Lead Me Home

On New Year's Eve I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car, sniffling with my fourth cold of the year and listening to my chauffeur for the evening talk about how she missed religious Sundays. This woman is one of my oldest and dearest friends and quit Roman Catholicism while I was still trying to find a way that combined "radical feminist and egalitarian" with "a hierarchy that uses flawed theology to mask its fear and mistrust of women." Needless to say, I've stopped making the attempt to reconcile the two.

The conversation was a soothing one. We both confessed that our Secular Sundays lacked a sense of community and a sense of purpose and belonging that our weeks had when we were both practicing Christians. It may be the result of years of indoctrination in a particular faith, but we both agreed that our Sundays were lacking depth. However, we both also agreed that returning to Christian churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, was an impossibility. That ground has been pretty well razed and salted. We eventually arrived at our destination and put an end to the conversation.

She's departed to finish an internship abroad and I'm left muddling through my own Sundays as best as I know how. Sundays generally include the Sunday New York Times, copious amounts of coffee, baking, cooking, and fiction reading. They're quiet and peaceful and have settled into a routine I truly enjoy. Lately, in addition to all of these things, my Sundays have included a playlist titled "Better than Church."

You see, despite giving up Roman Catholicism, Jesus, and feeling well on my way to giving up the idea of a personal God, I cannot drop Gospel music. I was never one for the organ-based hymns played at the church where I attended graduate school (this particular community could make "How Can I Keep from Singing" sound like a dirge) and I equally loathed anything that sounded like Christ-pop, but Gospel music has long been a part of my life.

As a theology student, I was passionately interested in grace, in the efficacy of the sacraments, and the mechanics of salvation. I thought of salvation as a kind of equation, something like: SALVATION=human sinfulness-Christ's sacrifice +the sacraments+(good deeds+living the faith(?)) I was told many times that salvation was a mystery explained (somehow) by Christ's willingness to be tortured to death, but I was always a little confused by the argument. I arrogantly wanted to be a part of my own redemption, and not just because I participated in the sacraments or professed Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I wanted the life I was trying to lead count for something--anything in that equation--regardless of whether or not I was a Christian. Even then I doubted my own sincerity when participating in the sacraments and wanted redemption, somehow, to not be wrapped up in my identity as a Christian.

Gospel music has always brought these questions of grace and redemption forward for me in a way that other religious music can't. I may be moved by the beauty of Mozart's Requiem Mass or repulsed by any religious music played on an electric guitar, but they never make me pause to consider my salvation. But even on my most secular mornings, hearing Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash sing "On the Far Side Banks of the Jordan" makes me long for some kind of certainty about my after life.

***

Driving home today Elvis's cover of Amazing Grace came on my radio. It's a fraught song for me and one that's part of my DNA, so to speak. I remember my maternal grandmother helping me to pick out the first notes of the song on her old piano. When she passed, I inherited both her piano and the songbook with the sheet music and the lyrics. I learned the words and the melody to the song long before I ever learned what they meant. It is a song that I can rarely hear without crying, partially because of family history and partially because the lyrics to the song are so powerful and something that I want to believe with every bit of me, but can't.  

I'd spent the weekend with graduate school friends, something that I always enjoy, but inevitably leads to some intense conversations about faith and how I've been doing. I wasn't particularly in a mood to think about redemption and I certainly was not in the mood to cry while driving down the highway. But ultimately, it was this particular version of the song that kept my hand from the seek button. It's a magnificent rendition of the song, and it had been awhile since I had heard it. 

Something happened this time. Instead of listening and hearing a message of love and redemption that felt like something I was excluded from, I listened with a strange kind of calmness. I didn't think about Church or salvation or heaven and how in the hell I'm going to get there as a skeptic. I thought about the generosity and love in the people I had just left. I thought about my grandmother and the fact that I can't sit down at my piano without remembering her fondly. I thought about my family and my best friend and the gift of a place that is finally beginning to feel like home.

When the song ended I realized that I am not comfortable calling these things grace. That word is still a complicated one for me, still wrapped up in a conception of redemption and salvation that require an equation to be explained. But despite not knowing what to call these things, on this particular Sunday, they managed to balance the equation and give a little more weight to the day.

For the time being, that may be grace enough.