I realize that with all I've written here about the Mentor, the Unitarian church, my current involvement (mostly, but not entirely musical) with the Lutheran church, and my atheistic family, I have never really explained why I started going to church in the first place.
I should say that despite my parents being atheistic Marxists and my mother being ethnically Jewish, we lived in Brooklyn Heights, which was an extremely WASPy neighborhood. At that time it was not, however, an expensive neighborhood, the way it is today. There were Old Money WASPs there and poor WASPs (not to be confused with poor whites). These poor WASPs were people who had somewhere long ago been connected by blood to Old Money but had severed all connections with their families either because they were gay, were or had been active alcoholics, lived a bohemian lifestyle of some sort, or their parents or grandparents had been crazy and had given most of the family money to charity. And most of these people attended the local Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Unitarian churches (in those days Unitarian churches were not that different from Protestant churches except that they didn't call Jesus "Christ" and didn't mention the Resurrection or the afterlife; but there was classical music and people got dressed up to attend services). So this was the culture I was immersed in. Not to mention my total immersion in Brit Lit, where the local village church and its vicar were regular stock characters.
As I grew older, when I wasn't seeing myself as a femme fatale, I saw myself more and more as a character in one of these books.
An essay that changed my life was an essay on the subject of Christianity and the Victorians written by Gertrude Himmelfarb. I hesitate to mention her because her husband and son are rather loathesome right-wing ideologues, but Gertrude has mostly confined herself to writing about the social sphere and has equally condemned the "feel good" revolution from the left and the "greed is good" message from the right as being responsible for fraying the fabric of society.
This essay mentioned that after the ideas of Darwin gained a foothold, very few British intellectuals believed in things like the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, or the afterlife (although they continued to mythologize the latter), but that hey still considered themselves "Christians", most notably "Anglicans" which was part of having a British identity. Even Jews, such as Disraeli, considered it not oxymoronic to be both Jewish and members of the Church of England.
So this led me to think that it was "OK" for me to want to go to church even if I didn't believe a lot of the doctrine. Having had fond memories of my childhood visits to the Unitarian church in Brooklyn, including singing in the choir, I decided to go (with my partner) to the local Unitarian church on the Upper West Side. Well, the rest is history. When I started attending services I had no intention of singing, but, well, the hymnals were there, so I sang. And I met The Mentor. And then I developed a faith in God, which I had not had before, even after 28 years of sobriety in AA. If my voice returned, better than it had ever been, after 23 years, when I was in God's house, then s/he must really be there.
After I met the Mentor my identity shifted from "nice churchlady" who watched Masterpiece Theater, to "occasional femme fatale", but I thought I had a niche. I could sing solos on the big holidays (really the only other trained singers were a coloratura soprano pursuing a career, and The Mentor himself) and once in a while sing an aria in one of their annual "talent shows", which consisted of a little singing in various genres, a little poetry reading, a little dance, and some silliness - very English village. But that did not happen. I fell in love with Mentor, he fell out of love with me (that might have happened anyhow; I think he would have gotten bored with me in any event), and the congregation decided it didn't want to hear operatic style singing or "Christian" oratorio pieces.
Where I am now is a lot more formal, and has in recent years, despite that there is no pay for singing, become a magnet for serious talent, not to mention that it is smack between Juilliard, Mannes, and the Manhattan School of Music. And, oh, did I mention that Marilyn Horne has made an arrangement for her proteges to give recitals there?
When I was thinking of scaling back (not giving up singing, just giving up opera singing other than the occasional aria or scene) I was imagining myself somewhere where I could do what I did at that Unitarian church: be one of a tiny handful of acknowledged "stars" in a struggling choir, sing solos at the big holidays, and sing an aria or two at special events.
If I shut my eyes tight I can imagine myself, in the late 1940s or 1950s, in a tiny church in St. Mary Mead, listening to the choir struggling through a hymn with gusto, my voice soaring above them. Oh, Dr. Who, could you please take me there?
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