How to put together a plan of action when you can't get out of your chair

Vicodin and Percocet make me itch, so I asked surgeon Mark for something else. He prescribed Norco, but the druggist objected that Norco is the same thing as Vicodin only stronger. I next got a prescription for Demerol.

Because I’m a practical man and because I had a bottle of Percocet left over from the second of my three surgeries last year, I decided that, if I could survive the itching, I’d finish off the Percocet before I started on the Demerol. To accomplish this noble ambition, I take a Benadryl every time I take a Percocet, and this has gotten me by passably well. My scalp about drives me crazy, but at least I’ve avoided the total body itching. I was curious about the Demerol though, so I took some at church last week. I thought I was handling it tolerably well until I came home and nearly fainted on the pot. I still don’t know what that was about.

Yesterday, I needed a nap, but I was hurting too bad to sleep, so I took some more Demerol before I sat in my recliner (the pain is much worse now than it was last week, which means that it is way too intense to even think about sleeping in bed). Well, I didn’t go to sleep, and I didn’t go to sleep, and I didn’t go to sleep, so I eventually found it necessary to advise myself as follows: “Snowbrush, my handsome and charming young man, you’re obviously not going to sleep, so I would advise you to get up and make yourself useful.”

I immediately saw the wisdom in this excellent counsel, so I ordered my body to lean forward and stand in the same punctilious way it has always done, but it declined my command without so much as a, “Thank you, but no.” I kept resolving to get up, and my body kept ignoring me, and each time this happened, the prospect of getting up anytime in the foreseeable future appeared a little more fantastic until it seemed about as feasible as flying out the door and laying an egg on the roof.

I finally said to myself, “Well, I can go one of two ways. One way would be to freak-out. If I freak, I’ll probably start thrashing around (if I can even do that) until such time as I fall on my face and possibly rip my tendon in two. The second way would be to lower my ambition to that of simply enjoying my drug trip until such time as Conductor Demerol puts me off his train.” Being a child of the ‘60s and having seen from inside my head what a bad trip looks like, I naturally chose option number two. Only there wasn’t much to enjoy since the trip was neither especially bad nor especially good. It was just….well, it was what it was, which was basically sitting shit-faced in a chair for three hours.

I kept trying to at least think different thoughts (so as to not totally waste my time), but I found that I stayed stuck in the same groove. I can best compare the feeling to an intellectual “Ground Hog Day,” that being a movie about a day that repeats endlessly, only nobody realizes it except for one person. In this case, I was that person, but what good did it do me? I was stuck; stuck like glue; stuck like stink on a bloated corpse; stuck like fluff on a baby bunny.

I think there might be some wisdom in thinking of chronic pain as like a bad drug trip. If you throw all the energy in your emotional arsenal into defeating it, it will catch that energy and throw it right back at you twice as hard. This means that the only way to deal with the problem is to stay loose. So, with that in mind, let us pray,

May the Lord bless us and keep us. May the Lord shine his fatherly countenance upon us and keep us loose, now and forevermore. Amen.

Household Gods

I have often thought that I would like to have a home altar, but two things work against it. One is that I have never been able to clarify what its purpose would be. The other is that I am a decorative minimalist. Things, even things I treasure, weigh on me. If you are possessed of a collector mentality, you will not understand this. Peggy does not understand this because even Peggy—who could not tell you if Barack Obama is a Democrat or a Republican, and who holds religion in the same low esteem that she holds politics—has a shrine in her room. She didn’t build it to be a shrine but, for reasons unknown even to her, she calls it her “Rabbit Shrine.”

I too have a rabbit, three in fact. Two are stuffed ones from childhood Easter baskets, and one of those still bears the stitches sewn by my mother after my dog made a determined effort to disembowel it. The third is in the form of a thirty-five cent candle that I saw in a junk shop while on a long drive through the countryside.

My attraction was instant and intense. I felt as if I had known Miss Bunny all my life but, as I said, I am not a collector. Because I am not a collector, I did not buy her that day, and so I had to drive over a hundred miles to buy her the next day. I mentioned that the store was a junk store, but I failed to say that it was, by country standards, a large and extremely junky junk store, and I misremembered what part of the store Miss Bunny was in. Luckily, I arrived six hours before closing.

