Chapter 2: Confirmation?

Since the beginning of time my family has been Lutheran. And in the Lutheran tradition, there is infant baptism and confirmation. I was baptized once I came home from the hospital. However, my brother was baptized in the hospital. He was born premature with asthma, and with him being sick, our parents weren’t taking any chances. Tradition dictated their choices.

But as we grew into young adults we got to make our own choices. In junior high, we could choose to be confirmed. Confirmation was the equivalent of saying – yes, I believe in Jesus Christ; I will continue in the tradition my parents established for me through infant baptism.

When my parents were confirmed in the Midwest - I imagine the actual event was equivalent to being on a rather serious game show. I am told they stood in front of the church and the congregation peppered them with questions from the Bible. By the time I was a teenager in wacky Southern California, the public formality had dwindled to one meeting with the pastor. I was nervous. I mixed up my memorization of the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed. Today I don’t know either one.

Long before the official meeting with the pastor and the actual confirmation ceremony there was confirmation class.  The class met Sunday mornings and the teacher took attendance.  We sat at those long rectangular tables on cold, squeaky metal chairs. Sometimes our warden was the pastor and sometimes it was a parent. We typically ran into the youth room, tipped over the old couches, ate donuts, and then rushed through a worksheet as quick as possible. We opened up the Bible, found the verses, and filled in the answers.

Once again, I had no idea how the verses or the lessons related to my life, other than maybe “to be good.” That was obvious. I knew Jesus was perfect and I knew I was not.

In the third grade, every Sunday School kid had walked up to the front of the church and received a gold “Good New Bible.” I carried this paraphrased version of the Bible to church and used it as a lap desk to take “Sermon Notes” and look up verses for confirmation class.

I didn’t yet know that God’s Word is “living and powerful.” I was still unsure if the Bible was the complete truth or a combination of reality and metaphor. I didn’t know that Jesus could speak personally to me through the words in His book. I only believed Jesus existed because I was expected to believe.

I looked to church mostly as a social occasion. It was a place I went each Sunday and everyone knew me. It was more habit than thrill. When we did not have confirmation class, my best pal and I would walk across the intersection to McDonalds and eat a hot fudge sundae at 10am. Sunday morning service was the only consistent event that required ironed clothes, curled hair, stockings and low heels or nice flats. I basically had a Sunday outfit that changed with the seasons. 

I always felt at home in the church. I knew where to put the dishes away in the kitchen cupboards, what books were in the library, where the copy machine was, and where my friends would be. There was always someone's mom who knew me. I never thought I would be uncomfortable showing up because I didn't know anyone. I sang in the children’s choir, helped with vacation Bible school,  spread peanut butter for the sandwich ministry, distributed food in the parking lot, sold donuts, dried dishes and skate-boarded on the patio.  We were at church all the time. Yet ironically, it was difficult to determine how church fit into my world. Not once did I invite a friend to come along. It never occurred to me that they might want to go.

Sunday morning confirmation class was only part of the gig. Over a couple years, we were supposed to accumulate 100 participation points.  Sermon notes (handed in, checked off, handed back) were worth 2 points and a retreat or lock-in at the church could equal out to a dozen.  I easily had enough points. My parents would pay for any activity that involved the youth group… so I took them up on days at Magic Mountain, camping trips, pizza parties and whatever activities our leaders put on the calendar.

The retreats couldn’t be all work and no play or no kids would show up. Our favorite non-confirmation activity was "Sardines." This game was played in the church sanctuary and basement classrooms with the lights off. The only rule was we were not allowed to hide around the altar. Everyone would count while several kids snuck off to hide. Hiding under the pews in the church, in the shadows was one of the ideal spots. If you hid in the basement it was dark, scary, smelly and home to many cockroaches. Disgusting!

The game is called “sardines” because once you found either person, you had to hide with them - which often meant squeezing together like sardines. The game was over when the last person found the group, which by then was likely not hidden anymore if there were a dozen or more kids.

When we were talking about getting confirmed, one of the boys said he was going to bring a pillow to fall back on, because he was going to hold his breath until he passed out. I however, preferred to stay attentive as I was expecting God to possibly speak to me directly. 

I literally expected a bolt of lightning out of the sky. I expected to see or hear from God instead of the church. I expected something to change, that suddenly I would know the sound of God’s voice, or instantly I would be holy and wise. I expected a deeper relationship with God because I did what the church required. I had spent time seeking God. I had accumulated enough points. I made my mom happy but nothing really amazing happened. I remember being disappointed because nothing inside me seemed to change.

I remained convinced I would be "religious," when I was old and grey. I thought it was just something that happened. You went to church for 60 years and being super religious was the side effect. If I kept doing what I was supposed to do, I would "get it" one day. Although I was confirmed and it seemed to mean a lot to my relatives and family, I wasn’t convinced my life would be any different or more significant. I did what I was supposed to do. Relatives sent cards and some had money – as if this event were a graduation of some sort.

I never expected that knowing God required a personal and purposeful decision on my part. I thought I would just float into a deeper relationship by showing up.

I know my parents did what they knew to be right. I know they encouraged me to follow the Lord. They just didn’t know there was MORE of the Lord. My parents’ version of God was trapped inside the confinements of religion and the Lutheran church and of course doing things the way things had always been done.

By the time I arrived at high school, my religious theory was “everything happens for a reason.” I just wasn’t convinced it was God who was in complete control. God seemed so distant and so far from me. I could believe he created the universe, but I couldn’t believe he cared about my personal life – about the little things or the teasing that made me cry.

