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.

It was an intricately die-cut door hanger sporting a crazy cartoon test tube with goony glasses and a jet pack inexplicably spewing pink bubbles all over saying, “Calling All Funologists!” I immediately licked my mental thumb and started working through the calendar wondering if one of my nephews was having some party or event I’d forgotten about.  Nope.  Then I noticed what looked like a logo tucked in the lower right corner.  This event was being put on by something called Group’s Power Lab.  There, in 10-point Comic Sans nestled below the company name and inside a Jimmy Neutron-style cartoon molecule, was the real meat of the thing: “Discovering Jesus’ Miraculous Power.”  Did our favorite Jewish carpenter load all of his magic into a pink cartoon jet pack?  I would have been less surprised to see Him as Felix the Cat, (“…Whenever He gets in a fix He reaches into His bag of tricks!”).

We turn over the giddy piece of paper thrill to find that we’re being told to “Plug into Jesus’ power at Power Lab!”  [Huh?]  Are we somehow trying to equate Jesus with science?  The invitation goes on to tell me where the adventure is, when the fun takes place, the time the excitement will begin, and who I can call if I want to join my new friends!  I fully expect to find Mr. Wizard in a cassock and collar changing a beaker of water into wine while climbing a rock wall at Gymboree. 

We graphic artists, typically being a most unwilling sidecar to the marketing world, understand the manipulation factor of good advertising.  I’m disgusted that this outfit and the sponsoring church might feel justified in disguising their indoctrination sessions as some kind of metaphysical adventure.  And it’s not only because I don’t espouse their belief system.  They’re clearly desperate to engage today’s youth and feel they can’t do it by honest means.  Hey, let’s ensnare overwrought mothers with this promise of an exciting week at camp for their little carpet monkeys.  By the time they realize it’s a religion thing, the kids will already have a cup of the Kool-aid in their sticky fists.  Perfect!  Let’s turn Jesus’ completely legitimate and beautiful message of love and compassion into a chocolaty river to be sucked down by all the little Augustus Gloops in the neighborhood.  It’s reprehensible.

All but the most hard-boiled of us acknowledge some sense of a larger/higher power.  I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I believe in Good.  If being made ‘in God’s image’ is true, then it seems we all have the ultimate power for goodness in us.  I believe that the only real evil is the hatred, malice and violence of which we are all capable.  I believe that having a God or a Devil nearby gives us permission to attribute or blame our actions on some will other than our own. 

Oddly, my beliefs along these lines are considered heresy by most Western standards of religion.  But this strange piece of chicanery hanging on my doorknob and portraying God as a wacky bubbling jet pack is perfectly okay.

Post Script:  A little extra sleuthing turned up this super-peppy audio companion piece: “Power In The Blood!” – yep, really.  “There is power-POWER, power-POWER, wonder-working power in the bloooood of the laaaamb!”  If I didn’t know better, I’d be thinking this outfit might be working for the Other Guy.