I have been on a spiritual quest as of late, unlike ever before, seeking out a new church home in New York City. I'd prefer Manhattan, but would travel to the Bronx, Brooklyn, or even Queens. Trekking to Long Island would be asking a bit much for Sunday morning service.
I was raised Southern Methodist, which isn't the end all to be all, but has instilled in me certain beliefs (and prejudices). Church life was simpler back then as a child. I wasn't concerned with moral codes or eternal damnation because I left that to my mother and other adults in charge. I excelled in Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, participated throughout year on various programs, and enjoyed my time in church.
I don't think I consciously sought to rebel against anyone or anything when I relocated to the East Coast. I just didn't make the time or felt the need to go to church (hopefully Granny Gums isn't turning over in her grave). As I aged, I began asking questions that were difficult that no one was able to answer to my satisfaction:
- How old is the earth?
- Were there dinosaurs on earth?
- Did we evolve from other creatures?
- How do we know that the bible is accurate?
- Is God male or female?
- How can there be a God with all the murder, mayhem, and chaos in the world?
There are so many things we don't know. If we're intelligent beings, shouldn't we question the bible, or accept it verbatim as fact of what happened and what's supposed to happen in future? I was given this link to a YouTube video that adds to the expanding dialogue on religion and Christianity. I'm not going to suddenly abandon everything I've been taught, only that I'm going to reexamine who I am, what I believe, and how I will govern my life.
I fell out of love with church because of some of the hypocrites I encountered back in Houston. How can a minister who's then current wife seduce him away from his previous wife preach and/or lecture on the sanctity of marriage? I believe that all humans are flawed, and it takes more than a public apology by a televangelist to erase the fact,too, that we are all sick with sin, lust, jealousy, insecurities, and thoughts of revenge.
Navigating the bible, churches, religion, and faith can be a very daunting task. What do we believe? Who do we believe? Where do our beliefs end and another's begin? Do we need to see God once, twice, or three times to accept that He is real?
And on the question of gender. The bible tells us that God is masculine, however I recently attended a church in Harlem where some of the assistant pastors repeatedly referred to God as She. Is it subjective based on our personal tastes or belief systems? This same church has a system in place for membership that includes a personal interview and a Saturday class prior to joining, which seemed rather corporate to me. I've not been back since. I visited this church several times because it's within walking distance of home, and I had the intention of joining. I expected I'd have to provide personal and contact information, but not attend a class on how to join their congregation. Is there a certain type of personality or educational background that would count against a perspective member?
My primary goal in attending was to find a public place of worship, not be rallied to protest local, national, or international political and social injustices. I went to congregate, not apply for an office in the religious black panthers.
Over the years in NYC, I've asked friends and colleagues about faith, religion, and spirituality. It's been a mixed bag of responses: I'm more spiritual than anything else. I'm agnostic. I used to go to church, but not anymore.
My southern identity is concerned that some will look at this entry as sacrilegious; that I'll burn in hell for posting this public query. I watch nature programs and think humans are no better than leopards, lions, tigers, or bears that hunt and kill daily. Humans are just as ruthless and savage in corporate America and the inner cities. Maybe I'm still naive in my thinking that the world ought to be a safer, kinder, friendlier place, and that carnivores should start eating vegetation and fruits. Leave those poor gazelles, wildebeests, and deer alone. The child in me thinks and shudders: God created predators and prey. Don't these creatures deserve to live their life in peace (without being chased at breakneck speed, dodging, bobbing, and weaving) just as I aim to do daily?
My search will continue for a congregation that shares enough of my core beliefs, not necessarily religious, that my soul would feel light and free to rejoice at the mysteries of life, earth, and the universe. There's a place of worship in Midtown Manhattan that has evening and regular Sunday morning services that I'll next investigate. Wish me luck. Feel free to join me!
I grew up Southern Methodist, and was content with the weekly services absent of bass guitars, drums, or tambourines that were a staple of my cousin's Southern Baptist church.
When I was younger I thought our family went to church because we were supposed to like all good Christians.
Religion can be a confusing topic with various denominations and theologies seemingly competing and contradicting each other. To my mind, spirituality has nothing to do with religion, pomp, circumstance that takes place in most churches.
In the years I've lived in New York City, I've never formally joined a church, but was always interested in finding a regular place of worship. I don't know if it was a feeling of dissatisfaction or confusion that kept me out of organized religious ceremonies.
