Asking the Important Questions

One of my favorite movie scenes is in the movie "American History X" where Avery Brooks's character is talking to Edward Norton's character about how to turn his life around, and he says "I used to be like you. I used to hate like you."
Of course Edward Norton's doesn't want to believe it, because he's been a racist white supremacist all his life, and he's in prison for murdering two young black men who were trying to steal his car, and he's been beaten down and abused, but he's still having trouble letting go of his pride and admitting he needs help.
Avery Brooks (his counselor) goes on to say  "that's right, don't listen to me, don't look critically at your life.  Blame somebody, blame anybody, blame white people, blame God. I didn't get answers because I wasn't asking the right questions." Edward Norton's sneers and says "yeah? Like what?" Avery Brooks pauses for a second, then says "has anything you've done made your life better?"

That always stuck with me. I have anxiety, so I've always been plagued with "why's" and "what ifs." I look at things from every possible angle, even angles that aren't possible, I play scenarios in my head over and over. I'm constantly asking questions, and it irritates people, they tell me I shouldn't worry so much, and yeah I know they're right, but itsi the way I am. It made me stop and think, this movie, "American History X," about how maybe I wouldn't find the right answers in my life until I was asking the right questions. Just questioning and worrying about everything is obviously not going to be enough if you're beating your head against a wall trying to get out of a room not realizing you're standing two feet away from a door and you'd be out in a second if you just took the time to look in a slightly different direction. It sounds silly, but i think we do it a lot in our lives, obsess and worry and wonder and cry, but never stop to ask ourselves why, how we got here, if there's any solutions we may be overlooking because we're too focused in one direction.

Maybe there aren't any solutions though, and maybe we just need people to support us and be there for us while we live with the overwhelming fear of not knowing. Maybe the fear won't be so overwhelming if we make peace with it. If we realize we're all in this boat together. After all, even the most put-together people have doubts and fears and thins they can never know. We don't know when we will die, and we all have to live with that. No matter how much faith we have in our belief in the afterlife, exactly what will happen after we die will always be shrouded in mystery until it actually happens to us.

I used to feel inadequate, because as a Christian,  I'm supposed to be sure without a doubt what will happen after I die, so I'm not supposed to ever worry or freak out about it. I'm not supposed to be afraid of death. I've spent most of my life hiding the fact that death scares me, because I know I'll get a lecture, or advice to trust God,  or pray  and study the bible more until I'm sure. I'm saved, saved, so wonderfully saved, and I'm so glad I am, proclaims the hymn. That would be great, but it's just never happened for me, and I've spent most of my life as a Christian thinking i was a failure because of that.

When i was sixteen, i was getting a ride home from church with my pastor, and i had brought a group of kids from my neighborhood to church with me, so we were all piled in the backseat talking and laughing and probably being really loud and annoying. It was dark outside,  and we were on a rural road, when suddenly a car pulled out in front of us. There was no time to stop the car or turn. I saw my pastor's hands fly up off the wheel, I heard her scream, heard us all scream, and I closed my eyes and waited for the crash, the pain, the death. Nothing happened. I opened my eyes, and we were further down the road, my pastor had her hands on the wheel, the kids were all confused and a little scared. I could clearly see the car that had pulled out right in front of us pulling out of their driveway right behind us. It was as if someone had rewound the night, picked up our car and put us ahead of the driveway on the road where the other car was pulling out, and then pressed "play" and resumed the night like nothing had happened. We all remembered the car pulling out in front of us and screaming and waiting for the crash, but it was like none of it had happened. Even though we all knew it did.

That's a night I will never forget. I'm sure some people will think I'm lying, or making it up, or think we all imagined it or something.  Other people will think "wow, that's awesome how God saved your lives, praise God!" I go back and forth between several of those feelings depending on my mood, honestly. But in the end, I know what I saw, I know what happened...and I don't know what happened.  I'll probably never know, until one day I'm in heaven chilling with God and he can show me the video of that night and I can see the big hand come out of the sky and move our car and be like "oh cool, that's what happened then."

One thing sticks out to me now, years later, more than anything else about that night. My pastor was a really strong Christian (obviously a good thing in her line of work). She preached and spoke and sang with absolute certainty of heaven and the afterlife and what her mansion would look like in heaven. She never paused or hedged or seemed to have any doubt. In fact,  she said that having doubt was an insult to God.  If you were uncertain, if you had any doubt or fear, you had no business being in church. We would all come forward to pray every Sunday at the end of church, and she would announce that if anyone had any doubt or fear in their hearts, they had to leave the building and wait outside, because God wouldn't listen to our prayers if we had doubt. I used to think of her faith and feel totally inadequate. There was no way I should be a Christian if I had so many doubts and fears. I didn't have strong faith and I never would have faith as strong as hers. I had too many questions.

Then one night while I was thinking about this event, this almost crash that was either a miracle or all of us in the car going crazy at once, I thought about it and I realized something. What did my pastor do when she saw that car pull out and thought we were going crash?

She screamed.

She screamed just as loudly as the rest of us did, because SHE WAS SCARED TOO. It might not have been the nagging,  prolonged fear that I always seem to get, but she was afraid too. Even with all her assurance and knowledge and faith. She was scared too.

