Preparing for eternity
Church, suffering, denim-on-denim, other things from my week
In church today, I heard a sermon about not growing discouraged in suffering. He said that Paul, too, struggled to find his place in the world and wrote our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all from a cold, dark prison.
The pastor was a visiting pastor from the Baptist church in town. He was a silver-haired hippy wearing a Canadian tuxedo and he said “pace, caro” when he shook my hand. It was my second Sunday attending a Methodist church and my fifth church since moving to Milan three years ago.
A kind British woman in her 70s who greeted me on my first Sunday and who so warmly welcomed me again today explained to me that the Baptist, Methodist, and Waldensian churches have united in recent years to form a BMW of sorts and their pastors often rotate sermons.
For some reason I’d been wary of these old protestant denominations in Italy, because I assumed they’d remind me of the stiff and sterile midwest churches I grew up around, congregating in fluorescent-lit basements around a buffet of casseroles, the odor of age-old carpet, wood-paneling, and denim skirts far too vivid.
I also, by instinct, eschewed the traditional catholic places of worship, awe-inspiring as they are and equally impersonal. There’s too much echo to hear what’s being said or feel like you belong, in my experience. Though through the three years I’ve lived here I did try—once at Sant’Ambrogio but there were tourists milling about the fringes carrying rain jackets and pamphlets, once at the local parish in a worship space that was more like a hallway than a room (I felt a million miles away), and once at another near cathedral tucked away behind my neighborhood, for Easter, alone. There were an appalling few people there. I just didn’t understand. But nothing came even close to approaching my heart. And no one said hi.
Instead, I mostly opted for newer “evangelical” congregations with you know, young, bon-vivant, stylish people. The first was quite nice and I met a few friends there, but it was an hour and a half away and the fifteen minute walk from metro to front door felt so cold. I did a year there but I felt as if no one would care if I never showed up again. So I stopped going. There was a Dutch couple I really liked who we spent some good time with, but they moved away. There was a Finnish couple that we met up with a few times who were really quite nice, but they moved away. And there was a single, older guy that I invited to my house for Easter dinner, and visited his house with once for a pizza, followed by a coke in the park on the outskirts of town, in which we sat mostly in silence, smacking mosquitoes on our legs, grasping at straws for things to talk about. Then I stopped going to the church and I never saw him again.
Then, a risk: the exuberant young church with the crazy-prolific instagram activity. Snapshots of young, cool people wearing name tags that said “Dream Team,” putting their hands in a huddle, some wearing branded t-shirts and tote-bags with the church logo. It came across my feed. I took a deep breath in. Okay, let’s risk it. It’s near our house anyway.
It’s not a good sign when everyone hears about a church through Instagram, which was the case with: everyone.
The service was held in a dark movie theater with colorful stage lighting and massive graphics on the big screen. There were maybe 15 people there and it looked like 10 were there in a “working” capacity — playing music, hosting, welcoming, doing sound, taking pictures, pouring coffee, handing me a tote bag for being a first timer.
The pastor swooped on me like a vulture. The very next week, I was on stage playing guitar with the “band.” What followed was about six months of some of the strangest experiences of my life: doing rehearsals, meeting with this charismatic pastor who kept telling my wife and me how beautiful we were, watching him get into aggressively confrontational squabbles with strangers on the street: 1) a guy in the subway who bumped into him, 2) an ice cream scooper who didn’t do it like he asked, 3) a shop worker who asked that he sit outside because they were closing, 4) event staff who asked him to kindly walk on the other side of a walkway, 5) the time an El Salvadorian immigrant failed to show up to band practice because he was working night shift at a hotel and morning shift at a restaurant and had just fallen asleep about which he commented to me, “man we’re just really praying for some reliable people.” If anything had been a sign to run, it was that.
Another time, he tried to tell me that, as a basis for his vision for the next season of church, Christians invented the idea of “mentorship.” I awkwardly pressed: “The word mentor comes from The Odyssey when Athena disguises herself to guide Telemachus.” He shrugged and stirred his coffee and said, “It was something like that—I don’t remember exactly.” I thought to myself that someone in the business of knowing shouldn’t be in the practice of guessing.
He wanted me to open up to him over and over again and I just refused, which makes a catch-up over a beer very awkward. So I just stopped spending time with him, and kept playing music, kept trying to be kind. But eventually I just felt like I had to stop. I went back to church after a long absence and he caught me before leaving—“you free for a quick coffee?”
“No,” I said, “unfortunately I can’t today.”
“Really?” he seethed, “Not even a quick coffee?” He handed me a brochure of a leadership document they had drafted a week prior, attempting to solidify vision and commitment I presume. I don’t know. I never read it.
“No, sorry,” I said and walked away feeling so clearly like no one in the world had ever made me feel so unhappy and uncomfortable.
He kept texting me asking if I was okay. I said, “Yeah, fine, just really busy” time and time again. He grew more concerned, as if my failure to get back to him was a sign I must really not be well. I texted him that I just really wanted “space.” Then he started calling. I ignored them, but felt a chill go up my spine every time. It started with two calls at a time, then singular shots in the dark from time to time. Then, finally, he just left me alone.
I had never before met somebody I so longingly wished I never saw again. He technically didn’t do anything to me, but I felt real bad things about him and hoping I never ran into him again.
Then after about seven months of not seeing him or going to the church I did run into him—yesterday. He was with his family. He said I looked like I’d lost weight. I thought, “What a weird comment.” Then I said that I’ve been busy and that I got a new job and would be moving to a new city, to which he replied, looking me gravely in the eyes: “You sure you want to do that?” which I think is the exact perfect thing to say if you want people to want nothing to do with you.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m sure.”
I think I prefer churches that smell like mold and wood-paneling with gray-haired pastors dressed in all-denim preaching about how present winters are preparing you for an everlasting spring. Jasmine is in the air. I’m ready for it.
Other things I did this week:
Finished reading The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Remembered going to Catalina Island this summer and watching a woman in her 30s pack for a day of sun, except in her backpack was a mermaid outfit, which she promptly dressed in and posed for hours on the beach taking pictures with little children before packing up at sunset and taking the boat back home. I found it oddly inspiring.
Read Lynn Darling's essay on marriage, which rocked me
Listened to Anne Lamott’s interview on the TED Radio Hour, which rolled me
Played a lot of Bandle
Watched and loved “Baby Reindeer,” one of the most intense, beautiful, riveting, and emotionally profound things I’ve ever seen.