For the most part, I hated Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. I hated that he changed his shoes when he got home (why not just take them off?), I hated the way he spoke his songs instead of actually singing them, and I especially hated that stupid cat in the Land of Make Believe who only spoke in meows but somehow everyone understood her and liked her. But I watched that show all the time. I sat there through the shoe removal, and the song-speaking and the echolaliac cat, waiting for one thing: the Picture Picture Factory Tours. I sat raptured by the process of wax dying and paper wrapping required to make crayons, fascinated by the many different molds used to cut pasta shapes, intrigued that toothpaste tubes are filled from the bottom and then sewn shut. (Who knew!?) For a while, after I had to grow up and stop watching Mr. Rogers, I really missed those tours. You can imagine my delight when I came across How It’s Made on Discovery Channel. Now I know how guitars, hot tubs, snowboards, gummy worms and rocking chairs are made- and I don’t have to deal with Mr. Rogers’ shenanigans.
To make my point, I am a person who loves to know the origin of things, especially if it involves a process of sorts. For this same reason I love cooking, children’s museums, arts and crafts and history. I love when makeover shows don’t just show the before and after, but the in between stages. I like to take things apart. I like to know how things work. I think this is why I chose to study Sociology. It’s like a Picture Picture tour of people and the things they do. Sociology teaches critical examination of everything. It teaches you to take everything apart, understand how something came to be, determine what is truly useful and discard parts that are flawed or unnecessary for its health and development. In some, this practice breeds a pervasive cynicism- deconstruction of a person or society most always uncovers injustice- but if nurtured correctly it can develop a healthy and avid longing for truth.
Like a surgeon, I spent my days as a Sociology student dissecting. Urban society, suburban life, gender roles, family dynamics, educational systems – I took them all apart. I cut away layers of motive, upbringing, history and culture to find truth and value. The more I learned, the more often I turned my scalpel inward. I took apart my childhood (did being a ballerina put pressure on me to be thin?) ,my womanhood (do I feel like I have to be independent because my mom is a housewife?), my class (what is middle class?), and my ethnicity. I dismantled, learned my origins, reviewed the process of the making of me. Like a desperate gold miner, sifting through so much muck in search of the occasional nugget, I have been trained to efficiently strip away the false. But in every facet of my self, my process, I continue to find this thing called Christianity that I just can’t cut through. It goes back almost as far as I can remember. It trickles down to every particle of my existence. It is in my thoughts, my actions, my motivation and my ambitions. It affects the way I treat people and the way I treat myself. It makes me feel guilty and it brings me joy. My self is Christian self. My process is a Christian process. But with all of my sociological training, I can’t really figure out why.
In any other setting, in another person or society, I would dissect this Christianity and find out whether it was something that was positively or negatively permeating that social organism. But I can’t. I grew up in this Christianity – the Sunday school, VBS, Veggie Tales and McGee and me. I went to Christian school and youth group and Christian college. I married a Christian guy from a Christian family. Christianity is the back of my hand. I see it everyday, but let’s be honest – I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried.
My friend Julia calls it the “fishbowl syndrome”. She grew up a pastor’s kid and says that for someone raised in the Christian culture, trying to examine your faith objectively is like asking a fish to describe water. It can tell you that water surrounds it, that water fills it’s lungs-but ask it the quality of water, how it moves, how it sits in the bowl. It is impossible. The fish would need to take a mighty leap out of the bowl, lake or ocean and sit outside to examine the water. That is what it feels like to me to try and look at Christianity with my sociological mind. I cannot take it apart and examine it because I cannot even see it.
So I did what any scholar would do: I turned to my books. And like a sociologist, I didn’t seek out the textbook, I found memoirs because people teach better than statistics do. I sat
on the floor in the Inspirational section of Barnes and Noble with a stack. Lamott, Miller, Lewis…But it’s frustrating and dead-ending because these people aren’t like me. They’ve come to know God late in life. They’ve abandoned the church and then been drawn back in. They’ve fought with God and lost.
They’ve been outside the fishbowl.
But what about those of us who have always been inside?
In the church, we act like the worst place to be is outside of Christianity. But I feel jealous of these people who have been outside. People like my mom. She grew up Catholic, disenchanted by a church who taught her that God is angry and wants to catch her doing something wrong so He can rub his hands together and zap punishment into her life. When I was five, my dad started going to church with my Uncle Ralph. Uncle Ralph would come over after us kids went to bed and answer all of my dad’s questions. My mom would read her book and pretend not to listen, but couldn’t help overhearing about this God of love and patience who time and time again redeems His people. She says it was so beautifully different from the God she had pictured that she thought “I want that God”. I hear stories like this about people being drawn to God’s beauty and the grace of the Gospel. Looking in and thinking “I need that”. It makes me so fiercely wistful. I want to know that feeling. I want God to be something new and beautiful that I discover and choose, not just the water around me, not just a reflex. At times it feels like I can’t stop being a Christian any more than I could stop being Asian or stop having a northern accent or stop my feet from turning in. (and yes, I understand that Christianity is a heart change, not just a way of life)
I just read a book about a woman who heard someone speaking Italian and thought that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She decided that she had to learn to speak those lovely words. Like my mom, drawn by beauty she overheard, she knew it was something she needed in her life. In comparison I feel like I am the homegrown Italian who grew up speaking my native language, hearing it all of the time- both to bless and curse others. I love the language, believe it is what I need to communicate, but to me it is not beautiful, it is functional. I don’t hear the inflections and pronunciations that made that author’s heart flutter.
To me it is just life - just the water that fills my lungs.
