LETTERS FROM CHARITY

Part 4

Dear Beth,

Good morning!  Well, I mean, it’s morning right now as I’m writing this, but I’m not sure what time of day you’ll read my email, so good (insert time of day)!

I have to start out by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed your story about how you came up with the name for your blog site.  I’ve not visited too many Roman Catholic churches or chapels, myself — okay, I’ve been to exactly none of either — so your description of the one where you saw the life-sized crucifix was a revelation to me.  And I confess that I’ve never thought much about the difference between crucifixes and regular crosses, I just always assumed they were a matter of personal preference.  What you said really opened my eyes, though.  I’m sorry that so many people have misunderstood your intentions with the blog name and yeah, people can be gargantuan, grade-A jerks a lot of the time.  But I definitely get what you were saying and I am totally on board with the Skinned Knee Jesus Revolution!

Sometimes I have a really hard time thinking of good segues into new subjects when I’m writing letters, and this is one of those times, so I’m just going to jump into talking about why I like fantasy books.  The first non-children’s book I remember reading when I was a child is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I guess Lewis actually wrote it for children, so maybe I should say it was the first book longer than ten pages that I read.  My little girl brain just exploded with wonder at the thought that maybe there were other worlds, other places where children were actually treated like people instead of being told to shut up all the time.  I devoured the rest of the Narnia chronicles and, perhaps unwisely at that age, jumped right into Tolkien.  I made it through The Hobbit just fine, but when I started The Fellowship of the Ring, I got mired in all the pages-long descriptions of geography and lengthy songs/poems.  I’ve never been particularly enthralled with overly long descriptive passages and at the time, poetry was very much not my thing.  I had to forsake Tolkien for a while until I’d matured a bit more.

My late teens and early twenties were spent in the magical worlds of Piers Anthony and Anne McCaffrey.  Every cell in my body yearned to have what the dragonriders of Pern had in their wondrous telepathic relationships with dragons, although if I’m honest it wasn’t the dragon part that appealed to me so much, it was more the idea of there being another creature that was so completely and absolutely devoted to you in every way.  I could only dream of such a bond.

David and Leigh Eddings’ books were what made me willing to try Tolkien again.  Even though the writing styles are drastically different, the Eddings gave me a reinvigorated love of books that created entire worlds along with comprehensive and thorough mythologies of their own.  Their snarky humor made it much easier to slog through explanations and descriptions (which were still mercifully way shorter than anything Tolkien wrote).

As for what book stands out the most to me (and by the way, I really love that you asked it that way rather than asking what was my favorite), I would have to say  The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, which I think you mentioned was one of the first books you read by her.  I wanted to be Hari Crewe more than I’ve wanted anything in my entire life — displaced, disconsolate, despairing, and yet discovering that she was more powerful and more special than she could have imagined.  Thinking about it now, I’m realizing that it’s not just the being powerful or special aspect of her story that clutched my heart and wouldn’t let go.  It was that her being powerful and special made her a necessary and desired part of the community she was thrust into, and what she brought to the table was valued because it came from her and it could come from no one else.  I don’t know if that makes any sense.  I’m not quite as good at expressing my thoughts and feelings as you are, I’m afraid.

I want to thank you for not screaming “Heretic!” in my face and dismissing me like so many others have for what I said about Moses and the Bible.  I keep saying it, but you truly have no idea how much it means to me that you still want to communicate with me.  I’ve had the door slammed in my face so many times that I’m honestly not sure why I keep going back to church and church people.

Yet the doubts and the questions persist.   What if all those people who have shut me out are right and the Christian life is about nothing more than duty, obligation, practicality, and just getting by?  What if there’s no more than what I’ve already experienced?  What if there is no glory in this life and we are simply supposed to hang on by our toenails until Jesus comes back?  What if God is not a God of wonder but instead a God of drudgery and dullness, a God of never being quite sure of anything until you get to heaven?  What if He is not a God of release but a God of chains?  What if the “good news” is just that you get a ticket to heaven but until then you have to figure out everything on your own?  I’ve heard so, so many things in my life about how awesome God is and about how much He loves us.  But I’ve also been taught, in deed if not so much in word, that Christianity is really just about reading your Bible and having a quiet time every day, serving no matter how you feel about it, forgiving everyone no matter how much they abuse you.

I don’t know why, but a memory just hit me with quite a bit of force.  It was the last time my sister and I were together at our mother’s funeral.  Everyone had left and we were sitting alone in the dining room at our parents’ house.  I vividly remember the candles on the dining room table, flickering in the dimly lit room as dusk crept over the house.  Our mother despised candles for some reason and would have been horrified at the thought that someone had put candles on her table.  Maybe that’s why I did it.

You must have quite the opinion of me by now.  I would totally understand if you think I’m a little too much to handle and decided to end our email conversations.  It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Several years ago, I started getting into poetry, and I even started writing some of my own.  I am definitely no Walt Whitman, but I’ve found that poetry gives me a way to say some things in a way that isn’t possible in prose.  I think that maybe a poem I wrote last year might be the best way to answer the last question you asked in your email.  And just so you know, I never really intended anyone to see this so it’s not exactly polished.   I’m not sure I can phrase how I feel about God any better than I did in the poem, though.

did i do something wrong?  did i forget You in some way?

have You forsaken me forever?

didn’t i do what You asked of me?  didn’t i obey Your voice?

have You rejected me forever?

oh God, what did i do wrong?

how did i displease You that You have abandoned me like this?

i cry out but all i hear is silence.

i reach out but no one reaches back.

yet i can’t kill the hope that maybe — just maybe —

You are listening.

are You?

I guess that last part sums up why I keep going to church.  I keep hoping beyond hope that maybe God really is listening to me and someday I’ll have some kind of breakthrough where I understand Him.  Every day that passes, though, that flame of hope sputters a little more and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep it up.

As ever, thank you for taking the time to read all my nonsense.  I hope I didn’t put a huge bummer on your day.

~Charity