God Crawl: Part One

Faith! Who knew!

I never expect to cry as much or as often I do. This is an embarrassing truth, because as a theater-artist with clinical depression, I should really know myself better. I cry all the time. I have always cried all the time. I cry when people sing. I cry during dog food commercials, when they show an old pitbull looking lovingly at his equally old person. I cry when I get stuck in an intrusive thought loop, unable to stop imagining my own old dog being hit by a car, or my family drowning in a flood. These thoughts serve no purpose, other than satisfying some strange need to acclimate myself to inevitable loss by tasting just a little bit of it first. Still, I can’t seem to not think them, just as I can’t seem to not cry each time I do. What an anomaly! I think, even as it’s the fourth or fifth time I’ve cried that week. I wonder what’s come over me?

All that to say, I shouldn’t have been surprised by my experience this morning at the Unitarian Universalist church. I wept as soon as the service began. It was partially because of the architecture– how fantastic it was to see ceilings so tall in New York City, to watch the filthy, winter light diffuse into pinks and reds through stained glass windows. It was also because of the simple reality of my situation: I was at church. Yes, it was a church I’d never been to in a faith I don’t practice, but I was at church, nonetheless. It felt warm and pretentious and meaningful and inappropriate all at once, and I couldn’t soak enough of it in. I felt as though I’d walked into a diner full of those revolving pie cases, and realized I was ravenous: immediately hungry, and immediately fed.

I grew up religious. Our home was an environment where God wasn’t a certain, singular thing, but a thing revered and ultimately respected in their many forms (though it was his many forms when I was young). My first faith was Catholicism, passed down to me from my mother and her mother before that. I learned my “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” from her, repeating each line she spoke until I could make it through the entire thing on my own.

When I asked her why I had to learn the prayers, she told me that one day, they would comfort me. I’m still waiting for that day to come. What is more true, perhaps, is that it comforts her to know I know them, and it comforts me to know she’s soothed by that. It’s enough for me. For both of us, I hope. Now, more often than not, my brother and I use the lines from “Our Father” to riff about where our actual father is.

Our Father, Who Art in Glendale,

Broken is His iPhone.

Much to my mother’s dismay, my Catholicism didn’t stick. I found, in its place, an alternative church run by an ex-broadway star who sang show tunes and did grand jetés throughout the sermon. I fell in love. Where the Catholic church left me nervous and ashamed, this new spiritual community gave me hope. They had a group for tweens, but I preferred to perch at the top of the staircase (a fire hazard) and listen to the sermon with the adults. I was 11. After service, I’d wait in the reverend's office and pick apart his words. What did you mean when you said ‘we are all God?’ What part of us is ‘God,’ exactly? Is it all ‘God?’ And if it isn’t, what’s the other stuff all about?

My reverend was patient: a beacon of generosity and good humor. He answered all my questions thoroughly and with respect, even though, as previously mentioned, I was 11 and occupying his office without consent. I stayed with this church until I was 18, when I went off to college and began the Godless, hedonistic life I live today. When I came home to visit I’d go back, but the magic from the staircase was gone. The location had changed, the congregation dissipated, and I, probably most importantly, was no longer the same person. What once felt like a rag-tag group of artists convening in a black box theater turned into something ornate and classy and inaccessible to me. I didn’t recognize it. The last time I went, an elderly woman in a fur coat asked me if I was new, and told me I could find cookies downstairs after service. I’m not new, I thought. You’re new. She was only being kind, but I never looked back.

Though I now consider myself without religion, I have remained spiritual. This is something I hate saying, in part because it makes me sound like an asshole, and in part because I worry it doesn’t actually mean anything. I’m not religious, I’m spiritual. I buy my own sage and create my own rituals, unlike you sheep-le, who prefer to color inside the lines.

What I mean, more specifically, is that I went from organized religion to a dice-roll sampling of wellness-of-the-week spirituality. I practiced yoga in a borderline appropriative manner that I now regret. I did sound baths and sang in Kirtans (again, regret). I learned to meditate. I read dulled-down philosophy books and convinced myself I was different after each one. I journaled. I tore through meaning-making practices like some kind of alternative Pacman. I became a caricature of myself. I was (and am, barring only my current location) a barefoot angeleno jumping from Kundalini to cold plunges, all the while criticizing the homogenous power and influence of major religion. I did not see the irony. I was always hungry for the feeling I had on that staircase, and I never dared to try church as a solution.