Here's the thing. The bible has all these stories about great people and their faith that never wavered no matter what happened, but it also has the book of Ecclesiastes that says there's a time to every purpose under heaven, even a time to mourn and weep. There's Lamentations, that ends with God's people in exile, asking him if he will turn his face away forever and never getting an answer. There's a man in Mark asking Jesus for healing "if you can" and when Jesus is like "um what do you mean IF?!" the man replies "Lord, I do believe.  Help my unbelief." There are these and a ton of other examples in the bible that we don't always hear about that show that people are scared, messed up, questioning, and worried, but that doesn't mean their faith isn't real. They're just human. And being human is a scary daily struggle with the unknown. Pretending that we can't have fear and faith both together doesn't help anyone. Pretending that we know everything and there aren't things we wonder about and struggle with that might never be resolved in our lifetimes? That's make believe. It doesn't make anyone feel better and it really doesn't even make us feel better. I've found that I dont get healing by manufacturing answers. I get healing by asking the right questions, and knowing they're right, even if I never get an answer.

The Why's and Wherefores: Statement of Purpose, 2019

So I went to church this morning. It's a church I've been going to since 2004, which contrary to how I may feel makes me very old indeed. 2004 is when I graduated from college. Check it out. 2004 is also, much to my chagrine, 15 years ago. I feel older than the sands of Egypt.

So some of you may be wondering why this post is here. This is, after all, mainly a blog about horror movies, most of which I chronicle when I attempt to watch at least 100 horror movies every October.

Well, see, this blog is SUPPOSED TO BE about my life, and thus about God and sexuality and love and food and everything that makes me ME, which is why I use it to talk about horror movies mostly, because horror movies are a big part of who I am, but that's not ALL of who I am. Just a big part. A part that's fun to talk about with ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, because those have always been a big part of who I am. Boo.

But there's more to me, so much more, just like there's so much more to every person, in the big broken glass tapestry of who we are. So many peices, each important and beautiful when the light hits it right and it shines brightly, illuminating something that once was dark.

Even the title of this blog, "Out of the Box," and the web address "youcanhaveabigbox" is about something. Many things. One of the churches I used to go to had a concert one night, and the singer tried to teach us many songs, one of which went

You can have a big box
You can have a little box
But if your god is in the box
Your God is very small
You can have a plain box
You can have a fancy box
But if you think that God is in the box
You don't know God at all

That's how I think about God, at least the God I am seeking and eventually finding. He doesn't live in the little boxes that fit the bits of God we can see and think we understand. He's huge, bigger than anything we could ever hope to understand, and he reveals himself however he sees fit. In my life, he's revealed himself mostly in horror stories. Maybe he knew I would understand the darkness better than anything else, who knows. But I've found God more in horror stories than I have anywhere else, and I'm planning to write more about that in the coming months, but before I do, I think I have to make a post explaining this as best I can.

I was talking with someone after church this morning, and the talk strayed, as it often does, to more political matters. I've been hoping that maybe we can reach out more to people in this area who don't realize that they will be welcomed and accepted at our church, and people tell me we don't have to fly a banner to say we accept people, our faith is bigger than that, etc. It seems that I'm always in this place, trying to fly a banner and having people tell me I don't see the big picture, and it makes me tired.

If anyone knows that life is bigger than one piece in one banner, it's me. Tell the vegan who grew up catching squirrels and skinning and dressing them so she'd have food to eat that life is bigger than one label or one piece. Tell the huge diehard horror fanatic who graduated with a degree in English Literature and was baptized as a Mormon, Evangelical, apastolic Pentecostal who now identifies as an Episcopalian, that life is bigger than one title or one label.

I get it, folks. I get it better than you may realize, because my life has been a series of contradictions, definitions that didn't define me, labels that fsilef to describe me, gates that couldn't hold me, and wonderings that never ceased. Every person's life is bigger than any one definition, one banner, one truth. We're all part of a whole greater than some of our parts. I know this. But let's say we recognized that people might be accepting if one part of us, one aspect of our lives that always seems to cause conflict, one piece of us that we get sick of talking about sometimes because no one understands us and people talk to us like we haven't thought of every angle, haven't read every book we could find, haven't considered every option. What if we thought there was one church, one place, where we were welcomed to be our whole selves, where we didn't have to hide or pretend to be normal (whatever THAT means) or constantly give a defense for who we are, but were just accepted, no matter what? Don't you think we would want to seek out that church and go there? Don't you think the possibility of having a community of friends who didn't expect anything from us but were just happy we showed up, don't you think we would love a place like that?

I'm of the mind that anything that tells people we love them and we care more about God's message of love for them than anything that people might say about politics is a good thing. Love God, love others, nothing else matters to me. Anything else is too great a weight to bear. So I'm going to be posting more in the coming months, God willing, and I'm going to be telling more of my story, mostly because keeping it bottled up is wearing me down, but I hope you'll all remember and know that whether we agree or disagree on everything, we should choose love, because anything else it too great a weight to carry.

You can have a big box
You can have a little box
But if your God is in the box
Your God is very small
You can have a plain box
You can have a fancy box
But if you think that God is in the box
You don't know God at all