Am I dualist or what?

I sing in a men's chorus. I love it. And it's made up of guys from churches in our area.

Except......I've stopped going to church some time ago.

Black sheep perhaps, but most of them don't know I've stopped. At least, they don't act like it. Topic for another post, I suppose.

Even though I've stopped with church, I have NOT stopped being spiritual. The church gets in the way for me, and many members also do; but not all, certainly. Nor do I deny God, as I understand her/him. And since my roots are very churchy, I don't get off much on too many other forms of 'spirituality', the trendy or exotic kinds, you know. Except American Indian and perhaps a bit more, but then that's not trendy, at least from my side. Another topic for another post.

But my singing in our men's chorus has to do with touching base in a very, very meaningful and gut-level way for me. Not that I hang onto all the words, let alone theology, of the songs. I don't. But many of them I do. If they're not too Calvinistic or fundamentalistic or scare tactics about death etc...

There's just something about good music....

And our chorus doesn't sing just religious music; often it's classical or non religious. The right music can touch me in ways that no other things can.

Christmas. And Christmas performances. Last night we sang with another men's chorus from a few miles away; another city. They have 4 times the members as we. This made for some 150 male voices singing....

Almost always, singing with another chorus/choir, director, accompanyment etc. is - at best - mediocre, a bit awkward, uncertain. This performance went absolutely perfectly; we sang as one group that had been together for years. Perfectly. Flawlessly. Effortlessly.

And we - and the church full of people - were touched - no, more than touched - in our deepest being. Of course, the audience sang along in various numbers. Ere Zij God was the last such number. Devastating, it was. While our chorus is Dutch, we sing often in English and German, and sometimes other languages, depending on the original music, of course. Heck, we even sing Negro Spirituals from the US and Russian work songs, Jewish...but I digress.

I'm in a real spiritual struggle. I admit this readily, but not so easily to my mother. This is the fight of fights, for me. Separating the lies and B.S. from the true spirituality, separating what is real from what has been force-fed to us from the 4th century, when it was all politically decided.

Politically.

And many think that this is the true stuff, word for word, from the time of Christ.

Yeah, I also get into politics rather heavily. My other blogs. Not this one.

This blog is personal; what has happened and what is on my mind.

And after last night, I couldn't sleep for hours, so "up" I was. Not bad for a "searcher".

There are more dimensions to life than we know of.