I Am a Cross Bear

Yeah, so... that didn't work out.
I broke up with the nice liberal church today.

Today, my fourth Sunday there, the pastor said that if it were up to him, he'd replace the church's cross––(what cross? that tiny cross on the banner on the pulpit?) ––
he'd like to replace the cross with a communion table as "a more fitting symbol of our community."

Uh-oh, I thought. I seem to be in the wrong place. (That was my instinct on the first day, but I'd talked myself into trying again. I'm glad I did because now I know for sure.)

This is a Protestant church, and their cross is not, of course, the dead guy on a stick (who I miss). 
No guy here; only sticks. 
Crossed, like so:

                        +

Even this is too much, the pastor thinks. 

Too much what? 
Too much suffering? Injustice? 
Incarnation? Resurrection? 
Heaven meets Earth? 
Arithmetic?
_______________

The Wrong Mary

I don't get it. 
What's Christianity without a cross? 

In this case, I think I know.
It's The Church of Mary Oliver. 

A second Mary Oliver poem was read in the service today. (That's two in four weeks.) 
When I hear Mary Oliver rhapsodizing about nature, I think of Werner Herzog's doc Grizzly Man, where the guy gets eaten alive by a bear at the end.

Mary Oliver's like... 

You don't need to  bear  a  cross.

I'm like... 

You need  not  to cross  a  bear.

I need a little Werner Herzog in the jungle, ranting about "vile nature", to restore me to rights:

"The nature here is vile and base ... 
I would see asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and just rotting away. Of course there is a lot of misery ...  

... Taking a look at what's around us, there is some sort of harmony ... the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. 
But when I say this I say this all full of admiration. It is not that I hate [the jungle]. I love it. 
I love it very much. 
But I love it against my better judgement."

Herzog is (delightfully) over-the-top bonkers, but if you prefer a mellow mood, Neil deGrasse Tyson says the same thing in 36 seconds:
 "The Universe is trying to kill us." 

I know I said I wasn't looking for spiritual guidance, I was looking to meet my neighbors, but I can't stand the Mary Oliver world view. I don't want to bond with these neighbors, if they share it.

Replace the cross with a table if you want, but that's no good to me. Life isn't a picnic. 
___________________

The Church of We (Are not You)
 
The service had begun with a Read-and-Response Land Acknowledgement. 
It starts, 
"We have associated this place where our Church sits with our European/American roots".... 

Our roots? Because no one in the church has non-European roots?

My God, what a statement of exclusion. 
What if you're Black or Asian or . . . ?
What if you're Native member of the congregation?

Well then, you're not guilty! 
But you're also Other--not a "we" with "our roots" in "our Church".
It sounds like that's never expected to happen though.

The thing I hate most about Land Acknowledgements––
and I hear them in a lot of places (not just churches)––
is not their underlying assumptions but their hypocrisy.

What's the point of this toothless statement?
If you care, 
GIVE THE LAND BACK.

Really. If I were in that church, I'd vote for that.
Maybe swap the beautiful stone church for some crum-bum building near the thrift store, where the city's highest concentration of Native people live. 

There's a Werner Herzog vision! Church Swap. I'd love to see that documentary.
_____________
The funny thing is, I'd introduced myself to the pastor before church started and told him I would like to learn more about the church. Jumped the gun there...

He said a couple other people had asked, and he'd be starting an Inquiry group soon.

He's very likable--I like him (still, even)--and I told him I'd read a book about Roger Williams.

He lit up. "Really? Which one?"

I told him-- Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul--and he said, "Oh, the one by Berry--that's a good one!"

I'm a bit sad this relationship didn't work out. Not super surprised though.

Roger Williams ended up leaving all denominations forever. He called himself a Seeker.
Guess I'm with him.

 Pull a chair up to our picnic table in the howling wilderness. 
We're having bear on a stick.