The reason was simple. I found religion embarrassing. It was conservative. Stuffy. Tired. Problematic. Institutional. Dare I say: cheugy. Going to church felt like throwing your hands up and saying, “well hell, if you can’t beat em, join em!” Besides, as a failed member of not one but two religions, it didn’t seem like I had a great track record.

Plus, in the circles I run in, church isn’t a huge part of the lexicon. My friends are 90% gay communists and 10% folks I met before I grew boobs. We don’t go to church. We protest. We doomscroll. We make art that people hate for no money, and we make art that people love for no money. We take care of eachother. We boycott. We repost. We call out, and in, and out, until we decide it’s too hard and just stop responding. We gossip. We do crafts. We inhale cult documentaries, and then dream about starting our own commune that looks an awful lot like one of those cult documentaries.

I love my community, and would kill or die for any last one of them. And while there are plenty of folks who would identify as religious, and even practice their religion actively, there is not a regular church or temple going member among us. It is such a faux-pas, in fact, that when I went this morning, I sent the following text to my friend from the pew.

bro i’m at church lol

And why? What compelled me to immediately undercut this thing I was doing with utmost sincerity? This thing that meant so much to so many people? There was not a witness to be found. I was not there “ironically,” as if we can be anywhere but not “mean it.” Was I afraid someone would see me, and report me to my friends, who are all much cooler than me and always have been? Did I think they would laugh at me? Did I assume they also found religion inexplicably embarrassing, and were also ashamed by this ridiculous belief? Did I just need to dilute the vulnerability I felt being moved in the very way human beings have been moved for thousands of years? How tremendously uncool it all was.

And then, the tears. The truth tellers. The tiny referee inside that blows the whistle saying: hold up! You’re lovin’ this! Looks like somebody needed a little spiritual nourishment!

Just as I am shocked by my own constant crying, I’m also shocked when I discover I’ve needed something for a long time and not given it to myself. I do this most often with rest, to the consistent dismay of my partner, who is too patient with me. I don’t know how to rest. Even my downtime must be productive in some way, lest I spiral into a good-for-nothing, lazy sack of woe. I must read important books, or clean, or exercise, or meal prep. I will work myself into a stupor, inevitably get sick, and then bemoan the terrible inconvenience of actually needing to sit the fuck down and watch a movie. I’m not proud of this, though I can see how it might be read as the equivalent of saying “well, boss, I guess my worst quality is that I just work too darn hard!” It is an unfortunate habit that comes from managing my depression and anxiety: a by-product of years of “opposite action,” and a handy way to appear high functioning at all times. And capitalism, et cetera— whatever.

The point is, I needed that day at church. I’d probably needed it for a while, and not because I’m looking to get absolved or call dibs on a good spot in heaven. I needed to acknowledge that I was hungry for meaning, and to try and get fed. In a world that is burning, revolutionizing, evolving, devolving, inundating, inspiring, and trying to sell you something all the time, it is extremely hard to identify your own needs, let alone fulfill them. I struggle to, at least. I don’t think I’ve gone a week without an existential crisis or a panic attack since I got my first period. I need some solace, some greater meaning, some kind of God in my life, humiliating as it may be to admit.

Which brings me to this series: the God Crawl. Obviously, I am the very first person to realize that there is solace in spiritual community, and that religion can help make you a little less depressed and anxious about the world. Faith, I am proposing, might actually be worthwhile. I know– it’s nuts– but hear me out.

Here’s the idea. I will be trying out a new church or place of worship each week, and writing about what I learn along the way. No, it’s not a yelp review for the world’s major religions (although I do think that would be funny). It’s also not a way for me to bash on or glorify any one religious practice. That’s not my bag. My hope is that this experience brings me meaning and purpose, something I have only, so far, found through writing– hence the creation of this whole interface. I think it might be a little bit fun, too.

Like anything fun I’m allowed to touch, I’ve implemented strict rules and guidelines. I will not be attending any place of worship known to preach hate. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no God in that kind of place. I will also not be attending any place of worship that would be inappropriate or culturally appropriative for me to inhabit. Nobody wants that, and I’m still repenting for my Kirtan days. I will enter every space with sincerity, respect, and a real desire to get something good out of it. This is not a bit. It might be a little weird and regimented, but it is not a bit. I want to find meaning, and purpose, and community, if not at a church, then maybe here, with all of you freaks.

I hope you join me. If not on my God crawl, on some sort of journey that brings you closer to a place where you find ease in living. God (I assume) knows we all could use some more of that.

See you next week,

E