One Sunday morning years ago, I opted not to go to church and expected my mother would demand that get dressed and make my way to the car. She didn't. It was as simple as my saying I didn't want to go that I was allowed to remain at home. That was pivotal in my ongoing spiritual quest to question my beliefs and why I attend church.
I read scriptures and participated during Sunday morning services in various capacities because I enjoyed public speaking and was encouraged by Sunday school teachers and church personnel. When I landed in New York City, I didn't decide forgo formal church services again. By not actively pursuing a church, the decision was cast in stone.
I miss the spirituals and gospel songs of my adolescence at church and during the glee club. I yearn for inspirational and invigorating Southern-style sermons that are based on reality, not clogged in religious rhetoric or conflicting scriptures.
I've twice attended evening church service at a Midtown Manhattan church that felt more theatrical than spiritual or religious. I didn't like racing into church to get a seat.
The search for God and the strengthening (or establishing) of faith is a continuous process. There's too much information, stimuli, versions of the Bible.
I've began going to a new nondenominational, international church closer to home that's a beautiful place to behold, but the pipe organ and ceremony aren't replacements for what I seek: a meaningful church service with a message.
A few years after I moved into my apartment, I had a distinct feeling that I wasn't alone. I felt or sensed that a middle-aged African American man had died in my apartment and hadn't crossed over.
This registered strange to me because I had no understanding of spirits, ghosts, or demons. I was raised to go to church every Sunday, to pray daily, and to say grace before each meal.
The more I thought about this spiritual squatter in my house, the more I tried to rationalize that I was imagining him. I was no more psychic than some of the carnies or women I'd see on the streets of Manhattan. But, I couldn't discount what I sensed on certain days or nights in the apartment. I felt that this ghost was lonely, and blocked me from leaving the apartment when I had every intention of doing so.
The situation intensified one night when I felt pressure at the end of my bed. I had a chill in my body. It was the presence of evil. I was in a deep sleep, and was immediately awakened by this presence. I lifted my upper body and commanded it to leave. It didn't feel like Casper the Friendly Ghost; it felt dark and ominous.
Over the years, I've come to sense that this man committed suicide, that he jumped out of either the bathroom or kitchen window. It sounds otherworldly, and reminiscent of a spooky movie I wasn't supposed to watch as a child, or a magical realism novel by Gabriel García Márquez or Isabel Allende.
Several years ago I happened upon a classifieds ad for a creative writer/editor posted by a woman in Chelsea who I later found out did automatic writing. We met to discuss my creating advertising and marketing copy in exchange for free psychic/automatic writing sessions. The apartment was an obligatory mystical and eerie. I remember not being afraid, but sufficiently skeptical. The woman sat in front of her laptop and connected with her spirit guide, and proceeded to ask questions I posed. She typed the questions and answers in short-answer format. Her spirit guide confirmed what I'd felt up until that point in my life, and warned that I wouldn't rid my apartment of his unwanted presence until I performed emotional, mental, and spiritual cleansing, with ample meditation and candles.
A few of the answers seemed obvious to me, and others off the mark. At the end of our session we debated the merits of my paying her at least five dollars a session, if I was serious about healing what ailed me. Momma didn't raise any fools, and I was in between jobs back then, the reason for my occupying my time and energy. A few weeks later I received a multi-paged astrological chart that detailed my ups, downs, quirks, and affectations, as predestined by the day, hour, and minute I was born. Again, some of the information matches certain aspects of my personality, and others made me scratch my head. I recently re-read the report and answers to those questions, and stared into space.
This reading was brought on by a newfound interest in Lisa Williams, Medium and Clairvoyant, whose weekly Lifetime TV show precedes yet another reality show, America's Psychic Challenge. There are things I don't know for a fact, and others that fascinate me. Is there life after death? Can people see ghosts, angels, or demons?
I know what I felt that night in my bedroom many years ago. And I know what yet another person confirmed when she visited my apartment as we communicated via instant messenger chat years ago. The second spiritual healer didn't identify herself immediately as such, but when she did, she informed me that she was a shape-shifter, and that she traveled the through eyes of animals. Whatever I believed or didn't believe went out the window when she identified over the Internet as we chatted privately, areas of my body that were in pain. She saw colors here and there, she said. Further, she mistakenly entered my neighbor's apartment with a Russian Gray cat, instead of mine with a Calico and Tortoise Shell, all while we typed away.