It was some time before I could even theorize about why I felt that I had always known Miss Bunny. The bunny in the Little Golden Book that I got for my fifth birthday in 1954 is obviously a very different bunny, but you will also note the similarities.

Eugene has many stores that sell gods and goddesses (“idols made by hands” as I once called them) for home altars, but I feel no special affinity for any of them. I sometimes wish I did, but I don’t. People once thought they represented real entities—and some still do—but they are not real to me. They are often interesting, and sometimes beautiful, but they are not real; they do not demand my obeisance from across ten blocks much less a hundred miles. Even though Miss Bunny spends most of her life in the hall closet, she is still my chief goddess because she puts me in touch with the innocence and gentleness that lives within me, and that I have often tried to bury beneath a manly floor of concrete.

Here is another of my deities.

I wrote the following on the day I bought her:

January 25, 1987
Eugene, Oregon

I saw the print at the 5th Street Market a couple of months ago and fell in love with it but didn't want to pay $55. It was still there yesterday, so I got it for $25! Yippee! It reminds me of Peggy when she’s asleep, and of a storybook character from my childhood, and of a part of myself that few are allowed to see—the part that is vulnerable and innocent. I see many art objects that I like, but few that I love enough to bring home and look at everyday for years. I am absolutely ecstatic.

I can scarcely believe that 22 years have passed since I bought my squirrel. If I survive another 22 years, I will be 82. Peggy asked this morning if I ever think about how near death I am, even at best. Yes, all the time. The old tell the young that they too will someday realize how fleeting life is, but the young never quite believe them. It is not just my death that I grieve but the fate of all those things—like my bunnies—that I cherish and that no one else would be likely to appreciate. Then again, I own a jar of sand. The caption reads:

SAND FROM THE
PACIFIC OCEAN
FRI. JULY 25, 1952

And this is what I wrote in my journal the day I bought it:

June 8, 1989
Richfield, Minnesota

We went to an estate sale where I found a molasses jar full of sand that someone had collected on a long ago vacation. I didn’t want it, but worried that no one else would either, and that it would end up in a landfill. I went back the last day of the sale hoping it wouldn’t be there, but it was, and I paid twelve cents for it. Someone had treasured it for decades, and I felt that I validated the good in them by preserving it.

Maybe someday I will have an altar. I will place upon it my storybook, my candle, my squirrel print, a vase of yellow daffodils, my molasses jar filled with sand, a picture of Peggy, and maybe one of me when I was a child. What else…I’ve always liked the painting of Jesus knocking at the door….

You see, it’s easier to start than to know when to stop. Even if I just limited myself to those symbols with which I resonate most powerfully, I could fill a room. But since I am a decorative minimalist, all those things would feel like a heavy weight on my chest, and I would eventually have to get rid of them. A prayer just entered my mind:

God save me.
“From what, my child?”
I don’t know.

God lead me.
“To where, my child?”
I have no idea.

God preserve me,
“Why, my child?”
Because despite my failures,
I am worthy.

Have you seen Blackbeard's gold hidden in this here cave?

If your idea of a good time is dropping a roll of toilet paper down the john and repeatedly trying to flush it, then you should just love narcotics because that’s what they do to the human excretory system. How can a person even want to get high on something that makes him constipated? It just ain’t dignified. Besides, pills are for sick people.

I thought I had stopped them yesterday (two days after surgery), but pain woke me up in the wee hours this morning, so I took first one Percocet and, when that didn’t work, another. I called the physician’s assistant today, and, to my great surprise, she said that most people take narcotics day and night for several weeks after shoulder surgery. She also said that patients tend to migrate from their beds to their recliners.

I was in such pain last fall that the only relief I could find was in a recliner that Peggy bought with her inheritance from her grandmother (and even then I could only stay halfway comfortable for a few minutes at a time). Now that I’m having to sleep with my lower arm sticking straight up into the air, maybe I will have to move back to Granny's recliner.

