Church in Bklyn

Every story I read or watch about someone moving to NY is so emotional to me because, no matter the decade or time period, it always seems to be the same. It looks and feels just like mine. Someone wanting something new, starting a grand adventure. There’s always some big reason to pull someone there. It’s meaningful, personal.

They arrive and it’s like a cold plunge into magic. Suddenly slammed with a new kind of society with new rules, a new pace, an intense and vast map to learn. Not to mention slammed with all the bodies of so, so many people of every variety you can think of. It’s like dumping a bag of Skittles over your face, tasting the rainbow, except there are added flavors like bagels and lox, thai food, Jamaican meat pies and other spices and seasonings the city churns out.

Attending church in Brooklyn opened my eyes to another world of faith-filled possibilities. The only other place I’ve ever lived is Utah where the local congregations/wards of the same faith do not deviate much from each other or from how things have been done. Because of that, it feels more important for things to look a certain way.

In Utah, where there are so many members of the same faith, nationality, language, race, and possibly economic background, with slower turnover rates, they seem to pile on each other, unable to find distinction and room to expand. I’ve noticed a lot more fear of doing the wrong thing which results in more control, preventing experimentation and possibility, something I find unfortunate.

Bklyn felt more like the wild frontier or an improv variety show where everyone’s working to just keep things running, keep support coming, adapting to constant change, banding together in a wild ride of common goals and purpose.

People often comment on how they love the LDS church because it always looks the same no matter where you go.

I happily, thankfully disagree.

They probably mean the same basic things are taught in the basically the same format or structure and they are probably, basically right. And NYC is probably an extreme on the spectrum of church experience.

But for me, attending church in Brooklyn was unlike any Utah-based church experience I’d had and it allowed me to connect to other faith-endeavoring humans in a way I hadn’t before, it taught me what true Christian love can look and feel like, and it allowed me to find a place in a pool of people so diverse, there was no way I couldn’t fit in, another thing that was new to me and deeply cherished. In short, I religiously came alive.

Our reason for being there was for Sean to attend art school. And we loved it so much, we stayed. It’s coming on eleven years being in Utah which is how long we were in New York and I’m feeling it in my bones.

Newlyweds

Recently Sean and I sat across from each other at dinner and we began to reminisce. I pulled out a notebook where we quickly listed things we experienced that might be “unusual” and perhaps unique to the church and beloved church community in Brooklyn. Strange, funny, heartwarming memories.

Writing these things was deeply and therapeutically oxygenating and soul-expanding, just as it had been to live it the first time.

Here is our list:

1. Our stake comprised most of Brooklyn + Staten Island. It had English-speaking wards, Spanish wards, and a Chinese branch, with subsets of other languages. One of the first Sundays, we listened to a testimony born by someone speaking French Creole. Sean and I looked at each other delighted and affirmed to know we were in the right place. Here’s a map of our stake + where we lived and attended church.
   

   

   borrowed from here.

2. We hung out with anyone and everyone in Prospect Park on Sundays. The park was just south of where we lived. It was a weekly ritual. Open invite. Everyone brought food to share. Children ran wild over park hill and vale. We often celebrated birthdays, farewell parties and other events at these gatherings. But mostly we celebrated nature and each other in one of the very best parks on Earth.

   

3. At the park, I offered a fellow ward member who was homeless a blanket. She told us how frustratingly cold it was at the shelter and I was like, hey, I have this blanket that’s way too hot for me. We chatted as equals just sharing the same space because that’s exactly what we were. This was normal.

4. In church in Brooklyn, there was an ever-present consciousness of treating everyone equally because people had such wildly different backgrounds. You started from zero with everybody. No assumptions. Bliss.

5. I played the piano in the basement primary room for a wedding of a homeless couple who met at the shelter. Bishop married them and there were maybe two other attendees/witnesses? I tried hard to play pretty wedding music and pulled out some Cannon in D and whatever else I could think of.

6. In one testimony meeting, a woman stood up wearing a wedding dress and talked about her faith and beliefs that she was somehow sealed to her brother who’d died and was also her husband? Unsure. She definitely referred to him as her “dead brother husband.” I do remember that. She obviously suffered mentally which was the more pressing issue so it was fine. This belief gave her comfort. Let her have it. Nobody bats an eye in church in Brooklyn.