Chapter 1: Aliens, Church & My Mom's Wedding Ring

My church had long wooden pews and a slick cold linoleum floor. I distinctly remember the Sunday when my family moved from sitting on the right side of the sanctuary to sitting on the left side. There were four seating areas including the two center sections. We were always late and there were more empty pews on the left. My mother was never going to sit in the center pews. The back was where the old people sat and the front two benches seemed invisibly reserved for one of several families who helped at every event.

It was during this season of sitting on the left side of the church - that my mother lost the diamond from her wedding ring. It was before she got sick, but I was old enough to wonder if we could replace it.

My father always insisted on sitting on the end of the aisle so he would get the wooden arm rest. Usually, the order was my brother first and farthest from my father. He would slide all the way to the end of the pew and make cardboard computers out of the green attendance cards. My mom would sit next to my brother to separate us from fighting. I would sit alone between my mom and dad - unless my brother needed to avoid strangers - in which case we'd both end up sandwiched between the parents.

When we got up to take communion, the usher would stand next to our aisle and motion to my father. The entire row would rise and file out, my father stepping aside for my mother and I.  I would go first, then my mom would stand behind me and put her arms around my waist or shoulders and we would wait in the aisle until it was our turn to walk up the steps. I didn't like being first, because this meant I had to pay attention and make sure I lined up on the correct side of the aisle. Sometimes there were two lines and too often I ended up being the line leader for the entire string of adults and children behind me. I never messed up.

The pews were a dark wood and upholstered with olive green material that was hard and made impressions on your skin when you sat one way too long. I always attempted to pay attention, but I had difficulty understanding how the Bible verses fit with the topic. I don't believe I got much useful information from the sermon. I learned that Jesus died on the cross and he called the fishermen to be his disciples.  But the pastor would also speak about not being able to set his VCR, about the baseball glove he was going to give his grandson or even the score for the Padres or Chargers.  I would hear the story, but I couldn't make the jump to determine how it applied to my life. In Sunday School I learned the basic stories but they were like a dot-to-dot page in my brain that I could never quite tidy up.

Every Sunday I would sit in church in my nice clothes with my legs crossed and my hands neatly folded and I would daydream. My brain harbored multiple ponderings... Are we aliens? If there are aliens, how far are we from them? Are there alternate earths out there where similar earth-like things are going on? Are we the only ones out there?

I knew my mom had the lost the diamond out of her wedding ring. I don't remember how I found this out but I remember looking under the pews, putting my eye next to the hard slick linoleum floor - in hopes of seeing it. I think we all knew it was gone, but we looked anyways. I wondered if my father would replace it, or what you do in this circumstance.  I am sad I never asked to try on my mother's ring. I had never seen it off her finger, but I think soon after she lost the diamond she stopped wearing the slim gold band - its little claw now clutching only air.

At church we had the standard Christmas production, requiring a costume and the ability to show up on a couple Saturday mornings. At least twice I was offered the choice between playing an angel or a shepherd. Most of the girls were angels and most of the boys were shepherds. It took little thought for me to make the decision. On a surface level I didn't like what the angels wore - white gowns like dresses, sparkly gold halos and cardboard wings like butterflies. Who are these people?

I think the shepherds appealed to me because I pictured them as honest blue collar workers. The shepherds walked out around the altar, rubbed their eyes to show they were tired, then laid down and pretended to sleep until an angel appeared to them.

The shepherd’s costume of  bath robe, bare feet and towel with rope around your head was something I could literally grasp. Who would imagine you would ever be allowed to wear your father's bathrobe in church?

Although the story of Jesus's birth in a manager called for angels, I didn't believe they really existed. Like Jesus and the disciples, angels seemed more like characters in a story and less like real people. I had never seen an angel. The Bible could have just as easily stated that Jabba the Hut and Luke Skywalker walked with Jesus. I was never asked to be Mary. But in one production, I did get to ride my skateboard across the stage.

How was I going to apply the Bible to my life, if like a movie - I wasn't sure it was true? I believed the Bible because I was supposed to.

Yet as a young teenager, I gave a sermon in this church not once, but twice. The first time, I won a speech contest and they asked me to speak  in the evening chapel. There were not more than a dozen people. The second time I spoke was youth Sunday and I gave my sermon along with several others, in front of the entire 300-400 attendees in the morning service.

In the first sermon I spoke about how my faith had been changed in the summer between sixth and seventh grade. My mom had let me go to beach camp and I was one of the youngest kids there. We slept in a church classroom in San Clemente and each day we hiked what seemed an endless sidewalk down to the beach. I was known as the kid with the green shoelaces, and from the older girls I learned I was at the age I should be shaving my legs.

On one of the final evenings of the San Clemente beach camp, the pastor who was teaching us told us his baby boy was very sick at home that night. He said he would appreciate if the group could spend a few minutes in silence and pray for his son. I prayed because I was asked. I was familiar with prayer, but unfamiliar with the visible results. The following day the pastor informed us that his son's fever had cracked shortly after 9:15pm - the exact time we had prayed. I held onto this proof and this was what I spoke about in the first sermon.

My Mom and Such

(Mom talking to the pastor at church. Dad is on the left.)

Read more »

Resurrection

I am thinking of resurrecting the blog.


But then I will have to write....

and then I will reflect.


But then I will process...

and I will make progress.


Perhaps a resurrection is in order.