When she corrected her mistake and entered my apartment, my Calico fled to the back of the apartment where I sat, looking as if she'd seen a ghost, replete with large cartoon eyes that looked as if they'd pop out of her head. It wasn't a coincidence! She confirmed, too, that there was someone or something in my apartment. It was her goal to out-ghost the ghost, which she did temporarily. Back to my not 'being ready' to handle such things on my own.
During her astral visit, I visited her house in Texas, and was able to see a dimly-lit room with dark burgundy curtains, a hand-carved wooden table with glass top, and a small creature sliding across its surface. It was all I could see in my mind's eye. She confirmed that I was accurate. The small creature was her cat. Her father made the table many years ago and gave it to her. One thing she couldn't see while she was here in spirit was a wooden mask I bought in a flea market in the Dominican Republic. She told me it was a mask of protection; that it was protecting me, and blocking her from seeing it.
She later sent me a specially-selected crystal with male energy to watch over me. It arrived in a miniature wooden chest. I carried it in my pocket for a few weeks, and later felt silly or odd, and placed it back inside the chest. I didn't know if I was opening myself to someone or something I shouldn't have.
I still have many unanswered questions that I'd like to find answers. Am I an undeveloped sensitive (psychic) afraid to hone my gifts, or have I watched one too many scary movies?
I just bought three books the other night to read over the next three weeks: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison, and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.
I'll read them in the order of the above images. I've been meaning to get away from my routine in New York City for the longest time, but I can't afford to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia. The Day Trips on the Metro North, buses, and trains in the metro NYC and tri-state area will have to do.
What better author to read while traversing public transport than Toni Morrison?
And after I've taken my excursions, read for pleasure, I'll be ready to do my research for a new novel I've outlined that has a main character with bipolar disorder.
Life is oftentimes a series of tests that can be hard to overcome-- nightmares, emotional scars, and hiding out in your apartment or at your best friend's are left in the wake of said tests, trials, and hand-wringing troubles.
I've always taken refuge in my grandmother's strength, will to live, and spirituals as a way to heal what might ails. Nothing could go wrong when Granny was on the scene. Granny was there to impede our parents from spanking us when she thought we deserved a second or third chance. Staying overnight at her house was mandatory on the avoid a sneak attack in the middle of the night or the next day.
Over the years granny's strength has waned, her eyesight not what it used to be, and there now great-grandchildren scattered throughout Houston and surrounding subdivisions. Her will to live remains, even if her body contradicts her. I'd love to live as long as she has and have a similar will to persevere at ninety and beyond.
People have come and gone in my life, and I try to be grateful for having met them and shared experiences in all forms good, bad, and those I try hard to forget, but reside at the edge of my sanity.
I travel back in my mind to pleasurable memories when the bogeyman, devil, or the rude neighbor downstairs bangs out the same simple rhythm that I played in kindergarten on my wooden chopsticks. I remember Granny pushing me down the street in the wheelbarrow before sunrise in my footed pajamas, her walking along with one of my aunts to every daytime performance at my junior high, or her giving my first drink of coffee, cooled, on a porcelain saucer when I was a child.
Music has a similar soothing and escapist effect on me, be it Billie Holiday's blues, Marvin Gaye or Aretha Franklin's soul, Jessye Norman singing Wagner, Purcell, or Schubert. Add to that a hot-as-I-can-stand-it bath with Epsom Salt and wintergreen alcohol, Granny's recipe for anything that bothers you, as the CD's shuffle as I fall asleep with a towel as a pillow in my clawfoot tub.
I remember when I first heard Jessye Norman's voice. I was still living with my mother and two younger brothers. I was alone at home, and had turned on the TV while I prepared something to eat -- the local PBS station. Her voice rose from the TV and over the sofa and latched onto me. The closest I'd ever come to classical by that point in my life was being forced to take private piano lessons as a child. I made it as far as third grade in piano before being pardoned by mother. Anyway, where I grew up and in my family, little black boys didn't listen to opera. Piano was different, because it was something my mother had wanted for me, for a foolish reason to impress her boyfriend at the time.
As an adult I don't care what other people think of me as African American male. I've only my faith and coping skills (see above) to get me over the hiccups and through the challenges that are part of life on earth.
