Tyler Blanski - An immovable feast : how i gave up spirituality for a life of religious abundance

AN IMMOVABLE FEAST

TYLER BLANSKI

How I Gave Up Spirituality for
a Life of Religious Abundance

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition) Copyright 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Cover photograph:
Church on the island at Bled, Slovenia by Franc Ferjan

Cover design by Tyler Blanski / John Herreid

2018 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-62164-233-6 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-64229-039-4 (EB)
Library of Congress Control Number 2017949608
Printed in the United States of America

For Brittany

Yours I am, O Lord, and born for you.
What do you ask of me?

Saint Teresa of Avila

If youre thirsty, you may drink.

Aslan

Help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go;
let me preach you without preaching,
not by words but by my example
by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do,
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you.

John Henry Newman

I was born in the middle of a freezing winter, under a moon more than half-l it but less than full. Outside the hospital window the sun would not rise for several hours still. It was the twelfth day of 1984, the year of Tetris, Purple Rain , and This Is Spinal Tap . My mother and father drove me home in a yellow Chevy Chevette, the hatchback they bought just before they married, and my mother cried because I would not suckle. I was loved and given every comfort, but I dont think a day has gone by that I have not felt something like longing.

Since I am a slow learner, I tried to fill that longing with romance. When I was very young, my heart was brimful of the Wild West, chivalry and knighthood, poetry and wilderness and adventure. Perhaps this is why pastors and therapists said I resisted authority and convention. I cried at the airport when I had to stow my tooled leather gun belt with matching holsters and toy peacemaker pistols. I said that I hated Christianity when my third-grade teacher at Calvin Christian School handed me a football and told me I was too old to play in the woods. I quit piano lessons when my tutor was caught having an affair with the church choir director. I posted a Declaration of Independence on my bedroom door when my parents wouldnt let me cut my hair in the Mohawk fashion and, much to the consternation of churchgoers at the Baptist church we attended, promptly grew a mullet. All in all, its safe to say that before my eleventh birthday I felt very much at odds with the world.

My parents were rebels in their own way. At the age of fourteen my mother rebelled against the American Dream with that most terrible act of open resistance to the establishment and became a Christian. At sixteen, having been raised by chain-smoking Catholics, my father rebelled himself into becoming an Evangelical Christian. They smashed their Beatles records and evangelized and lived an audacious prayer, and then with the utmost lack of summer of 69 propriety married young and started a family. I was raised on Larry Norman and Keith Green, as well as good home cooking. My first memory of dancing is to Michael W. Smiths 1990 hit Go West Young Man . We did not listen to secular music, we did not drink alcohol, and we never missed church on Sundays. Before anything else we were Christians, and I knew that my family was different, strange, and at variance with the prevailing social norms.

Yet, I was never really alone, for I grew up under God-filled skies and my parents spoke of angels. When I was two years old, they dedicated me to the Lord in the presence of many witnesses, and always a sense of the holy compelled my germinating and half-conscious religious life. My toy box was well stocked, my bookshelf boasted a small collection of boyhood classics, and my summers were spent climbing trees or running through the sprinkler with my brother and sister. Our father wrestled and built forts and read aloud from stories by George MacDonald and J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Our mother listened to her children when we came home from school, asking questions and letting us lick the cookie batter off the spoon. I drew pictures and tried my hand at watercolors, invented alphabets and worlds, and my fifth-grade teacher encouraged me to write poetry, even though I had a mullet.

My earliest memory of my father is when we took the training wheels off my bike. He held my seat and helped me balance as I pedaled, and suddenly I was racing down the sidewalk and he was far behind. In that moment, with the wind in my face and the sun shining bright, I was overcome by the horrible realization that I was on my own. As my father cheered and shouted instructions, I cannot now recall whether I managed to turn around or if I flew over the handlebars; but looking back I consider that first moment of independence, that first moment of responsibility for my own fate, with neither training wheels nor a hand to guide me, the beginning of the end.

One afternoon, I wandered into the backyard feeling bored. I lined up my toy soldiers and then knocked them down. I ate a pear and buried the seeds. I watered the soil and waited to see if a tree would grow. When I grew weary of this, I walked back into the kitchen and sighed, Im not even five and Im tired of living.

Take a nap, said my mother.

Can I watch television?

No.

So, the days passed, one very much like the other. Not being allowed to watch television, I was forced to press through those moments when we are unable to think of what to do or how to proceed and to fall in love with the world. We all can play, if only we find something to love. I loved brooks and meadows, butterfly nets and old boxes, backyards and kitchens, saddles and hammers. I loved rain, springtime, fall. I loved castles, treasure maps, bullets, and killing the bad guys.

Stapled in the pages of my scrapbook, a scribbled note from my mother pulls back the curtains of my childhood to what I was too young to remember:

Ive tried quite a few times to start this, but as typical, there are many interruptions. My pants have wet spots from many tears, and mud from the dirty little hands that wanted a hug. I sit in front of a table with markers, play-dough, paint, water, tools, cowboy hat, papers, crumbs, and a measure (otherwise known as a gun). The bedrooms are a mess, as is the bathroom, living room, and dining room, but somehow today it doesnt matter.What matters is that I got to read a story while a hot-headed 4-year-old fell asleep while touching my cheek and holding my hand. What matters is that I had two little helpers who got the broom, dustpan, and helped fertilize the lawn, edge the sidewalk, and clean up the trimmings. What matters is that I got up this morning, made bacon, eggs, muffins to feed my family and they gobbled it all up and as trusting can be, they expect more the next mealeven though I havent thought of what it will be! I can do the dishes and wash the clothes of the boys in the house and as I do each Im reminded that there were lots of games in the dirt, worms to look at, weeds that were picked, balls bounced, pants pooped in, cowboys and policemen and dirty faces and sticky fingers and pleases and thank yous and who-hoos!! that went with every piece.So I feel far behind in all the things that could be done (or that I think should be done) and I dont think its so important, because Im supposed to be a cowboy right now, or a princess that needs to be rescued, and I realize theres one character that needs development more than those cowboys. After all, when Tyler says, Mommy, did you pray for me last night while I was sleeping? I know , as long as God wills, I wouldnt change jobs for anything!Next page