The Varieties of Religious Experience, Updated

When our first son was born, a good friend and upstairs neighbor gave us a HUGE black and white mounted photograph of the philosopher William James. I’ll have to ask him again where he got it, but he always did move in highly intellectual circles. Anyway, we were thrilled to put the towering thing right in the corner of the baby’s bedroom, so that he could feel no pressure at all about growing up smart.

In one packing episode or another, we lost that photograph, or maybe someone swiped it. Thrown out, perhaps?  I shudder at the thought. Anyway, I really do miss the distinguished bearded guy. Our grown up young man, however, is indeed someone who exercises his mind quite a bit, so maybe a little bit of the philosopher did rub off.

I am thinking of William James the First because this past weekend, I felt a great affinity for his famous work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902. I swear, based on what I experienced, I could have given him some good material.

Before you go rushing off to read the book, l ought to warn you that it is a bit dry, what with his meandering through psychology, philosophy, anthropology and theology all at the same time. And then there are the footnotes. On the other hand, he does bring to life a number of characters in a certain way, by probing the origin of their beliefs.

Where I could have been helpful to ol’ W.J. (in our family, my niece loves to call her cousin “Willie JAY!”) would be in providing some descriptions of the two very different church events I went to – one on Saturday afternoon, one on Sunday morning. Since he’s not available anymore as a listener, and I’m fit to burst with my impressions, I’ll just have to tell all of you about it.

The first one wasn’t a church service, exactly, but it sure felt a lot like one. In our role as parents, we are often led by our children to new experiences; this is a blessed thing. Scurrying from a lacrosse tailgate gathering to the other end of campus, I arrived at the Bates College Chapel to take in the first annual Spring Benefit Concert hosted by the “Gospelaires.” It was a rollicking couple of hours, with several different singing groups taking their turn to rouse everyone in the audience from whatever Saturday somnolence they might have felt before coming in. Most groups were multi-racial, and a kind of melting together was definitely going on. Whatever song one group sang up front, everyone else seemed to know it. There was a whole lot of movement, a sometimes piercing decibel level, and enough high spirits to lift the roof off the place. Our daughter, raised Episcopalian, was exploring some new terrain by participating.

Sitting in the pew, watching her with her friends, I was brought back some years. When I was single and living in Boston, I sometimes accompanied my roommate to her church in Dorchester. The worship space was actually a big auditorium, and it was packed every Sunday. People were on their feet most of the time, transported. The music was fabulous. I remember wondering, then, whether it was OK for me to be there as a kind of visitor. I was enthusiastically welcomed, but not pressured to join permanently. It didn’t take me long to conclude, however, that going every week didn’t make sense. The service was 1) too long and 2) I was doing more observing than feeling something deep down.

Last Sunday, it just so happened that my husband was attending a church very close to our home, so I was glad to take a short drive and see him in action. With gospel songs like “Every Praise” and “I Am” still resounding within me, I pulled into the thick-with-mud driveway of St. John the Evangelist in Dunbarton. It was a lovely service, featuring quiet hymns sung with a hand-pumped organ and a rich sermon about how the blind man in John’s gospel is really very much like the Church right now—they both need to GO, be expelled even, in some way. Come to think of it, this message wasn’t completely placid, but the tone in which it was given certainly was.

People sat or stood quietly in the pews, there was no amplification, just a handful of young people; there was a distinct feeling of  “This is our treasured place where we’ve been coming for many years.” Afterwards, for fellowship, we gathered in a room that almost took my breath away with its simple beauty.

Driving home, I remembered another bonus of my weekend: getting to know a friend’s sprightly 97 year old mother – a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, and Jewish. When I asked her what her secret to longevity was, she said, without hesitating: “I’m interested in everybody I meet and every experience I have.” She didn’t even have to read William James, I bet, to figure that out. Sometimes, I have to admit, being a kind of bystander, religiously speaking feels a bit uncomfortable. It sure helps to try to hold fast to a handful of things I really am sure about. Making it to 97?  We’ll see.