A Moment of Honesty

Yesterday, walking to a local synagogue, feeling nervous, dressed differently than I normally would, my head filled with visions of congregants asking me, "are you Jewish"? I imagined, over and over, my witty, ascerbic responses.



I stopped myself a few strides from the synagogue and prayed for a moment. I prayed not to make a fool of myself, because I was wound tighter than a violin. I prayed not to be rude and deliberately confrontational and agressive. And for the 1,402nd time (or more), I realized that I was playing dress up. And I may never be satisfied playing, because I couldn't get what I really wanted from this game. I don't connect with God in a synagogue. I might not even connect that much with god in a church, although I probably connect more in some churches than others. But when I go to a meeting, do stepwork, and contact my sponsor and others in recovery, I am having my holy sacrament. It's not always fun because I have a million hang ups and resistance to the fact that I'm Christian. There's resistance to accepting my own worldviews and ways of connecting to God. But when I do these things, I get closer. I'm not racing around around with tons of hangups, I don't have butterflies in my stomach because maybe something will happen and I'll be like the pretty straight and orderly people I see at Synagogues and on websites. I'm there, and I'm improving my connection each time. If I keep doing this, I will get closer to God as I understand God.

In short, it's ok to play dress up, and the thing about playing is that I keep learning important things as I continue to play. But there's a time to play, a time to work, and a time to go not to the dollhouse spirituality (and by that I mean, not the places, people or religions themselves, but my own perceptions of them and ways I try to escape by following my skewed perceptions), but for real communion, which is not as exciting and not as dressed up, but is very available in meetings, stepwork, and reaching out to my sponsor and others.

I wanted to leave you with an excellent spoof video, which I feel sums up my feelings about being Christian. Enjoy!