The Cosmic Couch

I’m writing this entry between pub trips. I’m not going to go on and on about the pub issue and how English people seem to like pubs more than Americans like clogged arteries, but just be aware.

I’m also gonna go ahead and warn you that if you’re expecting this post to be a silly romp through farting in church or how the Brits all have snaggleteeth…well, you might want to skip this post and come back tomorrow for another installment of my immaturity. Because shit’s about to get real.

I also want to warn you, since I know at least a couple confirmed readers are Godosexuals, that this post is also potentially offensive (like everything I write/say). I’m probably the only self-described religious person who could use the words “God” and “fuck” in the same sentence, so please just be warned.

Henyways…

Because I’m studying religion and because I live in a seminary, it’s hard for me to not think about religion and to not think about prayer, The Bible, God, and all that on a pretty constant basis. Today for example I started daydreaming about the New Testament and came up with a little jokette about St Stephen and rain (“When it rains really hard does St Stephen look up and say, ‘I see the heavens opened’?”) And then I realized that I would probably be better off spending more time developing social skills rather than jokes about proto-martyrs. But, let’s face it, I’m probably going to keep trying to develop Bible jokes.

Yeah, religion on an academic level is a huge force in my life. But at the same time I find it deeply, deeply embarrassing to talk about my own personal beliefs. I’m fine talking about my positions on ethics, but when asked larger theological questions I try to switch the subject to Doctor Who. And it’s so weird because I am the honest and open sort of person who will publicly claim ownership of farts in polite company—some would argue that I have no verbal filter whatsoever. But for some reason faith is so difficult to talk about. And this blog post is probably as close as I'm ever going to get to sharing my thoughts on the subject.

So before I continue with all this heavy shit, we have to go back a bit. Yesterday in grad school we went on a field trip to yet another church, this time the town’s cathedral. As part of our educational experience the tour guide instructed us to lie down on the floor, right in the chancel, and stare up at the vaulted ceiling. And as he tried to describe to us how this ceiling would have looked before the Reformation, I was so overwhelmed that I even temporarily forgot the nuclear reaction occurring in my stomach (coffee allergies…). I mean, I liked the church before, but the church was hands-down inspiring from this perspective. Think about it: you’re out in the countryside and you look up and see a bunch of stars—okay, you think to yourself, that’s a lotta stars. But you’re out in the countryside and you lie down to look up at the stars—okay, now suddenly you appreciate just what an incredible place the universe is, and if there is a God (and at this moment you’ve never been more convinced in your life that there must be) He must be shitting his almighty pants every day over the beauty of the universe, because you’re already losing control over your bowels just looking at this tiny fraction of the universe. So that’s kind of what lying down in the cathedral was like.

I tried to recreate this feeling in one of my college’s chapels. So I sprawled out on the floor in my scruffy jeans that were well overdue for a wash, and I just had myself a staring contest with the Virgin Mary. Occasionally I glanced up at the ceiling, which is much plainer than the cathedral’s. And instead of the overwhelming feeling of beauty, I felt an overwhelming feeling of ownership.

What do I mean by that? I mean I can pray here, this is MY space. This isn’t a place I show up to once a week, having put on a stuffy sweater and nice shoes, and pretend to have a chat with God. No, sitting on the floor of this church, I OWN this place. Well, actually God owns this place, but God and I are such BFFs that I can just hang out on His floor. I don’t sit up straight on his upholstered chair that he reserves for guests while he stiffly and politely offers me a glass of water—no, I plop down on God’s cosmic couch and chill the fuck out.

If he has something to tell me, he’ll tell me when he feels like it, and if I wanna ask him something I’ll ask him when I feel like it. Just like dear friends whose friendship has moved onto that wonderful stage where they don’t feel they have to constantly interact to avoid awkward silence and chatter about nothing.

That’s kinda the relationship I’d like to have with God. I don’t want to sit in a pew, I want to chill out on God’s Cosmic Couch. And I recognize that this all makes me sound like a total weirdo. So let’s remember that I’m still me. I don’t want to sound like the youth pastor of some Vineyard church, trying to sound all hip and with it and failing miserably (“Hey, dudes, Jesus’ love is so rockstar!”). And, even worse, I don’t want to get overly kumbaya on your asses, because that’s also so not me.

So my only option is to relate it to bathroom humor, which we can all agree seems to be my comfort zone. So put it this way: lying down in church gives you the same feeling of ownership that peeing does for bathrooms. Yeah, I should probably explain that: Once on a road trip I remarked to my brother that I liked peeing in roadside bathrooms, because then “it’s like I live there.” Yeah, that explanation probably didn’t help… I guess it’s just a Me thing.

So lying down in a church is all about ownership, and the beauty of the universe on a large scale, and closeness with God, and, and, and, and and….

And it’s also just lying down in a church.