Peggy took a week off to stay with me, and I don’t know what I will do when she goes back to work—or when she leaves on her two trips in April. It’s not just the practical help; it’s having someone to keep me company now that there isn’t much I can do with myself. I can’t lift anything; I can’t take my arm out of my sling; I can’t even turn my palm up. If I break any of these rules, I risk pulling the stitches out, and that would leave me worse off than I was before the surgery. This is a state of affairs that will have to last for at least 42 days. The worst part is knowing that, no matter how careful I am, the stitches might come out anyway.

I’m enclosing some pictures of myself in my get-up. The black thing is my sling, and it comes with a thick pad that holds it several inches away from my body. The blue thing is a bladder that I have to fill with ice water several times a day. I wear the sling and the bladder all the time. The cooler is what the ice water stays in. I don’t always carry it in my hand as if I’m so stoned on narcotics that I think I’m in a cave holding a lantern.

You will note that I look like an axe murderer who is trying to pass himself off as a friendly sort of regular guy. That is because Peggy made me smile. If Peggy didn't make me smile, I would look quite handsome, but Peggy hates me and wants me to look ridiculous, so every time she takes my picture, she insists that I smile. I always say that I don’t want to smile, but she makes funny faces and silly noises until I do, and it is then that she takes my picture. People with cameras have been doing this shit to me for sixty years, and I hope they all fall down the shaft of the mine that I’m exploring with my lantern.

The hand-carved bowl on the wall was my Granny’s dough bowl that she received as a wedding gift on Sand Mountain in Alabama in 1896. It's made of the wood of the Tulip Tree. At a little under 200 feet, the Tulip Tree is the largest tree in the eastern U.S. and is the state tree of Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It also grows where planted here in the Willamette Valley. I’ll enclose a photo of its leaves and flowers.

Title to come later

I took two Demerol tablets and went to church today, my arm in its sling and the sling under Walt’s extra large pile jacket. My midriff insisted upon exposing itself from time to time, but I could neither get my arm through a shirt nor keep my sweatpants high enough to stay covered. Fortunately—for me anyway—I am not a modest person.

We discussed prayer. “If God is all powerful, all knowing, and perfect in every virtue, is it conceivable that he would cure someone of cancer or bring an end to a war because he was prayed to, but would not do so otherwise?” I asked. Most seemed to think so, but either they didn’t understand the dilemma I posed, or they had no answer for it. In any event, it was not addressed. A few expressed faith in prayer as a means of healing, but I reflected (to myself) that, despite the prayers of millions, many a pope has died well ahead of those who lacked such an advantage.

I told the class that I think of prayer as an opening of my heart as well as a meditation upon, and a dedication to, my highest values, but it was a definition that appeared to fall short in the eyes of many if not all, and I despaired of offering anything more to the discussion. Sometimes, I go to church and contribute greatly; other times, many people—including myself—seem to think I would have done better had I stayed home.

The question of teaching children about prayer was also touched upon. For the first time in decades, I remembered being too young to take communion at church, so I would pray and serve myself Welch’s Grape Juice and Premium Saltines at home. When I was ten, my family moved into town, and I built a wooden altar under a wisteria arbor. I set our big old family Bible upon my altar, preached to the neighborhood kids, and served them communion. My mother fretted over what God would think, but a preacher told her that God wouldn't object. It was about this time that a Negro deacon who worked with my father said that the Lord had his hand upon me, and that I would become “a great man of God” someday. His name was Truly Westbrook, and I felt sorry for him because he had to put up with endless profanity from my father.

Maybe I expressed myself badly today. I meant no disrespect, yet I must confess that I am often at a loss to understand people’s religious beliefs. They often appear, to me, to echo Tertullian’s statement about the Christian faith:

“…it is wholly credible, because it is unsound…
…it is certain, because it is impossible.”

In short: Credo quia absurdum—I believe because it is absurd.

Ataraxia, the only true happiness

He’s dead, he’s dead,
Hooray, hooray;
His surgeon killed him yesterday,
But his life insurance will quickly pay,
And with his doc I’ll gladly lay.

Oh, I think we’ll go to Borneo
Where there’s little risk of seeing snow,
And the brush it grows extremely low,
And wild, wild parties will we throw!

by the former Mrs. Snow

Actually, it was by the husband of the woman who got up every hour last night to ice his shoulder. Hopefully, you knew that. Such humor sets very poorly with people who don’t get it.

