A: Bad Advent (my bad attempt to follow the Episcopal calendar)

It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and for me, the start of Bad Advent, my annual-slash-seasonal reflection as a nonconforming, irregular Christian. And the Gospel reading on the Episcopal calendar this cycle was a humdinger, Matthew 24:36-44, in which Jesus sneaks into your home and you never see him coming, as if the web was down and your Ring Camera failed to pick up His Holy Footpad; there’s rapture, “then one will be taken and one will be left.” Scary stuff. The passage terrified my wife as a child, who as a Southern Baptist grew up under heavy handed fundamentalist threats.

But that's not really my issue. It's the prolapses I personally struggle with, this ending before the story has even started. I mean, Mary is not even presence yet, we’re not even to the Annunciation, yet here we are at the end of the world. And that’s the problem with prophecies, the finality. 

Lately, for other reasons, I’ve reading some of the prophets—Jeremiah, Daniel, Isaiah. And one thing that strikes me about prophets, even as they predict an Absolute End, mostly these prophets are interleaving the words of other, prior prophets. So Christians take their prophet, Jesus, to mean the last word, when it’s clear that the Bible really is nothing but a bunch of nutjobs, each proclaiming one Revelation after another.

You see, the act of prophecy is ongoing. Matthew proclaims: “you almost must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” But if we’ve learn from each predicted Apocalypse (most recently, this year’s, last September 23^rd) is that the predicted End never comes.

And to my point. During Advent we do not prepare our spirit because the end is near. Rather, as if the end were near. Hence, the room for multiple and successive prophets. Emily Dickinson, another prophet, wrote how “mylife had stood a loaded gun.” Adrienne Rich, still one more prophet, pointed out to me the word “loaded.” Expectation empowers the loaded gun. Jesus said to his disciples: “But about that day and hour no one knows ….”

We enter the season to take stock of our lives. What works for you in this life? Where have you been led astray? Listen to your kid. Call your mom. Buy a present for a friend. Contemplate: In what small way can you derail political tyranny? Mend an estranged relationship? What can you do to bring more light intto this world? 

Not for fear of your immortal soul. Not for the Second Coming. Because it's doubtful this Second Coming will come in your lifetime. Far more likely, this is the only world you will ever get.

F: First African Baptist Church (St. Simons Island)

Some historians trace the legend of the Flying African, the kidnapped African who flew across the ocean rather than face slavery, to an apparent mass suicide at St. Simons Island, on coastal Georgia. Per an 1803 slaver's account, men jumped at Ebo Landing, on the leeward side of the island, and drowned to their death. The story that survived in folklore, where men few away (and which Toni Morrison adapted for Song of Solomon), moves me to my bones.

A search for that legend led me to First African Baptist Church, the oldest black church on the island and the one closest one to Ebo Landing. The African-American presence on St. Simons has been plowed over. Ancestral burial grounds lie beneath the golf courses and most of the parishioners live off-island. But the congregation holds on still.

At last Sunday's meeting I was deeply moved by a ritual Blessing of the Children. Based upon some reading from the Hebrew scripture, the pastor pulls out a prayer shawl that she purchased in Israel, then gathers the children to the altar.

"I want all the brothers to come forward," the pastor instructs.

Jon and I are the only white people in the church. Children gather under the shawl, which the men hold aloft. "All brothers," the pastor says, "please come forward."

We did.

H: Heavenly Host

Coming to the front of church has always made me uneasy. With Fundamentalists it's the Call. I am not ready to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord-and-Personal-Savior. At the milder Episcopal Church, it's the Eucharist.

The Bob Eucharist. I am unsettled by doubt.

Here's the problem. When we die, I believe, our run ends. Call it soul or spirit or non-particle matter but whatever was inhabiting our body after we die is also ... well ... dead. Gone. Kaput.

Maybe we live on in the memory of others. Or maybe we survive by our good works. Perhaps there is some universal vibration that we humans can only begin to understand. But Pearly Gates? A choir of angels? Jesus in a Devo jumpsuit? All too cartoonish.

And yet the ceremony of communion moves me deeply. I have always been a sucker for narrative. If I believe in anything, it is Story.

So can I accept the body of Christ as metaphor? How much story should I let myself swallow?

Really. Help me out America. Let me know what you think. What are the boundaries between ceremony and belief?

S: St. Augstine Episcopal Church

A cool little religious home. I visited during the lenten season with Young 'Un and Love of My Life. With Easter approaching much of the service followed high Anglican ritual -- the Bible's procession into the aisles, recitation of common prayers, all that.

