That Church Pew and Me

               

                Once upon a time in another life I remember sitting in a church pew listening to a pastor talk about God and how folks perceive him and all of that. Now I'd grown up in a world where I'd come to understand the only right way was the preacher's way and if you went to thinking differently well it was the train to hell for you and it had greased rails to go with it. But this fella was talking about how each and every one of us see God in our own way because it's the only way we can. To this day I remember that and I do my level best to use it not only when it comes to God and religion but all those less serious things like when I go to starting to compare myself to someone else and then there's politics which are a whole separate religion unto itself.

                In the end my perspective is mine and I'll never be able to see through your eyes to see what you see. The way I see it the information that I can come up with is filtered first through others filters and then through my life filters and the conclusions I come to are as often as not based on what others might consider faulty logic but none the less how I perceive the world and if you're honest with yourself how you perceive your world as well.

                Right now, in this moment, it's obvious that pretty much the whole of this nation is seeing a future that likely will never happen and yet the panic on the parts of many has already set in. Each in their own way is seeing doom and gloom. And though I for one don't see the doom and gloom that many others are predicting I'm not naive enough as to not acknowledge that this nation has been through hard times in the past, some of them damn hard times, likely will be again and still in all has come out the other side if not the better for it then at least somewhere close to alright. And yes it takes time, it always takes time, memories are often longer than we wish for them to be, but they do fade and things do change and sometimes they even get a little bit better.

                I want to believe that this nation is set up to argue and bicker back and forth and in the end to come to some sort of agreement where ultimately no one is truly happy but everyone is agreeable with what's been accomplished. In the end we each make up our own story about how we got what we wanted and everything will be alright because honestly that's pretty much how we live our lives, we make up stories that work for us and we keep moving forward.

                Sitting there that Sunday morning on a wooden pew listening to a man I called friend tell me something I'd never thought about before, something I'd believed I wasn't allowed to think about, changed my world. In a very real way it let a whole lot more of that world in and I will always believe that's been a good thing though honestly at times it does get more than a little maddening. I admit to not liking to have to come to the realization that I'm not the only one that might be right or worse still that I might in fact be wrong.

                Then again no one really wants to find out they're wrong and the damn shame of it is that we all always find out we're wrong to late. We suddenly realize there's no "Overs!" in this game of life we're involved in. We've done what we've done and it can't be taken back no matter how much we want to. We're stuck in the reality of our latest choice and sometimes that really sucks. No matter how much we want to believe the world is some other way than the way others tell us it is we want to believe it's different, it really is different or at the very least could be different or should be different if only...

                Sometimes folks do try to step back from what they think they're seeing all around them and take a second or third view of what they think they see right in front of them. Sometimes they realize that perhaps they're standing at the foot of the mountain and maybe if they're willing to make the effort to walk to the top of that mountain there just might be a different view from what they've been believing was the only view there was. And yes it is a fact that it's only sometimes and sometimes folks look out and around or only in one direction or even back down the trail they've just walked up but in that moment their perception can't help but be changed if only by admitting to themselves that there is another perspective. And accepting that reality changes everything.

               

                When I was a kid growing up in a Lutheran Church in New Lisbon, Wisconsin the pew I sat on most every morning was hard, damn hard, and damn uncomfortable for more than merely the impatience of a youngster who was being forced to wear a buttoned up shirt and bow tie.  Those mornings were hard because the God I was looking at was holding lightning bolts and telling me he was going to use them on me if I even thought about thinking something other than what I was hearing from Pastor Rose. He was going to strike me down and I was going to be sent to hell if I didn't think and yes I'll use the vial word, believe, what I was hearing.

                Most mornings I couldn't get off that pew and away from it all quick enough.

               

                The day came when I was a freshman in high school and my English teacher gave me an assignment to write about Bertrand Russell. I had no idea who this man was but I was suppose to give a report on him and so I knew there was no way I'd get a halfway decent grade if I didn't do at least a bit of research which of course wasn't one of my strong suits but still I had to do what I had to do. Now you have to understand that this was 1964 and Bertrand was still alive but there was more than a little information on him in our little public library and so I actually went to work researching him and it truly changed my life. You see, he was an atheist and New Lisbon didn't have any of them as far as I knew. As far as I knew everyone went to church on Sunday and that was that. In the world I grew up in the pew you sat in on Sunday morning was pretty much either Lutheran, Bethany Lutheran (which I'm still not sure what that's about), Baptist or Roman Catholic (which brings up a whole family history thing that I won't go into here). In my world it had never been that complicated, you went to church on Sunday morning with your parents, you went to Sunday School after that and then you collected your sister, went to Red's Bar and collected your parents and then you went home to a meal that mom had put in the oven before we'd headed off for church. Simple right? Nothing to think about in those days. My view of the world was crystal clear. What's to be confused about?

