My wife is an atheist. I wish I had that kind of faith.
My mother was an atheist until she joined A.A. and took up with a mushy, new-agey God and called her former atheism—the belief she brought me up with—"a bunch of intellectual bullshit."
My dad was a quiet believer who didn't believe in talking about God with children much because, as he wrote his parenting book A Child to Change Your Life:
"I think if you try to paint God too vividly in the mind of a child you only confuse him and create irrelevant questions about whether He wears a hat or not.
"I think a child of mine will have a better understanding about God if I reverse the order in which religion is usually taught. Rather than begin with God and work down to people, I'm going to start with people and go the other way."
When Scout first asked me what a church was, I told her: "It's a place where people go to talk about their feelings."
But I do like church—and I will take Scout to church sometimes—because church is where you are supposed to think about real stuff, instead of Twitter, New Jersey housewives or Rod Blagojevich. And as long as the minister is also interested in talking about real stuff (and not just reading Bible passages and spouting platitudes), I figure that, especially for non-golfers, church is a smart place to spend a Sunday morning.
That's why I'm happy that my old friend Suzanne Ecklund is becoming a minister. Because Suzanne has a hard time talking for more than five minutes about anything that isn't real. And she talks really well.
Here's the opening of her first sermon, the Sunday before last:
In the early morning of April 18, 2008, the bed on which I was sleeping shook me awake.
Having never had the experience of being awoken in this way before, I crawled through the rafters of my brain searching for an explanation for this bizarre bed behavior.
My first thought? Demon possession.
I remember thinking, "The movies make this look so bad. I mean, Linda Blair didn't appear to be having a good time during her possession. But I feel great."
Then I thought, "No. This is not possible. You are imagining this. The bed is not shaking."
And then the bed would stop.
And then it would start again.
I went back to the possession thing. Again: pleasantly surprised at how good I felt in my demonic state.
And then, I had my a-ha moment.
Someone had broken in.
Someone had broken in. And instead of ransacking my apartment and robbing me, he or she had crawled underneath the bed and was lying down there shaking it.
Then I thought, "OK. That makes no sense. This is clearly Satan."
And then came my second a-ha moment.
"It's the CATS. My cats are BIG. I've got 40 lbs of cat. And they're running around or they're clawing the bottom of the bed and that's causing everything to shake."
But it wasn't the cats.
My next thought was that maybe I was hallucinating.
I volleyed these ideas back and forth until I'd exhausted myself saying, "OK. I can't figure this out. No one needs to know what happened here tonight. I'm going back to bed."
It wasn't until I turned on the news the next morning that I learned that Illinois had just had one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded in state history.
* * *
After this experience, I was amazed that not once in my confusion did I entertain the possibility that the earth was shaking below me. I was trapped inside this bubble of limited understanding of my own experiences—and I was unable to break out of it.
Now, this particular story goes further to illustrate the depths of my own personal flakiness than it does anything of spiritual value. But I share it because I think we can sometimes relate to faith from within a kind of bubble, too. …
Last week Suzanne moved from Chicago to Atlanta to attend seminary school. I think she's going to be pretty good at this, don't you? She's got me thinking about real stuff already.
Damn your eyes, Murray.
I was going to blog about Suki’s sermon today. And you did it better than I would.
Damn your eyes, man.
Rarely has there been such a perfect fit as there is with Suki and Preaching. Part writing, part acting, part social worker, part nurse, part listener . . . she’ll be famous one day.
Steve C.
Damn your eyes, Murray.
I was going to blog about Suki’s sermon today. And you did it better than I would.
Damn your eyes, man.
Rarely has there been such a perfect fit as there is with Suki and Preaching. Part writing, part acting, part social worker, part nurse, part listener . . . she’ll be famous one day.
Steve C.
Damn your eyes, Murray.
I was going to blog about Suki’s sermon today. And you did it better than I would.
Damn your eyes, man.
Rarely has there been such a perfect fit as there is with Suki and Preaching. Part writing, part acting, part social worker, part nurse, part listener . . . she’ll be famous one day.
