So, there I was, all geared up to write a nice blog after my dance lesson... ...and blogger was down, full of convenient explanations of how they'd announced it previously. Which they had... while I was at choir, prior to my dance lesson, which took up a combined four hours of my evening. Admittedly it might not have made much sense. I got to the ballroom at nearly 8:30 because choir went too long. (More on that later, if I can think of a way to write about it coherently and politely.) Although lessons theoretically go from 8:00 to 10:00, I wasn't worried because our instructor is always late. We finally started at nearly 9:00, which was excessive even for Igor. Of course, being sick, I had no intention of staying if we did anything really rough—jive kicks are bad enough when one isn't already wheezing while standing still! But it was quickstep and mambo and then (we always get to latin eventually) international rumba. Quickstep is standard, and I daren't leave during standard because it is my favorite and we do not do it nearly enough. Mambo is more or less a fun dance, and if I must do latin I'll take rumba. (I'm thinking maybe I should technically be capitalizing some of these words, but they're not capitalized in my head, so it just doesn't happen!) So, I got back to my room at about 11:12. (I noted the time, because it was so late.) I'm sure that would have been a lot longer yesterday, but at least you were spared patterns and counts. (Warning: If you're a fan of light and happy and very silly content only, you'd best skip the rest of this. :P) I sing in my school's gospel choir. It's a fairly young student organization, which recently had a shift in leadership (while I wasn't here, I might add) because the founder is about to graduate. Now, last year while I was a member, and before I joined, the gospel choir had members from a wide range of backgrounds, even occassionally non-Christians. It's always been a Christian group, which I'd happily support. I've been proud to tell people I'm a member, and it was really quite fun—people are suprised to find a white midwestern Lutheran in a "gospel" choir. But our choir was always inclusive rather than exclusive, and unabashedly Christian without shoving it down anyone's throat or restrictively defining Christianity. However, something strange seems to have happened to the gospel choir this year. "Gospel" no longer seems to mean a musical style, or praise much, or ::gasp:: "good news." Now, it's a very specific understanding of Christianity (a denomination, as far as I'm concerned, though they might not agree with that classification), and an attitude that is increasingly exclusive. I can handle a less litergical and/or more demonstrative worship or prayer style. I can suspend my skepticism during random displays of emotion during concerts. I can (just barely) refrain from making clever remarks about "praise dancing" which mainly seems to entail jumping around waving scarves in monotonous patterns. I'll accept that the Spirit moves different people in different ways. But I absolutely did not sign up for the pastor (minisiter? preacher? I don't know what his title is) of the local church they all like so much to appear at the end of rehearsal with "things to say to us" and then proceed to instruct the choir—as if this were catechism class, or Sunday school—about the proper ways to respond and accept the Spirit's presence, exhibited in its most basic form as speaking in tongues. It wasn't "this is what I/we believe," or a presentation of facts meant to convince, but sharing "the Truth." I won't go any further into details, but the general implication of the whole thing was that faith that does not include such things isn't true faith, or isn't very strong faith. Challenging my faith is one thing. Go ahead, be my guest. But every Sunday I worship with a wonderful, caring, very Christian congregation, where I really have felt God's presence. If true faith requires speaking in tongues to function, then apparently none of us have it. I cannot accept that, and I know it isn't true. The very worst part of all of this is expressing it. Many people in the choir obviously saw nothing wrong with last night's "talk." (I do know that others have expressed dissatisfaction with the group, but not everyone was there. Did they know something I didn't?) There's an attitude that among Christians one isn't ever supposed to criticize anything (you might be familiar with its correlary, which states that song lyrics need not be good, creative, or even interesting as long as they are vaguely Christian). And from those who agreed with it, how do I forestall an automatic reaction of either defensiveness or pity? ("Poor girl, she just hasn't seen the light...") Is it even possible? To make matters worse, I'm perilously close to the point when my tolerance and genuine ecumenical instincts are going to snap, and I'll be as guilty of high-handed exclusivity as I feel others are. I cannot remain a member of the group if it continues down this path, but I don't want to be forced out. Darn... I knew I shouldn't have started on this subject. I imagine I won't leave it up long, although I won't be back to take it down until late this evening. There's dinner, then... joy, choir practice. In other news, my cold-which-is-probably-allergies has progressed into the annoying cough stage. Fun, fun. ~Erin, 5:10 PM Comments: Post a Comment