Then the Meet and Great, the exchange of Peace. A small combo -- flute, tenor sax, piano -- broke into an African-American spiritual. (This is one of the first racially mixed congregations I have visited in St. Petersburg.) Folks shook hands. Veneers broke down. I felt truly welcomed. We were invited to breakfast.

Young 'Un wasn't hungry so we didn't stay long, but during breakfast, we chatted just a little. An older lady took him outside to see the vegetable garden. She showed us the repairs on the education building, mostly done by the congregants themselves. They didn't have Sunday School this morning. The kids worshiped with everyone else.

On the way out, we asked Young 'Un what he thought of the church. Top of his head was "great"; feet were poor. "To my chin," he said.

I had to agree.

UU of St. Petersburg

In my heart I am a Unitarian. The body of my scholarly work draws from the intellectual traditions of Thomas Jefferson and Thoreau, with a heavy dash of Seneca Falls reform. My partner and I were married in the Unitarian Universalist Church of Philadelphia. The creed suits me.

Visiting any UU congregation always feels like a homecoming -- with the ambivalences of home thereunto. This week it was the UU Church in St. Petersburg, Fl. All the usual hallmarks were there. An elegant, aging sanctuary. Heavy oak timbers and the original plastered festooned with felt tapestry. Bad haircuts. Tolerance and a coffee pot.

Lately my own thoughts on religion have taken a traditional turn.

Let me explain. My spouse and I recently completed adoption of an 8 year old boy. Child came to our house with lots of clothes, toys in various states of repair, and no less than 6 Bibles. Pity must motivate perfect strangers to give orphaned children Bibles. One night, tyke pulled out an illustrated version of Good News and pointed at the pictures, asking me for explanations. He was taken with an illustration of Moses in the bull rushes.

So we have started plowing through Exodus. It all makes perfect spiritual sense. Our child prays to God in Heaven. He holds his palms together, open, in a fundamentalist style. Even if he is guarded about his feelings with us, he does insist that we pray, which for an adoptive parent is terrific. Our prayers amount to indirect communication. An expression of hopes and dreams.

Back to the Unitarian-Universalists. The sermon was the typical stuff: explaining UU beliefs, with the usual emphasis on open-mindedness. Plus a few pot shots on doctrinaire faiths. In short, not what we need at this time.

Invariably I will return to a UU Church. Maybe not in the immediate future, however.

C: Church Communities International (St. Petersburg, Fla.)

"Thank you for overcoming your fears," Lenore said, as we stepped inside Bayboro House.

"No fears," I replied. Honest. Spousal unit held out the reservations. We had been invited over but for different reasons, the dates did not work out. I thought my neighbors were Bruderhofers; they are not, they are members of Church Communities International -- an international group that replicates the communal life of the early Christian Church. Other than those few false leads from web searches, and more than our share of superficial conclusions about women in scarves, I did not know much.

Well, I did know some things. That members of this community opposed the War in Iraq when few others did. That their vegetable garden makes ours look like an embarrassment. That their company, Spruce Up Services, does quality home repairs (though not necessarily cheap). And that their annual Christmas Carol skipped the home of a gay couple in our neighborhood (true or not? I can't say).

At any rate ... We sat down for dinner. 20 of us, around one table. Your basic monastic fare: chicken, rice, salad from the garden. I struggled with names. I always struggle with names ... here especially though, as my prejudices lead me to cluster people that seem foreign.

Jesse's father was a Dean at Emory. Lenore's family attended law school where I went to college. The late teen next to me would have rather been sitting next to his friend. A young man across the table is majoring in environmental science at our school. The conversation turned to spousal unit's book, an anthology of civil rights literature. "Do you include any Langston Hughes," a young woman asked.

Conclusion ... and just so we don't think we're done with King's Dream ... The last place for our prejudices to disappear are in church.

V is for Vendanta (St. Petersburg, Fla.)

From Swami Ishtandanda --

A pilgrim wanders from the Himalayas to the southern tip of India. Exhausted, the pilgrim prays to God ... or Gods ... whatever.

"Please, water." A cool glass of water appears.

"Oh, this floor is too hard," the pilgrim cries, "if I only had a mattress." A bed and mattress materialize.

"My body aches," the pilgrim cries next. "What I would not give for a massage." This time a Goddess. Let's say she's beautiful, draped with golden trinkets, smelling of sandalwood. She massages the pilgrim from scalp to little toe.

Thirst slaked, sated and relaxed, the Pilgrim falls asleep. Then a bengal tiger pounces through the window, devours the sleeping pilgrim.

The moral: think about what you pray for.