Yesterday morning I called home to wish The Dad a happy Father’s Day. He wasn’t there, The Mom informed me.  I prepared to leave a message with her and quickly finish getting ready for church, but she went on to tell me that he was down at the golf club’s sauna.  I paused in my closet (yes, I can actually stand inside my closet these days, as opposed to the closet I had in New York, which I could only stand in front of).  “The sauna?” I repeated, certain I had misheard.  She went on to explain that The Dad likes to hit the sauna after the gym, or just hit the sauna period, then shower at the club.  Recently he pointed out to her that their water bill had gone down since he started this routine.  I had to laugh, thinking that my family is headed toward starring in a reality show that no one watches.

After that call, the BF and I set out to accomplish another first for us, this time in the form of visiting a new church.  This process is fraught with complications for me.  The first is that we are coming from Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City, home of wonder-pastor Tim Keller, a name known well outside the evangelical community, author of the New York Times bestseller The Reason for God and multiple other books.  Redeemer’s presentation of the Gospel, and Tim’s preaching in particular, converted my faith from a performance-based achievement ladder to a daily walk of reliance that I love.  Tim quotes Sartre and Camus almost as regularly as the Bible.  He always brings it back to the cross.  He’s an intellectual.  Listening to his voice doesn’t give you the feeling of being on a roller coaster: up, down, up, down.  He is even-keeled and logical.

In short, everything most Southern ministers are not.

I’m something of a Southern anomaly.  When I was younger and heard of the magical land of New York City, I was intrigued. Buildings touching the sky, lights canvassing every square mile, Broadway shows…but what appealed to me most was the rumor that in New York, you could be walking down the street and pass within inches of someone and not even have to say hello. To my Southern mind, such behavior was unheard of.  In the Southern etiquette handed down to me by my foremothers, such crassness was not permitted.  But for my painfully introverted personality, this possibility sounded glorious.  A place existed where I could spend an entire day surrounded by people without being expected to acknowledge any of them.  I think that’s when the seed of desire to live in Manhattan began to grow for me.

In addition to my eschewing of etiquette for comfort, another non-Southern thing about me was my constant need to know why things were the way they were, and “because that’s the way it’s always been” was never a sufficient answer.  I never saw the need to place a doily beneath every damn drink served, and “bless her heart” began to sound like an insult the more I heard it. And as far as the “Jesus loves you” routine went, that was fine by me until the life I planned began crumbling before my eyes and Jesus began to look less like a Good Shepherd and more like a Mean Bully.

What to do with the girl who can’t find her place below the Mason-Dixon?  Expatriate her to an island full of similar misfits and watch as she either sinks or swims.

Well, I didn’t sink, and Redeemer provided my best swim lessons.  Which is why I’m having such a hard time returning to the region of my youth and hearing messages about self-improvement cloaked in hymns and dressed up with stained glass.  To me, faith is so much less about me than most people preach it to be.  Also, down here, I’m finding that the Six Flags over Jesus movement is catching on with a fervor.  Which means that the BF and I are going to have many more Sundays like yesterday, when the church service began with a light show and a rock concert.  The music leaders were covered in sweat and tattoos (the ink actually appealed to my Manhattan-honed sense of rebellion).  And, printed on the back of the program, was the following:

Warning for Epileptics: This service contains flashing lights that may cause difficulties for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

Oh, how I ached for Tim and the plain black shirt and khakis he wears each week up at his unadorned podium.

Okay, so hear me here: I don’t want to sound like one of those “Um, YEAH I lived in New York for like five years, whatever, who the eff are you and where is my twenty-dollar glass of wine?  Aren’t this town and its customs so quaint!”  jerks. The fact that Jesus had to haul my ass a thousand miles north and onto a tiny island to get me right in the head (and heart) is the stuff of humility, not a bragging right. But I will always struggle with monitoring my own inner commentary and praying for the grace to make it less about judgment than observation.  I’m also learning to not jump to the conclusion that earnestness is always a cover for something else just because my starting point is most often jaded sarcasm and earnestness, for me, has been more reflective of a people-pleasing nature than a sincere one throughout my years.

All of which is to say, that the next time I walk into a church and hear the bass thumping, I will try to remember that God is big enough for all kinds of music; that he travels between solemn austerity and blatant excess while managing to avoid both; that heaven has room for people who use doilies and those who do not; and that JC is neither solely Southern nor totally Yankee.  Just like me.