I went to college at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. If you haven't seen it, you can't imagine how beautiful it is. Don't even try. Just get in your car right now and drive up there for a visit. This story ends in All Saint's Chapel, the religious and architectural center of campus. You can see some pictures of it and read some descriptions in this blog post about our recent road trip through Sewanee.
The beginning of the story is a history of my religious seeking. I grew up Methodist and was about as religious as the typical person in the South. I went to church, sang in choirs, participated in youth group, but thought very little about God. I had a moment or two when my natural desire for life to be as dramatic and romantic as a French novel led me into some kind of fervent spiritualism, but not all that often.
When I went away to boarding school for nerds and weirdos (a very happy time for me), I gave agnosticism a spin. It really didn't take all that well because I was just so devoted to drama and ritual and a life full of symbolic meaning. The agnostic answers "Whatever" to some of the greatest questions of life, and that wasn't me. I was and am often wrong, but I never waver. I wanted an answer that was RIGHT - the kind of right that a person finds in Camelot or in Thomas More. The kind of right that was worth feeling and talking about and holding sacred.
That was a big problem. I wanted to be sacred. I wanted my words to be sacred, my actions, the ground that I walked on, the air that I breathed. I wanted a world where every tiny choice, every miniscule detail was pregnant with meaning. So no agnosticism for me.
At Sewanee, I got religious again. Very religious. Sewanee is steeped in God, and I was aware of the atmosphere in a way other students didn't seem to be. First, as I said, Sewanee was exceptionally beautiful, and that got me in a worshipful mood. It was also my first real exposure to high church Episcopalianism. There was incense! There were lovely robes, candles, ritual to satisfy even me, and a prayer book that was literature.
Before I knew it, I was starting and ending every day with church. I would go to the Eucharist (communion) in the morning before class, and at night, just before bed, I would attend and sometimes officiate compline (the evening sung service). I became an Episcopalian and thought I was set.
The only problem was that none of the stuff that was supposed to happen really happened. The loveliness of the chapel and services moved me. The pathos of Easter Week whipped me up into an emotional froth that I adored. My feelings were alive, on edge, and my thirst for beautiful movements and sounds and layers of meaning was quenched. But I prayed to be a better person, and I wasn't. I wanted God to help me know the direction my life should take. And he didn't.
I was considering switching to Catholicism, hoping to enjoy my ritual and get some practical help from God, when I read Atlas Shrugged. I was in the habit of reading my Ancient Greek assignments out loud in the chapel. You would not believe the spectacular sound of Homer echoing off the ceilings. I took Atlas Shrugged there to read, as well, for the shadowy, cool solitude that I loved. I finished the book, closed it, and thought to myself, "Well, it's this (looking at the book) or that (looking at the chapel)."
It wasn't an easy choice. I could see that God wasn't real. I could see that I had been waiting for God to give me guidance and to make me a better person, and I could see that I must guide myself and improve myself. What I couldn't see was how I could live in a world with all the awe and poetry and magic sucked out.
But I did what I look back on as one of the most courageous things I've ever done. I said to myself, "If the world is without all those things, you must be strong enough to face it. If you are to be doomed like Hector, you must walk straight out of here and face that doom with his dignity and valor." And I did. I got up, put the book into my backpack, and walked out into the sun, looking around me for the first time at a world without the hand of God upon it.
I learned soon that I didn't have to live in a world without awe and spiritual values. I see my life now as a series of moments pregnant with meaning, but I lay the meaning on the moments, instead of God. The human struggle to be better, to learn more, to know ourselves IS the great drama. To participate in it, to struggle myself and to witness the struggle of others - nothing mystical could inspire such awe or such emotional heights.
Now All Saint's Chapel has another layer of meaning for me. I always loved it for itself and for the many, many lives that are literally or figuratively inscribed upon it. And now I love it more as the site of my transformation into myself.
8/24/10
