could do in life is pray a prayer of repentance and “accept Jesus into my heart”, followed in importance by then making it my life goal to convert all sinners, or to use the lingo, to “save souls from Hell”.

Oh, of course, that meant there was a Hell.  A literal place of eternal punishment complete with fire, brimstone, tormenting demons and every soul who died without “asking Jesus into their heart”.  This doctrine was all based on the interpretation of Scripture (The Bible) and when it didn’t quite make sense, we were then encouraged to have faith “like a child” (Matthew 8:2) and to just not worry about it.

I mentioned the nearly 30 years that passed.  Life has a way of teaching you things through experience.  Another really good way to learn things is to step outside of any echo chambers you may be living in.  When I left my home church, I felt the immediate irony.  The gap between what they said and what they did seemed to grow larger every day.  Without my closest friends whispering reassurance of verses and platitudes at every twist of life, I was actually free to think my thoughts and attempt to live my life with my own faith in God.  The questions rose more and more frequently, as did the disconnect between what I had been taught and what I was seeing as reality.

The first part of my life was classified perfectly by Richard Rohr in his book “Falling Upward”.  I was now in the “second half of life” when the brain needs to make sense of things.  Those disconnects, or cognitive dissonances, need to be closed if one is to truly grow and become what they were created to be.  I think I got to my second half a bit late, but I was at a point where I was willing to ask questions and be genuinely curious about things so maybe that’s not late, just right on time.  Strangely enough, one of the best things I did to untangle all that doctrine was to read the Bible.

I had read the Bible cover-to-cover several times as personal challenges.  You know how I am with stuff like that.  But each time I had read it, I had done so with a lot of prior assumptions about what things meant, the things I had been taught in that first half of life.  When you have a head full of doctrine and you read something in the Bible that doesn’t make sense, that moment of cognitive dissonance is immediately filled with what you were taught in church.  For example:  Early in Genesis, God seems to refer to itself as “we”.  I wondered why there would have been a need to make that pronoun plural.  What does that indicate?  That gap was immediately filled with the doctrine of the Trinity.  If you accept that there is a Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you don’t need to question the “we”, in fact, it makes perfect sense.  But what if, for a few minutes or a few days, you don’t fill that dissonance with doctrine and you just let the question linger?  What might that mean about any potential personification of God?  

I found freedom in that most recent reading.  I was able to be genuinely curious about things that were glossed over or completely left out of church sermons.  Those questions led me to read more materials by scholars and religious thinkers who may be located somewhere other than inside my early church doctrine machine.  

gallery ratings

I have an idea I’m going to give you for free.

At least twice each year I’m reminded that there’s a website called ratemyprofessor.com where students who do not have a degree in education can go and anonymously rate me on a scale of 1-5 according to my teaching, my personality and even my level of “hotness”.  (Are the chili peppers still a thing?  I know they were a million years ago.)

If you regularly read my posts, you’ll know I’m not a fan of anonymous student ratings, especially when they are school-sanctioned and given weight in faculty reviews.  It might surprise you, then, to find that I don’t mind the ratemyprofessor website.  Of course, students can misuse such an online tool but the written comments usually let you know exactly how biased the ratings are.  I would guess that if students still look at things like this online, they can get an idea of whether or not they should take a class from a certain professor based on other students’ experiences.  My students don’t have much of a choice, they’re just kind of stuck with the guy who teaches Sculpture.  

My mixed feelings about anonymous ratings will not prevent me from sharing my great idea with you.  After all, the ability to hold conflicting ideas in one’s head at the same time is some sort of reflection on their capacity for complex thought, right?  

I think artists need a similar resource.  I would like for someone to start a web presence called ratemyartgallery.com.  I’ve checked and the domain seems to be available as of this posting.  I’m not suggesting that artists would be more reliable or mature than students, but I believe such a platform of helpful information about galleries and museums would be beneficial to exhibiting artists.

An image from one of my favorite exhibition spaces, Public Works Art Center in Summerville, SC

10 out of 10 experiences there.  Highly recommend the people and the place.

Artists are dependent on the current exhibition system that is in place.  In order to stay relevant, have their work in front of people and in my case, meet academic research expectations annually, artists need to exhibit their work.  Much of this work is created over years and months with excruciating detail and care.  Some artists feel as if their creations are as sacred as children.  Most artists invest a significant amount of money in materials and time to create a single work of art.  Many artists spend just as much time, effort and money in preparing, packaging and delivering these works of art to exhibition spaces.  There, the artists leave their sacred contributions to this world in the hands of strangers and, too often, unpaid interns for safekeeping.