Steve C.
I’ve only met Suzanne in person once, but I sorta think she’s already famous.
I KNOW that she’s awesome, and clever and funny, and I liked her pretty much on first sight.
I guess I need to get on her “sermon distribution list” since Atlanta’s a little far for me to go to hit church.
Thanks for sharing this David! And: “Go Suki, GO!”
Well, I couldn’t disagree more with your view of who God is and what faith is all about and what church is, David. I just chalk it up to we have very different experiences in how we relate to God.
But I do agree that, based on the opening of Suzanne’s sermon, it looks like she’ll be one of the good ministers out there, and we can use more of those.
@Steve: I think you’ve done your share of heart-warming for the week.
http://corporatehallucinations.com/hallucinations/?p=245
@Kristen: Her sermon should become a blog; video blog, actually.
@Robert. I think the difference in how we relate to God, Robert, is that you believe in Him as a specific entity, and I don’t.
I find that people who believe in God and people who don’t (I have a number of believers among my friends) can agree on their love for human beings, which God, if he’s there, must dig.
Absolutely, my friend. God is a big-time believer in every one of his creations, even if they’re not believers in him.
I’m counting on that.
Wonderful post, David. While it seems you and I have had pretty different relationships with God and religion, we certainly agree that anyone fortunate enough to cross paths with our Suki will be forever changed for the better by the experience. I can’t think of a better way for her to serve and I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds for her. I also love that when I opened her sermon and read it for the first time the other day, I could hear her voice in the way that she writes—the punctuation, the capital letters, everything.
Yep, Suki is a hell of a writer, which should be one of the top three qualifications for any job as a minister.
If your friend Suki is posting her sermons somewhere, could you post a link to them on your recommended list? I like how she thinks. And I think my spirit could use some nourishing.
I really like your approach, David, towards teaching children spiritual values. There will be plenty of time for them to explore their own conception of God. They don’t need to automatically adopt ours simply because we are their all-knowing parents.
I don’t know if anybody else ever goes to the links that you provide, but the one on Alcoholics Anonymous is full of factual misstatements. Most importantly, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are not affiliated. NA is a copycat (not a bad thing)organization that has adopted parts of the AA program to assist drug addicts.
A minor nit to pick is that Bill Wilson was a New York alcoholic. His co-founder of AA, Dr. Bob Smith, was from Ohio.
Closed AA meetings are open to anybody who has a desire to stop drinking. Drug addicts, cumpusive gamblers, overeaters, etc. who don’t have a desire to stop drinking alcohol are not welcome at closed AA meetings.
Finally, AA tradition admits a singleness of purpose. It has no opinion as to the advisability of drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes
Hey JG, thanks for your note. Say, though, I didn’t provide a link to AA. Not sure where you found that link, but it wasn’t in my original post. (Was it??)
The link is at the bottom of your post
Oh, that’s just a technorati tag, placed in my post to drag people kicking and screaming to here; I hope nobody ever follows those elsewhere. But if they do, yes: They’ll be straight on AA. Thanks. DM
DAvid…AA is one of your Technorati tags a the bottom, which links us to a page on AA
Thanks to all of you for your ridiculously generous praise.
I pray that I am as ready for this as you believe me to be.
Love you all,
Suzanne
David,
Thanks for bringing this beautiful sermon to light.
Several years ago, when Suzanne lived in the “snake house” in Pennsylvania — sorry folks, only the Ragan clan will get the reference–she launched a blog about her life and living in her home state. After her first post, I sent her a breathless e-mail telling her how much I liked her writing, and the way her mind worked.
Of course, I always have. Suzanne and I met when she was 23 years old, I think. We were both studying Shakespeare at The Folger Shakespeare Theater in Washington. She had been asked by our director to perform a sonnet. I can still remember the beauty of her performance, and the honesty. As you said, David, Suzanne cannot be dishonest.
I really love that you posted this.
Mark