Me, James Erb, and the nature of God

I spent most of my formative years as an active churchgoer.  Then I pedaled off to college and was asked to challenge everything I knew to be true.  In that process and in learning more about the many horrors we’ve committed in the name of faith, I lost mine.  Not just because of the grandwizardmagicsantaclaus absurdity of it.  Heck, two hundred years ago folks would have thought a trip to the moon was equally absurd.  Nope, I lost my faith when I realized that religion is a purely human construct.  It’s one more tool that the powerful have devised to control the unwashed masses.  The corrupt prey on fear – fear of loneliness, of rejection, of the unknown.  Because fear, if properly sown, can work to the benefit of those controlling the story.  Scare the crap out of people and they’ll give you their last dime to keep the door bolted behind them.  It’s the worst possible chicanery and it infuriates me.  But that’s WAY off the point.

The point is that we don’t have to pay for God, or placate others to intervene with God on our behalf.  It seems to me that God – or the idea of perfect goodness – really does live inside of each of us.  Every time we put someone else’s well being ahead of our own; when we make something beautiful or do something extraordinary; when we’re calm and quiet or thrilled beyond words – THAT’S God.  God is us at our very best.  God is our awe at life and the world around us.  God is our own unmitigated joy.

I think God may also be parading around as James Erb.  Because every time I hear a choir sing his arrangement of “Shenandoah” I break out in head-to-toe goose bumps and sob uncontrollably.  It has little to do with the text.  It’s an unremarkable little wagon trail tune that holds no relevance for me whatsoever.  They could be singing about plumbing or a recipe for bread dough.  My apoplexy is entirely about the sounds being coaxed out of those people on the risers.  There’s a quiet majesty in how the whole piece is constructed and how well it knows the human voice; how it builds one simple idea upon another until you’re drowning in glory.  And when it all winds down and the tenors sail for that beautiful high E, your heart feels like it might burst.

(Turn up your speakers!  The bass/baritone section is particularly rich and chocolatey)

And God being the cagey fellow that He is, it’s not just James Erb.  There’s an arrangement of “Oh, Holy Night” that I heard performed by the Yale Whiffenpoofs (okay, not the most awe-inspiring name ever imagined) that will have me undone for hours afterward.  The thing that really gets me is how prayer-like it is.  We’re used to hearing the command to “FALL ON YOUR KNEES – Oh HEEEEEAR the angel VOOOOOICES!  Oh NIIIIIIIGHT di-VIIIINE…” You get the picture.  But this one is tender and quiet; it’s magical.  It’s something you’d sing while watching a baby sleep.  That’s where God lives for me: Inside those notes and sounds; inside the concept of that song and the inspiration to arrange and perform it in that specific way.  Say what you will about miracles, but the all-you-can-eat fish buffet’s got nothin’ on this one.  And look – it’s right here.  I can play it again.  

Hold on to your wimple because here is where I get really heretical: When Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” and no one gets to heaven “except through me,” we weren’t being told to worship Jesus the man – or even Jesus the son of God.  We were being invited to find God in ourselves.  He was calling up the “I” that is all of us.  I am the way.  It’s MY goodness, my joy, my willingness to share what I have and to do good works that determines my state of grace, and not because it’s written down somewhere.  I am at my happiest when I’ve made someone else’s life a little nicer.  There’s my heaven.  I don’t feel that when I’m sitting with a bunch of other people in a building listening to someone tell me about fearing God, or the four cowboys of the apocalypse, or some impish beast doing a jig in a pit of brimstone.  That’s pure silliness.

But I suppose some folks need to know that they’ve sat through their weekly hour of silliness and paid to have their heaven ticket punched.  If that’s where they find their grace, then I support and encourage it wholeheartedly.  The problem starts when the ticket-punchers expect others to live and die by their arbitrary rules.  I deeply resent the fact that those who pay their hour of silliness consider themselves entitled to impinge upon the rights and free will of others.  I resent the self-righteousness and false piety and the idea that one morning in church will wipe away a week’s worth of meanness.  I think a philosophy is critically flawed when it says a loving and generous Muslim will go to hell while a chronically philandering but sufficiently apologetic Christian gets a hero’s welcome at the pearly gates. That philosophy feeds the weakest, ugliest aspects of our nature: the need to feel exclusive and chosen over others; to be better than.  I want nothing to do with it.     

All but the most hard-boiled of us acknowledge the idea of a higher power, whether it’s Praying The Rosary or Using The Force.  I don’t believe in some grandfatherly being in a big gilded chair throwing thunderbolts or handing out favor like gumdrops.  So I suppose some will say I don’t believe in God.  But I believe in Good.  I believe that each of us is capable of divinity, whether through art or music or words, or simply by being decent to one another.  I believe the only real evil is the hatred, judgment and violence that we have inside of us.  I believe that having a God or Devil nearby gives us permission to attribute or blame our actions on some will other than our own.  I prefer to take full responsibility for my actions and their consequences.  And I prefer to think that heaven is immediately attainable by anyone who chooses a course of kindness, tolerance, and understanding.  And as far as I’m concerned, it’s available to anyone willing to bring on the goose bumps of James Erb and the Whiffenpoofs.