I have gone to pick up work from an exhibition space and found my work half-hazardly stashed in a storage closet, unwrapped, leaning against other artwork.  I’ve left work carefully bubble wrapped and labeled only to pick it up with no trace of bubble wrap or packing materials.  I’ve had work shipped back to me with badly chipped paint in several different areas of the sculpture and no trace of damage to the box and no evidence of paint chips inside the box or packing materials.  This work was clearly dropped on a concrete gallery floor and quietly packed and shipped back to me without a word.  

On the other side of that coin, early in my career, I shipped several drawings to Chicago behind glass and several of the pieces of glass were broken in transit (and that’s why we don’t use UPS).  When the gallery guy saw it, he informed me and then meticulously removed the glass and replaced it with Plexiglas free of charge.  I’ve also had viewers knock sculptures off pedestals, chipping the paint and the gallery director has apologized like they ran over my dog and offered to file an insurance claim.  

I’ve dealt with curators and gallerists who didn’t show up to the gallery when I drove several hours to meet them.  I’ve dealt with many who were late.  I even had one who had no idea where my art was when I came to pick it up.  It was later found - you can’t make this stuff up - in a kitchen under a shelf with pots and pans.  I’ve joked that when I’m old and don’t care anymore, I will write a blistering tell-all about the art world, naming names and pointing fingers.  I’m pretty sure it’s just a joke.

I’ve also dealt with curators and gallerists who came in on their personal time to let me in the gallery.  Some came in early and late while I worked on murals.  They took me to dinner, offered snacks and coffee and even found me free places to stay while I was in town.  These people who live a life of art have said some of the most insightful and encouraging things to me.  Some of these people have become second family and I love them dearly.  

Any artist could go on social media and brag about a positive encounter if they wanted.  A few of their followers would see it and all would be well.  But no artist can afford to go negative publicly.  Dude, I could tell you some stories and name some names.  Doing so would burn bridges and permanently close doors.  And just to be clear, we’re not always talking about a person.  Sometimes it’s just a place, a town or a campus that an artist might need a warning about.  Some venues are just downright predatory.  But again, you don’t want to be the artist who talks smack.

Enter www.ratemyartgallery.com.  Your all-inclusive place for artists to share their experiences and ratings of exhibition venues with one another.  This resource could be checked before an artist pays an entry fee for a juried show, before they drive 4 hours to deliver work to a locked gallery and before their fragile work becomes irreparably damaged.  Artists could then make a more informed decision.

Sure, an artist with an axe to grind could go there and leave an untrue or inflated negative rating, but when 50 other artists left positive ratings, any artist curious about the gallery would have a lot of information for balance.  Galleries and their workers would be held to a higher standard of conduct.  They would document how work arrived and make sure it left the gallery in the exact same condition – and packaging.  They would make sure that even a student intern knew the correct painters tape to use on bubble wrap so that it doesn’t tear the plastic and render the bubble wrap useless.  Not that I’m a little obsessive about details like that.  

I haven’t checked in a few years, but back in the day, a student could go to my rating on ratemyprofessor and see that they might enjoy my class but they were going to have to work hard.  With a new crop of students appearing in my studio in two weeks, I think that’s good information for them to have.  When those students head out into the art world all wet behind the ears and eager, I’d like for them to have access to similar information about galleries.  Maybe you want to provide that?  I’m a little busy.

making fun, part 2: pickup

Ok, we're back for the second part of our Virginia adventure.  About a month and a half passed since we arrived back home near midnight after dropping off our sculptures in Norfolk.  We made arrangements with the nice people at D'Art Center to pick up all of our work about a week late because I couldn't take two days off the week before the studio sale.  They were very accommodating and since we were all very busy with summer things, we didn't really talk about our trip or plan anything until last minute.  

Cathryn had a conflicting trip and couldn't go.  At first, Elena didn't think she could take the time off of work so we weren't sure she would go.  Violet was out of school this time, so we added her to the group.  As the travel dates approached, Elena decided she couldn't miss it and worked it out so that she could go.  We had no plan, but we still had our info from the first trip and this time we decided we were going to base our operations in nearby Virginia Beach.  This was a decision that happened in seconds in a group chat.  Truly on a whim, a question followed by a bunch of "yes" replies.

So after I got up at 3:40 am to run in the dark with what I was sure was a black bear (long story about running for another time) we piled in the car at 6:00 am and made our first bathroom stop about 2 hours away at the beaver gas station.  We also loaded up on road snacks and coffee.

