Beth and Traci and "Maybe He Should Try Cocaine"

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“Maybe he should try cocaine” is right behind “Japanese spin-fuck chair” on the list of things I never thought I’d hear in a church and I guess I should brace myself for GOD KNOWS WHAT because it’s also one of many bits that made me laugh mightily at “Women Alive,” the meeting of fascinating female minds that takes place each Tuesday morning in the parlor of Tabernacle Presbyterian Church. The ladies in the group showed me a good time — not a not-uncomfortable time, which I suspected was the best I could hope for throughout this project, but a really good time.

Oh, and I learned stuff, too.

Also there was praying. Whatever.

A gas-log fire burned in the limestone fireplace of the ladies’ parlor, and we sat in a circle that closed at the flames. The event started with singing, one of those hymns where the words don’t quite match the melody, and then there were prayers, generous and undemanding prayers uttered by whoever felt them among interstices of deep silence.

Somewhere in that sequence fell introductions for the newcomers. I went first, lunging into “I’m an atheist,” which this time was met with “Some of my best friends are atheists, and I’ve been there, too. Might be again this week.” Darned fine unholy ice-breaker, that.

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Beth and Traci: Groovy Presbyterian Ladies in Sensible Shoes

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“Embed! Embed!” Traci shot to me under her breath as we were dismissed from our Tuesday morning visit to the Women Alive group at Tabernacle Presbyterian Church in downtown Indianapolis.

Throughout the hour of teaching by the delightful author and pastoral counselor Marilyn Ryerson, Traci’s guffawing outbursts (at appropriate moments) signaled that she was enjoying Women Alive as much as I was. But I did not expect my atheist friend to share my ardent desire to return.
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Beth and Traci: "As Real As the Chairs in This Room"

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That’s a quote about God not Beth and me. The chairs in question were at Grace Community Church, where we sat in on a Soul Formation Workshop.

I could see the chairs; I was rigid in one. But nobody lays eyes or hands on Him as they do on stackable meeting-room chairs.

Believers of any stripe swallow broad statements that support their thinking like cool drinks of water. Or wine.

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Beth and Traci's First Night of the Soul

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“I can’t decide whether to have Starbucks or Stella Artois,” Traci told me when I called to see how she was feeling an hour before our departure for the soul care workshop, her first women’s ministry event. En route in my minivan, she reported she had gone with coffee and a beer. “Gotta have balance,” I said.

We were both nervous but for different reasons. For Traci, it was the unknown and a fear of judgment. For me, it was the experiential knowledge of just how badly we Christians can behave in our own house. The feeling of taking a non-believing friend into the inner sanctum of women’s leadership feels akin to bringing your college friend with the Ward and June Cleaver upbringing home for holiday dinner. You know. You love your family. Your family is mostly wonderful, fun-loving and kind, but gee you hope this isn’t the Christmas your father has a temper tantrum and throws the turkey in the pool. Again.
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Beth and Traci and the Looks on Their Faces

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“These women will think you’re going to hell,” a concerned Christian friend warned me when I explained Beth’s and my plan to visit women’s ministries. I was stunned: I’d forgotten about hell and certainly about anybody thinking I’d go there because I’m an atheist. (Easy enough when you don’t subscribe to the theory.) The warning stuck in my head and held my tongue at the spiritual formation workshop at Grace Community Church in Noblesville, Indiana, where right away one of the women at our table asked me where I went to church.

“I don’t,” I said, leaving out the part about my being an atheist — a big, phony, coward of an atheist if I couldn’t spit it out. I hadn’t finished lambasting myself when Beth made up for my omission during the introductions segment of the event.

“I’m Beth, and I’ve attended Grace for five years. This is my friend Traci, who’s an atheist. We’re writing a book together about women’s ministries.”

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