This essay picks up where Going Off the Deep End left off.
LOOKING BACK Over a life of conversions - from Protestant to Anglo-Catholic to Pagan to Gnostic to “seeker” to Episcopalian to Orthodox - I recognise a constant two-part pattern. For now, let’s call it convertitis, although it shows up in other contexts besides religion: when I came out in 1983/84; when, to a great extent, I went back in again 4 years ago; through several phases of politics and philosophy, etc. I also recognise it in various spiritual experiments/research in which I participated on my journeys. In each new conversion (religious, spiritual, political, whatever) the two parts follow, the first, then the second - rarely an overlap or shared boundary. They may be separated by years. I think they are linked as a matter of style more than anything else.
Part the First
On the one hand there is a full-tilt, gung-ho attitude. There is a need to do everything to the fullest extent possible and there is a need to do absolutely everything connected with the new conversion. Another way to say this is “Do everything and do it right” where “right” is defined as “to the Nth degree of exactitude.”
This has been a long-standing issue: when I dated a Jewish Girl in High School and we discussed my possible conversion, I said I’d only consider it if we were talking about Orthodoxy. Why do it at all, I remember saying, unless you’re going to do it right? Never mind that such was a level of observance far greater than she, raised in a secular family, had ever expected or desired. It was, ultimately, far easier for her to “pray the sinner’s prayer” at my evangelical church, as she did one Sunday, and get on with her life. I did the same sort of “level of observance” (earlier in High School) with Lord of the Rings. I did the same thing with my best friend and with football my freshman year: for a kid who didn’t like sports, how odd was it that I went to every game save one?
Jerusalem My Happy Home…
Seemingly, every time I turn around there is a new pool into whose deep end I must jump, feet first, with no preparedness. The Jerusalem Syndrome comes to mind. This was first mentioned to me by Margaret, the Chair of my Vocational Discernment Committee at St Gregory Nyssa Church:
[It is] the name given to a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences, that are triggered by, or lead to, a visit to the city of Jerusalem. It is not endemic to one single religion or denomination, but has affected Jews and Christians of many different backgrounds.The best known, although not the most prevalent manifestation of the Jerusalem syndrome, is the phenomenon whereby a person who seems previously balanced and devoid of any signs of psychopathology, becomes psychotic after arriving in Jerusalem. The psychosis is characterised by an intense religious theme and typically resolves to full recovery after a few weeks, or after being removed from the area.
…previously balanced and devoid of any signs of psychopathology, becomes psychotic after arriving in Jerusalem. I love that.
In a real - although I pray non-psychotic - sense, “Jerusalem Syndrome” is descriptive of my life at every turn, if “Jerusalem” is considered as the metaphore for everything from Anglo-Catholic Ritual to the writings of Mary Daily to Irish Republican Politics to the Gnostic Grail Mass to sex, drugs, Springsteen, my fraternity and nearly every intimate relationship I’ve had.
I get to Jerusalem and I go ga-ga.
It does not end, so, however.
In connecting my convertitis with “Jerusalem Syndrome” I learn a lot. But I don’t know: is there a way for me to enter Jerusalem without going crazy?
Vision Swings
In each successive conversion, I’ve “died to my old self.” The man who was adamantly opposed to Apple computers in the 1990s becomes an Apple Evangelist in the new millennium. The man who said, in High School, that all homosexuals should be shot comes out in college and becomes a political activist on quite a large stage. The same High School student who handed out tracts on “the Roman Catholic Cult” becomes Episcopalian before he graduates. The man who argues for Open Communion at a General Seminary gathering in May of 2002 is Chrismated Eastern Orthodox in June of that same year.
These wide swings of vision would not be so distressing (at least in a post-modern, GenX kinda way) if I wasn’t prone to burning bridges behind me. When I left NYC to move to SF, I wrote an essay about how glorious life was in the human-scaled SF compared to the Megacity of NYC. Many of my NYC friends just stopped bothering with me at all at that point. When I left Christianity for Paganism I wrote a letter that said, basically, “Fuck You” to my previous spiritual home. When I left ECUSA to be Orthodox I did the same thing.
Sadly, not until now - in my early 40s - did I ever feel regret for any of these actions. At the time each event felt like logical growth, evolution, sloughing off old, dead skin. Now I’ve reached an age where it might be nice to have at least some emotional (spiritual, domestic, philosophical) roots. Every community that would have welcomed me in - perhaps even in a position of leadership - every lover that opened his heart to me, almost every friend I’ve had has been dissed away at least somewhat in order to make room for me to “move on” and “grow”.
Many of my friends who are Orthodox now see me as finally having left all that “wrongness” behind. Now I’m “right”. Being right is no great comfort when it’s cold and lonely. The first regret I can remember feeling is when that same Vocational Discernment Chairwoman asked me, standing in her bookstore, if Orthodoxy was all I had wanted and hoped it would be. 28 June 2006, about 5pm, 601 Van Ness in San Francsico, CA, a wave of profound regret swept over me - lost friendships, lost opportunities, lost what evers, from so many bridge burnings - and I said “No.”