After driving North Carolina from border to border, we arrived back at Good Earth Peanuts in Shippers, VA.  The "open" sign was on and the door was unlocked.  Finally, we stood in the presence of all those canned peanuts we saw through the window.  We came for the boiled peanuts but we spent the most money on the chocolate peanut butter peanuts.  They are even better than you're imagining right now.  Good Earth Peanuts.  They have a website.  I'm already out of what we bought and ordering more soon.  So good.

We love a good photo opp.  If the fine folks at Good Earth want to sponsor us and pay us in chocolate peanut butter peanuts, we're open to negotiations.

Thanks to the last minute researching by Katherine, she led us to the 2D Cafe and Eatery as soon as we arrived in Virginia Beach.  It was a great find.  The cafe was the perfect place for visual people who love coffee.  The whole place was painted and decorated to look like a line drawing and the Turkish coffee was so good.  

From there, we were winging it.  We bumbled our way to the oceanfront boardwalk and started exploring.

If you're ever asked the question, "do you want to get matching henna tattoos?" the answer is always "YES!".  Trust me on this.

Soon, we were actually on the beach.  Toes in sand.  Feet in water.  It was great.  I love the beach.  We all love the beach.  It was now later in the afternoon and our collective energy was dwindling.  Another thing we all share in common is that we don't sleep well the night before a trip.  The sugar, the coffee and the beach helped to keep us going but I'll be honest, I was starting to fade a little.  It was time to eat.

Katherine and I took a little run on the beach while Elena and Violet soaked up the salty air and then we Googled our way to a local burger joint called Duck Dive.  It was a cool place with good atmosphere and we had the best waiter.  He even took this photo of us and the expression on Elena's face is everything.  She was responding to something he said.  Good times.  

Re-energized by the food, we decided we weren't done for the night.  We headed back to Atlantic Ave for a walk along the stores.  This was my first time in Virginia Beach and while the layout is different from Dirty Myrtle, the stores were basically the same.  There were lots of families out and it felt very safe, but the same hawkers were out trying to lure shoppers into their stores and then bargaining with them on prices to make a sale.  There were also street performers, which I thought was a nice touch, especially for a Monday night.  If you click on the photo above and zoom in, you will see a dude on stilts.  There were several bands and performers on the streets.  Very nice.  

Our reason for being out was to find Dippin' Dots.  It was almost a wild goose chase, but eventually we found some.  Dippin' Dots ain't cheap.  Geez.  

The beds and pillows in the hotel were angelic.  Maybe they felt better because we were all sleep deprived and exhausted, but either way, we slept very well.  Violet needed to get in a conditioning run, so Katherine, Violet and I headed out at 8:30 am for a 3 mile run along the coast.

I've mentioned our love of coffee, right?  I get credit for actually doing a little research and finding this one.  We decided to go to Java Surf for coffee and breakfast.  Food was good, coffee was great.  It was also located in the ViBe arts district along Virginia Beach.  As artists, we enjoyed a little walk through the area after coffee to see some of the cool art.

While we were walking, we ended up bumping into a Bad Ass Coffee by accident.  I've been wanting to try the one in Surfside Beach, SC and even though we had all just finished our first coffees, we were immediately ready for 2nd coffee.  

After that, we continued to explore the beach area.  As we walked and ran while in town, we kept seeing a big sculpture in the distance but we never ended up getting close enough to it.  We decided we needed to check it out.  I'm not a huge fan of the parking situation in Virginia Beach, but we found spot and did some more walking and exploring in search of the sculpture.  

It was a huge bronze sculpture of King Neptune made by an Italian guy in 2005.  Really cool.  

There were a lot of details on the sculpture, but it was hot.  

The weather on our first trip was perfect.  75 degrees, blue skies and light breeze.  The weather on this trip was more normal and realistic for late July.  It was hot, humid when the sun broke through the clouds, it was blistering.  We enjoyed a lot of cloud cover, but my head still got pretty burned.

We took a different route back to the car and found this cool candy shop.  I love candy.  The bright colors, the sweet taste, many of my childhood memories involve candy and sugar.  My dentist is on speed dial.  When Katherine said, "Y'all go sit in the ice cream cone chairs and let me take a photo" I was all about it.  

Apparently Katherine loves candy too.  The shop was a whole vibe.  And I think Katherine got some sort of edible pen and paper candy thing.  Very strange, very cool.

Driving around looking for parking showed us several places we wanted to check out.  One was this cool record store.  It was loud.  I thought I was just being an old man but after a few minutes, everyone was wanting to get out because we were all overstimulated.

The hours were clicking by and in the early afternoon we had to remind ourselves why were were in town.  We had a 20 minute drive to Norfolk where we needed to pick up our sculptures.  Here's maybe the coolest thing about this whole experience:  Elena didn't just get a sculpture accepted into this national level exhibit.  She freakin' won it.  