                So now my mean English teacher who as a child had survive World War Two over in Europe in some place like Hungary or Yugoslavia or someplace and telling us about goulash that I'm not sure she should have been telling us about was telling me to write about this Bertrand Russell guy and the minute I went to that catalog file to begin researching this guy my life takes what you might call a U turn.

                Books pulled from the shelves, sitting there on the table in front of me, and I swear the first thing I read is that this guy is an atheist! What in hell is an atheist? Wait, this is a mistake, there are Lutherans and Baptist and Catholics but atheists? How can that be a religion? God's honest truth is I didn't know there were folks like Islamics and Buddhists and though I think I had an idea that there were folks that didn't believe in Jesus who were called Jews I wasn't really clear on all of that so there was massive confusion in my world sitting there in the New Lisbon Public Library. I was rather certain that I didn't know anyone who didn't believe in God but then here I was being introduced to someone who says they didn't. To be honest with you there was a bit of pure panic that came over me in that moment because I was pretty sure that library was sitting way too close to my church and I was pretty sure those lightning bolts hadn't just somehow disappeared.

                In the end I did a report on Bertrand Russell and I have no idea what sort of grade I got though most of my grades were in that C range plus or minus a bit so you can figure that report wasn't much different. The thing is it changed my life in a way that nothing since then has and so I guess if I were to have to give it a grade I'd have to say it was an A plus with two big thumps up.

                It started me on a journey that has lasted a lifetime. I've found myself contemplating God everywhere from the middle of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic seas to the ponderosa pine forests of northern Arizona and I've yet to come to grips with it all. The one thing that I guess I've learned through all of this is that I don't do well at believing whether it be about the big things or the not so big things. And maybe because I find it so hard to believe I want to think, and I'm sorry yes believe, I look at things just a little more than those fortunate ones who believe and leave it at that. After all from my perspective believing in something can end up feeling a lot more comfortable than that day in that public library when I came to realize that not everyone believes in what I was expected to believe in. Let me tell you that there was one uncomfortable moment in my life.

               

                I don't have the answers for the world, the nation, my loved ones or for that matter even for myself but I have come to the conclusion that I know a thing or two about a thing or two. Plain and simple the truth almost always isn't the truth we decide to believe whether you like it or not. Then there's one more thing that I've learned and that's that perception comes from perspective and thus changes with longitude and latitude. Jimmy Buffett might tell us the lower the latitude the lower the attitude and Lord knows I do wish it were that simple. I tend to want to believe that the higher the latitude the better the view.

                That little boy that sat on that pew all those years ago staring up at a God throwing lightning bolts and hearing how there was only one way has gone away forever. He went away one day in a library in a little town in New Lisbon, Wisconsin and as would be the story of the rest of his life he'd never come back. Some might say he grew up but the best I can say is that I got older and did my best to keep on thinking just a bit. Sometimes it's hard and the truth is I admit to not being smart enough to know when I fail miserably but I do keep trying to look beyond what's popular in the moment. In fact I even try to look beyond what's been popular in more than just the moment.

                I sit here today realizing that some things in my world would have been so much easier if only I hadn't done that assignment all those years ago in high school. The truth is that even though I've not had an easy time of it I thank that teacher for giving me that assignment because maybe, just maybe, for the first time in my life I opened up my mind just a bit to other possibilities. Believing is easy, thinking brings on questions and believers don't like or want questions. These days I work hard at questioning.

                That little boy sitting on that wooden pew wanted to believe in most anything and everything he saw and heard. As the years went by he came to understand that though most beliefs may not be lies they're likely not truths either. As often as not they tell a story and the story that gets told comes from the perspective of the storyteller and the storyteller is always just retelling the story.

                So I guess what I want to tell you is that I hope you enjoyed the story and hopefully you got something out of it but never forget you're reading it from my perspective which turns into your perspective. About the only truth I think I know is that perspectives change even when the story stays the same. Good luck out there.