Eight months later I’m still trying to figure out what that means.
Part the Second
The second half of the pattern I see repeated in my journey - which may, in fact, be part of the source material for the first half - is passive aggression.
I was a practising Pagan for years before I announced any change of faith to those Christians around me and it was longer before I stopped going to Church because of a perceived discontinuity between my public actions and my private faith. I wanted to leave San Francisco nearly 18 months before I did, bringing myself to live so duplicitously that I managed to date a man in that period, claiming to him that I would never leave SF. I was secretly attending only Orthodox liturgies weeks before I told my vocational discernment team that I was leaving. During the overlap - when I wanted to be elsewhere, but wasn’t yet - every little thing about where I didn’t want to be would anger me: I’d fight with my pastor about a vestment choice when I was already praying to St Raphael. I’d fight with my boyfriend about smoking in the house when I was researching a move out of NYC. I’d move heaven and earth for a new Job description from my employers when I was getting ready to quit. In my pride, I pretended I just didn’t want to offend anyone. The result of my covert action being later discovered, I’d effectively lied to everyone for a set period (months, weeks, whatever). I wasn’t worth being trusted at all as a member of their - or any other - community.
The Root?
My problem, in case you cannot tell by this point in the essay, is that I think too much. I over-analyse and weigh every option, every minute option. One might want to be generous and credit this to my good sense. Rather I credit it, if credit is the right word, to fear. Although I can push the envelope when I make up my mind to do so (move across country, join a new church), it can take quite a long time to get to that point. I’d rather be seen to be a well-considered sort of guy; reasonable and not impulsive: to show my work, make the right steps, do the right thing. In fact, I’m usually just afraid to take the next step without permission. Fear is my great hobgoblin: fear of the unknown, fear of the dark, fear of death (in one of many possible senses), fear of change, and, to a great extent, fear of the possibility that I might paint myself into a corner from which it is not possible to escape.
It is also a fear of success. The irony is that in my fear - which a good many people charitably perceive as patience - I let most things slip through my fingers as I can’t quite decide if, in fact, I want to grasp them. Thus when I do, finally, act with sudden haste and seeming great aplomb, in the grip of some new Jerusalem Syndrome, I terrify and abandon those who came to love me for the mask I previously wore. I could rewrite the history of every major change I’ve made in my life - including my “Spiritual Autobiography” - by noting the point at which I wanted to change but couldn’t and saying “at this point the fear took over and I started telling lies.”
I would love to be the patient, careful man many seem to think I am. I would equally love to be the man who can think of a great plan and act on it, bringing it to fruition in grace and wonder. Sadly, I am neither.
…When shall I come to thee?
I don’t know. I’m not where I want to be. I can’t quite figure out where that is. I struggle to know what I believe (if I believe anything at all) and I worry that I’m pretty much telling lies all around. When I see Orthodox attacking others whose faith is different or weaker - or maybe stronger, though less exact, more grey - I get angry. That’s me, really: that person of a different faith, a weaker one. But also I recognise I’m in that part of the pattern where I’m gunning for an excuse to leave rather than just being honest.
When I’m honest (as I was, recently, with my confessor) my faith is more grey, and open-ended than I’ve been willing to let on, even to my self. It’s not that I deny things taught by the Church, it’s just that I don’t *know* them and I refuse to circumscribe possibility by them. There are more things in heaven and on earth…
What I’m sure about is that I don’t want to any change, growth or evolution to come off as more bridge burning. I broken off communion with hundreds of people - thousands actually - from whom I was learning of Christ’s unstoppable, universal and welcoming love. I don’t need my communion table to shrink any further. Some of my readers would call them heretics or sinners, one even ventured to call them blasphemers. *Shrug*. I’m not a man that is that sure of things even though I’ve managed to play one on the internet - words are cheap, living is hard. What I am afraid of, even more, is that having reached the most exclusive club there is, any recantation will be perceived of as a total dismissal. I fear any admission of weakness will be perceived as a chink in the armour of faith, rendering me impure. My own control issues and my own pride - by which I want to be 100% right all the time and seen to be right buffet me about on every side at this point. I can be 100% right and still be exactly wrong.
It is mostly my own pride and fear that keeps me where I am - that keeps me from hitting publish on this post.
Fear of y’all’s silence (my readership dropped nearly 30% after Going Off the Deep End) or reaction and, when I’m honest, fear of a vengeful God that I didn’t believe in before I became Orthodox: not since I was in first grade have I believed in this one, the one who keeps track of things in a ledger, the one who hurls earthquakes at Constantinople (as per our liturgical calendar) and invading tribes at Russia (as per our saints). And we wondered where people got the idea that the Tsunami was a curse from god? Increasingly this god seems nothing like the God of Jesus.
It was suggested that I focus on God’s love. The Gospels are all about love…
Lord, have mercy.