After reading what I wrote on Thursday, you might be challenged to believe that I went to bed feeling positive—almost cheerful—but I did. Your support was largely responsible, as was the support of local friends. I also sought the wisdom of Epictetus. The ancient Stoics, especially Marcus Aurelius (see photo), have often comforted me, and the worse off I am, the more effective is their counsel. As we turned out the light, I told Peggy that I had found my courage, as indeed I had. I even refused the “nerve pill” that I was offered at the hospital.

The surgery lasted two and a half hours, and Peggy was told that it went well. I awoke sometime later, eager to come home.

I worry that I am expressing myself poorly because of the drugs, and I am having a devil of a time typing in this sling, but I wanted to check-in, and I surely owed it to you to do so.

I send to you my deepest appreciation for your kindness, freshly showered by tears of gratitude.

It happens tomorrow

Mark (that would be my surgeon) takes his hardest cases first, and I’m first. I have to check-in at 6:00 a.m. He will remove a bursa, chisel down my acromium (a bone in the shoulder), sever and reattach at least one tendon, and possibly sever and reattach my biceps. He’ll try doing it all arthroscopically, but there is a possibility that he will have to cut me open.

If all goes well, I will be sent home tomorrow afternoon with my arm in a sling, and the sling fastened around my body. The sling comes with a thick pad that will hold my arm three inches away from my chest. I have to wear the sling day and night for six weeks. During the first two weeks, Peggy is supposed to use a weird looking apparatus to pump ice water around my shoulder once an hour for 25 minutes.

After the sling is removed, I will begin flexing exercises. After a month of those, I will (hopefully) be allowed to lift things that weigh a pound or two, and will begin strengthening exercises. After a year, I should have regained 90% of my strength and range of motion. Sometime during that year, I will start the process again on my left shoulder.

I’ve had twelve surgeries (or will have after tomorrow), eight of them since the year 2000, and three of them last year alone. I used to regard surgery as an adventure rather than something to fear. I’ll still grant that it’s an adventure all right, but if my fear were any stronger, I would have to be in constant screaming agony to let anyone near me with a scalpel. The reason for the change was that the more surgeries I had, the more I observed that things just never seemed to turn out the way they were supposed to. Based upon this, I’ve come to expect an unexpectedly bad outcome.

When I had my first fairly serious surgery in 2003, I got into an argument with the anesthesiologist about whether I needed something to calm my nerves pre-operatively. I said I didn’t because I wasn’t scared, and he said I did because anybody in my position would be scared. Now, I want all of everything as I lie there awaiting that gurney ride to the operating room.

Since learning what a drag chronic pain can be, I’ve gone out of my way to stash narcotics. I will actually endure considerable pain rather than take the drugs now at the risk of not having them at some future time when I might be truly desperate. I won’t do that this time because I expect the pain to be of such intensity that it might build to the point that the narcotics won’t be as effective. It’s like when you have a headache. If you treat it early on, you might be able to head it off (pardon the pun), whereas if you wait, you probably won't.

I wish I could think of something good to say, but the only thing that comes to mind is that it will be adventure. God knows; it will be that. And, hell, things might even turn out okay. A year from now, I might be feeling pretty good. Stranger things have happened…I guess. Well, maybe they haven’t. I wouldn’t want to run amuck with optimism here.

Eight days out

I struggle to make doctors see me as a person because my health is a very personal matter and because, if they see me as a person, they will do better work. For example, radiologists find more tumors after being shown pictures of the people whose x-rays they’re studying. My problem with getting doctors to see me as a person is that a lot of doctors, especially surgeons, are hell-bent on staying detached, clinical, sterile, emotionless. They regard a patient’s fear and suffering as an irrelevant and annoying nuisance rather than something requiring compassion. If possible, they would prefer that people just drop off whatever body parts are giving them trouble. I don’t play these games at all well, which is partly why Mark (I call doctors by their given names) is my fourth orthopedist in eleven months.

I gave him the following today. My surgery is next Friday. Mark said I’ll be first in line because he takes the more challenging cases first. I hope this means that he anticipates an easy day.


