Context

I have not "belonged" to a church since college. The last time I went daily was during basic training, and you would frankly have to be insane not to take the opportunity of a full hour away from drill sergeants once a week. Furthermore, I do not even feel a desire to return to what I have known as church. The political wrangling and greedy moneylust that show their prettied up faces all too often in the "house of God" have become too much for me to stomach. I am tired of one man being given the authority to translate the words and intentions of Jesus to an audience all too generously named a "congregation". I have never been to a service where the offering plates have not been passed around at least once; must sustain the temperature regulation in the grand loftiness of the place of course. Even in England, I was appalled by the great care and wealth invested into the stony cathedrals that held so little spirit in them, becoming mere tourist traps with their cold resilient beauty.

All this, and yet I still feel compelled by something that I approached in certain of these buildings and institutions. Or rather, something that approached me it seems at times. The church gave me a name to call certain experiences: vision, Christ, a still smallness that could consume everything. I have seen in the cute Bible stories of my childhood visions of horror, and then again the horror revealing itself as shattering beauty. What was handed to me as lists to be memorized and obeyed and pray to god it's the right ticket has become a chimera of ever-changing wonder at the edge of sight. I rarely think of the commandments that I knew at one time and my behavior is guided by the single (yet evasive) principle of Love, yet the certain damnation I was warned of should I behave in such and such a way (as I certainly have behaved) has not happened. Instead I feel a fierce and violent Love following me and surrounding me and consuming me. There is nothing more that I want, yet I do not know where to find it. The church has become empty to me, yet nothing has filled the comforting position it held in my life for so long. Now, I am left to the wind and cry to this great terror and great love to catch me.