grappling with big religion

so, it was an interesting weekend.

due to the fact that i can't afford to fly home for thanksgiving, a group of my friends and i decided to get together and have a thanksgiving meal on sunday. my friends christina, kim, and tara all go to this church over in post falls called real-life ministries. they've been asking us to go to church with them for a while (never persistantly, but just enough for us to know that we are always invited). i finally aquiesced and said we would start sunday by going to church with them. i said that justin and i would both go.

so sunday morning, we get up early and get dressed in decent clothes and meet them at christina's house. from there, we go out to post falls and to this church.

now, the church is set back from the road about a quarter of a mile. we've passed that spot in the past and when people pointed down that road and said that the church was down there, i always assumed that it was past the warehouse, turns out it is the warehouse. the side that faces the road is canary yellow and probably a good 35-40 feet tall. we pull down the road and check out the parking situation. imagine walmart. then imagine that the car park for walmart wasn't quite big enough and they had to have people parking in part of a cleared field and you've got the picture.

i have to admit, it made me uneasy. as we were walking in, i made the obligatory wise-cracks about jim jones.

"if anyone hands me kool-aid, i'm outta here", i joked.

the prior service had just gotten out and it looked like a train had just arrived. people streamed out of the various doors and moved their cars so that the next brood could slid in. we walked in past the people who were catching up with each other in the convention centre style lobby. before entering the actual "sanctuary", a few of my party wanted to go get coffee.

the place was huge and filled with people. i was reminded of an airport terminal, you know, the way they used to be when friends, family and various well-wishers were allowed to meet you at the gate. hanging from the ceiling in various places was a closed circuit television system with a timer counting down from 30 minutes, ostensibly telling us when the next service would begin.

i wonder if they dim the lights right before, like they do at play intermissions. i'll have to ask.

i almost forgot to tell you about the programs. you know, the double sided photocopy folded in half that lets you know what hymns you're going to be singing and the like. at real life ministries, the look like insurance brochures. printed in full cmyk on card-stock with a little "pocket" that holds all of the obligatory "tell us who you are and what you want us to pray for you about" cards mixed with the tithe envelopes.

so, now my friends are getting coffee that huge banner is telling me is from christian mission growers and i am nervous. i like the term "as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs" a lot. partially because it's so homey and full of character, but also but because, to me, it implies that one is vigilent to the point of being paranoid due to a perception of danger. in this case, i think it fits.

i'm scanning the crowd and i see the first thing that runs shivers up my spine. just past the coffee, i see a sign that says express check,-something. i'm not fully paying attention. my social anxiety is kicking in, so i'm already uneasy. there is a crowd of people and at first i think that there is some kind of cafeteria selection of pastries and they're making money off of the concessions. quaint, but not disturbing.

then someone moves out of the way and i noticed the screens and the ATM-like devices that they are attatched to. i look at the sign again. express check-in. an automated roll call? do you have to be a card carrying memeber, like the mormons?

i put my best foot foward and try to consider the logistical nightmare that managing this place must be. i push my exceptions into the back of my mind and we move to the sanctuary portion.
now, the snactuary portion is the size of a large gymnasium, in fact when i look up to the ceiling, there is a basketball hoop on one of those electric arms. here's the kicker, though. to give you a sense of scale, when the basketball hoop is in the upright and locked position, it is a few feet from the wall with the hoop facing the cieling. the clever observer will note that this means that since when the hoop is brought down, it will need to be in the correct position, that means that the pole holding it is the length of a basketball court.

and then, there's the stage. yes, a stage. i've been to churches with a stage before. i was in the band for a very brief period of time, but this is a stage. you know, like when you go to a concert and they have that metal girder-looking stuff that they hang the lights on? yeah, it's set like a concert hall. it looks like in a few minutes, rush is gonna take the stage and open with "tom sawyer". i find myself looking for my seat number on my non-existent ticket. i make a lot of nervous jokes about who the opening act might be. apparently, motley crue would not be welcome, though i'm not sure about stryper.

after a few minutes of extreme discomfort, i ask justin if he would be okay with leaving and it turns out he is as uncomfortable as i am, only he actually has the good sense to be quiet about it. we ask our friends if they would be offended if we leave. they say no (no way of telling if that's true) and then we are gone.

as we walked out, i felt kinda bad, but then by the time we got to the car, i could feel the weight lifting off of my shoulders. no more arena-rock churches for me.

the reason that i'm writing about this is that even though the experience was uncomfortable, i'm self aware enough to ask why.

allow me to digress for a moment.

when i was going to school in ireland, we went on a field trip to the irish museum of modern art. a very nice museum in an old army hospital complex. very cool place. there was this couple from russia that made these little automated scenes in these boxes and the idea was that they were to entertain kids that were in the hospital with severe of terminal cases of whatever. a noble cause certainly. the show-boxes were interesting and well constructed. the really interesting part was that the way they presented them was they sectioned off part of the building and made it back into a hospital again. each area seperated by sheets on a metal bar, like the privacy sheets at any hospital ward. it was an interesting way of showing the work, because you had to factor in the room and the significance of the empty bed. by having the empty beds, you had to factor in the perspective of the child when veiwing the works. in retrospect, i think it was really interesting. at the time i hated it.

one of the things they had done, one of those touches that makes the atmosphere, was to spray everything down with that cleaner that they use in hospitals. you know the one. they dont really use it much anymore, but when i was a kid, that was the smell of hospitals. it is very distict, but it's hard to describe. i imagine it is a series of disinfectants of some kind.

when i walked into the "hospital room" to see the work, i was assaulted with that smell. it made me very uncomfortable and i made it through only a few before i couldn't take it anymore. i only have a vague memory of the works. i was so distracted by the mise-en-scene that i could not concentrate on the work.

it wasn't long until i was tearing my way through the exhibit, through the various rooms trying to get out. i don't know how many "rooms" there were, but i remember being on the verge of a panic attack trying to get out. by the last few, when it seemed like there was no end in sight, i must have seemed like a madman, pushing the curtains aside, hoping that the next time i swept curtain out of my way, i would be free.

i left the museum and walked around dublin for a while in a daze. i've been to a lot of museums and i've seen a lot of exhibits, but there arent many that are as memorable. the point of art is to provoke some kind of reaction in the viewer. a good piece of art is interactive. a masterpiece is a mirror.

i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was about that work that got to me. i wasn't sure if it was the quiet discomfort of the empty hospital rooms. or if it was the works. eventually, i realised that it was the smell. i knew why the smell bothered me. i associated it with memories of my mom being in the hospital when i was a kid. i think there was more to it, but even though i dont have a very good sense of smell, i am always very wary of walking into hospitals, lol.

the way that this ties in to my point is that i was incredibly disturbed when i came out of that "church". i've been trying to figure out what it was about the experience that was so unsettling.

i'm wondering if it was the setting.

maybe i'm a closet traditionalist. i mean what are the basic components of any church service?

A) there are seats for the congregation
B) there is an elevated space for the preacher to lead the service and to give his sermon
c) there is some kind of musical instrument to lead the congregation in song

all of the basic parts are there, it just happens to be a re-imagining based more on the genesis "we cant dance" tour than the traditional transept and pew arrangement.

there was a part of me that really wanted to go. i havent been to synagogue in probably 2 years. i miss the communing with G-d thing.

i mean, it could just be a stirring of some old memories. when i was in college, i used to go to a church called "harvest". someday i'll have to write all about my experiences at that church because they were formative. i feel the way i feel about christians because of that place. there were a lot of similarities in organization, but the scale was far smaller. it was at least more intimate than the county fair.

it might be my prejudice against christians.

dunno. i'll have to think about it.