(Mark, Peggy and I went to the hospital yesterday for my pre-op, and I later wrote the following for my blog. Please don’t take it personally. It is not about you; it is about my fears.)

The clerk says that my surgery will cost $10,000, and that’s just for the O.R. and post-op care. The surgeon’s and the anesthesiologist’s bills will be separate.

The nurse says, “I see that you’re having rotator cuff debridement and tendon reattachment—that is SO PAINFUL. People who have had a lot of joint surgeries say it’s the WORST. We had to take my grandfather back to the hospital after his surgery because his pain got OUT OF CONTROL. Why do you think YOU have this problem?”

“It started in yoga, and was made worse by throwing tennis balls to my blue heeler.”

“Well, you’ll be throwing UNDERHANDED from now on, EVEN IF the surgery works.”

Nursey is TOTALLY UNHAPPY that Peggy is going on TWO TRIPS the month after my surgery. We try to explain that these are IMPORTANT trips that were planned LONG AGO, and that I FULLY support. Nursey frowns.

Nursey takes my blood pressure; it is WAY higher than it has ever been.

She takes me to the anesthesiologist’s “closet,” which really is smaller than your average walk-in closet. After a half hour’s wait during which we summon him twice, the anesthesiologist arrives. He looks BORED and SLEEPY, or maybe JUST BORED, or maybe JUST SLEEPY.

“May I have a nerve block instead of a general,” I ask hopefully. “I HATE being put to sleep.”

“No, but you can have both.”

“Both?”

“Yes, the block might not be enough without the general, but with the block, you can have a lighter general. Also, the block lasts half a day, so you will need fewer narcotics after you wake up.”

“Are there many risks with the block?”

“Just one big one really. It sometimes deadens the nerve that makes you BREATHE.”

“Uh, the nerve WILL WAKE UP again—right?”

“Well, they’re following patients now to see if any of them EVER recover.”

I wonder why “THEY” don't already know this. Nerve blocks aren’t NEW; are they? But I don't ask. I'm too busy developing FACIAL TICS and HYPERVENTILATING. I remember a documentary in which a woman was BEHEADED in a sports arena in Saudi Arabia, and I envy her because the physical part of her suffering was over FAST.

Peggy puts her hand on my arm. I assume she has a question. No, she's just trying to CALM me DOWN. Not that I'm EXCITED. I mean ALL I’m doing is turning my LIFE and my ability to BREATHE without a respirator over to a bunch of STRANGERS who I hope aren’t in the 50% of all doctors and nurses who are BELOW AVERAGE. If I’m REALLY lucky, none of my ABOVE AVERAGE doctors and nurses will be ALCOHOLICS, or have COLDS, or be in the middle of MESSY DIVORCES, or HATE MEN, or have stayed up all night PARTYING. MAYBE the MAJOR EARTHQUAKE that is FIFTY YEARS OVERDUE won’t hit, and MAYBE the anesthesiologist won’t SNEEZE while he’s injecting my NERVE BLOCK.

“Well, if a nerve block won’t do anything worse than destroy my ability to BREATHE, sure, LET ME HAVE IT. For dessert, I would like DILAUDID, FENTANYL, VICODIN, DEMEROL, and PERCOCET, all mixed together and smothered in a thick and creamy MORPHINE SAUCE. Oh, by the way, could your bring us some VALIUM STICKS?”

After finishing up at the hospital, we go to Fred Myers to buy EXTRA LARGE SHIRTS that will fit OVER my arm, and VELCRO SHOES because I won’t be able to wear a regular shirt or tie regular shoes, maybe for MONTHS.

I decide that I want a drink. Then I think that, no, I NEED a drink—a double. If liquor didn’t turn me into a bumbling, stumbling, dizzy, nauseated, cotton mouthed moron, I might come to like it. Even with these downsides, I like how I feel WITH IT better than how I felt WITHOUT IT.

“How about a nice movie to take your mind off things,” Peggy asked.

It might take a bit more than a movie, I think, but don't say anything.