She was awarded the Best in Show award for her excellent sculpture.  Oddly, Katherine predicted this would happen two months earlier.  That's Elena with her blue ribbon!

Then we played a game of art and luggage Tetris in the car.  Once we had everything packed so that I could still see out of the windows, we pulled back onto the road for the long drive home.

We all agreed that we wanted to arrive home earlier than we did last time.  Arriving at my house at midnight still meant another hour drive for Elena and Katherine.  As we made our meandering way through the day and as we enjoyed conversations on the drive, it started to not matter so much what time it was or what time we'd get home.  When Katherine floated the idea of slowing down to stop and eat at a favorite sit-down restaurant in Florence, SC, everyone happily agreed.  Redbone Alley has been a sculpture delivery stop for a while now.  It also helped that Emily lives in Florence and this would be an opportunity to maybe see her.

Elena really likes to color.  Still no story, just facts.

And there's our group photo with Emily.  She put the little one to bed and then hurried over to sit and chat with us for a while.  It was wonderful.  

After another couple of hours on the interstate, we rolled up into my driveway around midnight again.  When I steered onto the exit ramp near my house, Elena audibly lamented that our trip was nearing an end.  Everyone agreed, even though we were all exhausted.  

That's the thing that doesn't come through with photos.  The road conversation.  From early in the morning to late at night, this group always has great conversations.  Some talks were silly, some were very deep but all were enjoyable.  Each individual was able to put aside things like headaches, stomach aches, personal concerns, future worries and minor dramas and be fully present in heartfelt conversation.  The group was more important than the individual.  It was beautiful.  

Often, I find myself doing the heavy lifting when it comes to conversations.  I know that long pauses on road trips equal boredom and that's a slippery slope to falling asleep.  I often have to initiate conversations or ask crazy questions to get people talking.  With this group, however, I was able to relax and just be a person in the conversation rather than a person feeling responsible for the conversation.  A couple of times, Elena called me out for not saying much during a particular conversation.  That was because it was going along fine without me adding anything.  I could just listen and absorb and think.  My lack of input was a good thing.

One of our travelers told the group just how grateful she was to have gone on this trip and to have had these experiences.  It was a real moment.  Especially for a guy like me who says how much he loves to be alone and has done so many trips like this solo in the past.  In fact, it was almost a year ago to the day that I went on a solo trip to install a sculpture in a pretty remote area.  I remembered texting Cathryn and Elena about something funny that was happening there and I told them they should be there.  They responded that I should have invited them.  I had just never considered that someone would want to go.  Turns out community can be better.  

From the beginning of the first trip, one of the main goals was "fun".  No normal human wants to drive 14 hours in two days, so how do you make a drive like that fun?  These cool travelers demonstrated how.  You wake up super early and you know you're not a morning person, so you make sure to have a really good coffee and you do things that will ensure that you are in the best mood possible.  You say yes a lot.  You make suggestions and you're agreeable to what other people want to do.  You choose to see things as opportunities for adventure instead of a chore.  Elena and I didn't want Dippin' Dots and we were exhausted from lack of sleep but were we up for a long walk to try to find some?  Absolutely!  And because of that agreement, we saw live bands, a guy on stilts and we watched a guy juggle on a very tall unicycle.  

If you're the person who does the research, you also jump on board for the unplanned side quest.  If you're the person who doesn't plan, you take advice from the planner seriously.  If someone needs to run 3 miles and you only wanted to run 1, you go run 3 with the group.  And yes, it means you stop for a bathroom break even when you don't need to use the bathroom.  

As it turns out, that's what makes a good community.  Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.  Everyone had different wants and needs.  Alone, we have to suffer and make adjustments because of our shortcomings.  Together we work as a unit, allowing those with strengths to rise and take the wheel, making someone else's weaknesses null and void.  Things become smoother, easier, better and more fun.  It's so hard for me to type that.  Ugh.  Freakin' community.  

Taking it just a tiny step further, having fun is a choice that you make.  It is a state of mind.  The next time you have a chore ahead, give that a thought.  It is within you to turn that chore into fun.  

So, we took our artwork on a 7 hour delivery drive and then picked it back up after the exhibit.  We spent 28 hours driving, took a lot of precious time out of our summers and paid outrageous prices for gas.  But what we'll remember years from now is how much fun we had drawing in the sand on Chesapeake Bay, walking through so much beauty at the botanical garden, getting matching henna tattoos, trying Turkish Delight, reading sketchy sayings on t-shirts and shorts in store windows, laughing together in the car and getting closer as friends.