Going To Church, Still: Part II (Draining)

AFTER CHURCH TODAY, I felt different, better, than before. Before, I sat in the pre church visitation room, a spartan place with an old fridge, oven, window Air Co unit, and a few tables and chairs. I, sleepy, from not having had enough. Had a donut and some pleasant conversation with the minister and about five friends, half the congregation. Pleasant enough, but nothing special. All the small accumulated burdens very much with me. The misunderstandings and minor resentments of relationships and friendships. Emotioanal baggage from the past week and from sixty nine years of life on Earth. Self inflicted in the form of prick wounds, gathered together in festering emotionl rot. Well, and then, after the service, it was all gone, as if it had never been. All of it. My realization of that amazed me, and as I left my pew to shake hands with my minister friend I told him that whereas John was my least favorite gospel, that he had presented the loquacious ramblinig unknown writer, who gives Jesus a totally different personality, a special sort of sanity and relevance. Anyone who makes John sane and relevant has my vote of confidence. That's when I first noticed it: the absence of emotional filth within me. Where had it gone? Preferring not to look too closely at a gift horse,I settled for the explanation that I had simply allowed it to melt and wash away. For, verily, it had. And it had nothing to do with the Christian religion,or the content of the sermon, which was, as usual, simple and predictable. We are all imperfect. We can do better. We are forgiven, by God, who loves us. We need only forgive ourselves, and renew our pledge to get up, get out, and get better. To expect nothing, blame nobody, and do something The same beautiful sermon, delivered by my friend, each Sunday. So maybe it was the sermon. Maybe it was a subtle but profound impact on me that I am not even aware of. I do not know. But I do know, that I have been through a time of changes, and that, changed, I am renewed in my quest to ascend to the top of the mountain,and to look down from above, and say: I have progressed, I have learned, I have grown. "Mind foreruns all conditions. Mind is chief. Mind made are they. If one speaks or acts with wicked mind, because of this, evil follows one, even as the wheel follows the hoof of the draft ox. He beat me, he abused me, he defeated me, he robbed me. The hatred of those who harbor such thoughts is never appeased. Mind foreruns all conditions. Mind is chief. Of mind are they made. If one speaks or acts with pure mind, because of this, happiness follows one, even as the shadow which never leaves. He beat me, he abused me, he defeated me, he robbed me. The hatred of those who do not harbor such thoughts is always appeased. And this is a law eternal". (The Dhammapada)... I will live another week of my life, and the hatred, the wickedness, the pettiness, the anger and pin prick resentments and the impurity of mind will return, gradually, like a stealthy shadow. By next Sunday, it will have once again accumulated, come back to burden me, my self inflicted burden. But for now I am pure, clean, happy, and content. We'll see what happens next Sunday. In his seminal science fiction novel,"A Time of Changes", Robert Silverberg's central cnaracter, Kinnall Darival, lives on a planet in which self abnegation is mandatory. The worst criminal offense is to use the pronoun "I". One is required by law to ignore one's own existence. To drain away the inevitable anxiety which accumulates from this unnatural cultural convention, a religious psychology is in place in which people, when their frustration reaches unbearable levels, as it inevitably does, go to a "drainer", a sort of confessor priest, and rids the self of all the built up emotional baggage. Finally, Darival starts a cultural revolution, which overthrows this insane, absurd culture and allows the self to emerge, fully in view. Perhaps that is what church and my minister are to me: drainers.