From the heart

I went to church today. No, I am not a Christian—I don’t even have an unreservedly high opinion of Jesus—but I enjoy studying religion. I also enjoy being in groups in which people speak from their hearts. So, I go to church sometimes, or at least to Sunday School. If a church has two services and Sunday School during each of them, I go to Sunday School twice and skip church. In Sunday School, I learn; in Sunday School, I contribute; in Sunday School, I hear other people’s stories; in church I am just another member of an audience that is listening to a speech, and I am probably bored.

Joanne is 75 and goes to First Christian. I met her two weeks ago, and right away she loaned me three books. People who loan out books without even knowing where to go look for them are different cats than I, and I love them for that difference. I also love Joanne for other reasons. I love her because she is impish, sprightly, speaks her mind, punches the preacher on the shoulder when they disagree, has a sense of humor that goes right over most people’s heads, and most of all, because Joanne loves me.

Today’s lesson was from the Psalms. I’ve read that there are monks all over the world who get out of bed every morning at two a.m. and stand on marble floors in unheated chapels just to chant from the Psalms, but I don’t know why. Granted, it is a book of praise, but much of that praise was a thinly veiled attempt to persuade God to grant the speaker health, wealth, and happiness while annihilating his enemies; and the praise was interspersed with warnings that God would look awfully bad if he didn’t do these things. Today’s text was from Psalms 19:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God… Day and night, they keep on telling about God. Without a sound or a word, silent in the skies, their message reaches out to all the world. The sun…moves across the skies as radiant as a bridegroom going to his wedding, or as joyous as an athlete looking forward to a race. The sun crosses the heavens from end to end, and nothing can hide from his heat.”

Parts of the Bible, I abhor; other parts touch me down deep. Even when I don’t believe the Bible’s words, I cannot escape its power.

Peggy grew up much as I did. We both went to fundamentalist churches three times a week, only it was her parents who took her, while it was I who took me. The day she left home was the day she left church. I’ve never left. For years I tried, but I always went back, so I finally stopped fighting it. When I’m in the mood to go, I go; when I’m in the mood to stay home, I stay home. Mostly I stay home, but when I do go, I take my heart with me, sometimes to one kind of church, sometimes to another. My only requirement is that people feel free to speak openly. The participants in a recent class were asked to summarize what they thought about the Bible in one sentence, and one woman said, “The Bible is bullshit.” I thought it an odd statement, standing alone as it did, but I liked the fact that no one blanched.

During our study today, Joanne talked about how, years earlier, she came home from a wedding to find that her husband had packed up half of everything they owned and left. She didn’t know what else to do, so she started getting up early each day and reading from the Psalms. The ancient writer seemed to be expressing the misery that she felt in her own heart. Morning after morning, she would read and cry until, after many months, she was all cried out. I pictured Joanne, alone in the wee hours in her half empty house, crying, and I started to cry. Wanting to hide my tears, I searched the Bible in my lap for verses that might help me understand what Joanne had found that comforted her.

“In my distress, I screamed for the Lord…and he heard me…
The Lord is my fort where I can enter and be safe…
The Lord is my rugged mountain where I can hide…
The Lord is my rock where no one can reach me…
The Lord is my tower of safety…
The Lord is like the strong horn of a mighty fighting bull…
The Lord gives me the surefootedness of a mountain goat…
The Lord leads me along the tops of cliffs…
How I love Him!”

The second class today only had eleven people and started with a check-in. Martin, who had been in the Bataan Death March said that last week, for the first time, he had been able to bring himself to hug a Japanese. I thought of how that must have felt to him after 65 years of suffering, and I started crying again. The only other visitor was a woman who was seated beside me, and she too started crying, noticeably so. Someone asked her if there was anything we could do for her, and she said that her marriage had just ended, and that she felt as if her world was falling apart. Two more people now had tears in their eyes.

When the class ended, everyone held hands in a circle. Someone thanked God that I had come. Someone else asked God to heal my shoulders. I knew that both classes had been more meaningful because I was there, and that felt really good.


Part 2

I grew up in the fundamentalist Church of Christ. When I was twenty (I'm going to be rounding off a few numbers), I joined the Episcopal Church. A few years later, I joined American Atheists, wrote articles for their magazine, and was named non-resident editor. When I was forty, I became a Unitarian. When I was fifty, a Catholic. When I left the Catholic Church, I saw that my relationship to churches was as much of a joke as Elizabeth Taylor’s relationship to marriage, and I vowed to stop pretending that I had it in me to be faithful. I had imagined that the simple act of joining would open me to some insight or experience that I couldn’t otherwise obtain, but it never did.

The advantage of growing up in the Church of Christ is that I learned far more about the Bible than most churchgoers. In a recent class at First Christian, everyone was given five obscure stories and asked which ones were from the Bible. I was the only one of thirty people to get them all right. The Church of Christ didn’t use literature about the Bible: all we studied was the Bible. Kids were drilled on it. We would work our way from the front to the back, and then start over again, year in and year out. It didn’t hurt any that I also studied the Bible in college. I haven’t looked at it much in decades, yet I learned it so well that I could pass for a clergyman, which is what everyone expected me to become.

I can only attend very liberal churches. Fundamentalist Christians aren’t free to express doubts in church just as fundamentalist atheists aren’t free to express doubts in their organizations. People who belong to liberal churches are all over the board regarding belief so the concept of heresy is nonexistent.

I washed out of my first Catholic confirmation class because the priest didn’t welcome my questions. I went across town to a church that had a liberal priest, and I did okay there except for my relationship with the sponsor who was assigned to me. He quickly decided that I had no business being a Catholic, but he didn’t stand in my way. In fact, he did everything I could have expected except to put his heart into our time together.

I had wanted this most ancient of churches to show me a side of Christianity that I had overlooked, and I had wanted it to accept me, but I saw nothing new, and my acceptance depended upon how well I kept my mouth shut. After my confirmation, I left the Catholic Church.

Most churches are like political parties in that you only belong if you believe the same things that everyone else believes. I can see the sense in this, but it contradicts any promise of inclusivity. Because they agree among themselves, church people have no idea how exclusive they appear to someone like myself.

I am a pantheist. The reason a lot of people object to pantheism is that pantheists don’t believe that the universe contains any more or any less that what atheists believe it contains; pantheists just call the universe God whereas atheists simply call it the universe. The difference, for me, is a matter of reverence. I find within myself an implacable impulse to worship, and this impulse makes me constitutionally unable to be an atheist. Yet, most versions of theism leave me cold. Theists typically believe that God hears prayers, performs miracles, provides guidance, and cares about justice. These are comforting ways to look at the world, but I see no reason to think they are true. I am nonplussed as to how anyone can think they are true. Yet, most theists are no better able to doubt than I am to believe.

The books that Joanne loaned me were from the Cotton Patch Version of the Scriptures. It is a serious translation from the original languages, and was made by Vernon Jordan in the 1960s. The thing that Jordan did differently in his translation was to use Southern U.S. vernacular, and to substitute Southern locations and groups for Biblical ones. For example, in the Cotton Patch version, Jesus preferred the company of bootleggers and black prostitutes to that of the white elders at First Church; Pilate was the governor of Georgia; and Jesus was “lynched” in Atlanta.

I was a teenager in the South during the ‘60s. I watched crosses burn in the yards of “troublemakers,” and I saw groups of men standing guard in the doorway of my church “to keep the niggers out.” Had some white preacher called the church elders “white-washed tombs,” and said that he preferred the company of Yankees and whores to that of “Good Christian White People,” his life most certainly would have been in danger. Just as the Jews of Christ’s time believed that Gentiles were unclean, I grew up believing that sinners and black people (but especially black people) were inherently stupid, filthy, immoral, and germy. I sanitized the sinners of the Bible while standing in self-righteous condemnation over the ones in my own neighborhood. I was a Pharisee, and I didn’t even know it.

Something else struck me about Jordan’s translation. In fact, it figuratively knocked me to the floor. I am speaking of the difference between Jesus and Paul. If Jesus can be thought of as an itinerant hippie who wore tie-dye and spoke of love; Paul can be considered an IBM executive in a white shirt and black tie. Jesus was directly accessible to his followers; Paul erected a hierarchy that still stands between Jesus and his followers. The church might have died without his organizational skills, yet much was lost because of them. Thomas Jefferson made his own New Testament by throwing out everything that Jesus didn’t personally do or say, and I can see the merit in that.