7. In Utah, youths pass the sacrament in white shirts or suit jackets. In Brooklyn, adults pass the sacrament (and youths if there are any), and sometimes the adults wear glitzed-out sequin jackets, making for a more colorful, dazzling sacrament experience.

   

   Every time a kid read a scripture or passed off some memorized thing, they got to put footprints with their name on the board. The goal was to get closer to Jesus at the center but as the year wound down to a close, i started stapling feet at more of an angle because, as I explained, “We have to cut corners to get to Jesus!”

8. Easter was the best Sunday because all the local churchgoing ladies dressed up to the frickin nines. Pastel colors abounded with ornate matching hats adorned with veils and feathers. Riding the bus with these women was my favorite.

9. Sean visited a fellow ward member in prison for murder. This man had killed a tenant of his. He had been our former landlord as well.

10. A widely beloved branch president couldn’t be bishop because he was not a legal citizen, so he was put in the stake presidency instead which was allowed.

11. Every year on a certain Sunday in November, everyone arrived late to church because they forgot it was the NY Marathon, which runs through every borough. Sometimes it was worth it to miss church and watch the marathon instead because it was just as spiritual and emotional of an experience, watching people overcome.

12. We attended the newly formed singles branch and made a bunch of best friends there. It was tiny and awesome. Everyone gave talks every few months. It overlapped an hour with the other ward we attended so we put Julian in nursery for an hour while we attended sacrament meeting and then put him in a pack ‘n play we brought every week so he could nap during 2nd and 3rd hour in a quiet room because the other ward had gone by then. Glorious.

13. The linger longer was epic. Traveling to church was such an ordeal, it was nice to linger and have food and chat with friends before the journey home.

14. We were friends with a woman who had AIDS and eventually passed away.

15. The ward budget was used for a bounce house (wedged in a small cement area behind the church) and indoor activities for all kids in the neighborhood because schools were closed for days following a major storm.

16. We attended a Sacrament Meeting with everyone wearing yellow helping hands t-shirts. After the meeting concluded, people dispersed to help with storm cleanup. Sean bailed out a flooded basement of a catholic church.

17. When our baby was one, we purchased a car. Sean bought it in Ohio and drove it to NY. Having a car was unusual and a very useful resource. It was not uncommon for car-owners to offer rides to/from church whenever possible, because the laborious alternative was known too well. After a major storm, we used our car to pick up meals from other ward members to take to a central location for people in a particular neighborhood who had no power.

18. We had stake conference in the Marriott Hotel in like a grand ballroom which was the best. Bendy-backed chairs, beautiful chandeliers, tons of room for small kids.

19. One time we arrived at church at the same time as a friend whose car had a flat tire, a desperate situation. She had kids with her so Sean took her car to a mechanic to get it fixed during church and had it ready by the time it was over-high five! Coming up with solutions to problems was constant. I sometimes think this part of my brain has atrophied significantly. There was always a new problem to be creatively solved. I miss it so much.

20. Our church building was next door to an Italian bakery. Everyone was always so happy when someone failed to bring regular bread for the sacrament because that meant we’d get delicious Caputo’s bread from next door.

21. For a time, the organist, who was a pro, brought homemade bread for the sacrament every week. His name was Fletcher McBeth and I’m telling you his name because I always loved it and this person is a hero to me. I salute you, Fletcher McBeth.

22. We attended church in an Italian neighborhood (see: Caputo’s) in a re-purposed union hall of the Longshoreman’s Union (on Union street) that had mafia connections. Jokes were often made about dead bodies in the walls and throwing the dice on your life by using the haunted rickety elevator. Miss you, old scary buddy.

    

    Pic borrowed from this site.

23. Sean was on the High Council and had to make the trek across the stake every Sunday and I never ever saw him. Everyone bemoaned having to go to Staten Island because it was so far away and challenging with no direct route or subways. It felt like the sticks and I visited it myself a total of maybe three times. If you take a car you get to drive over the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge, the longest suspension bridge in America. Before he had the car, Sean had to take two subway trains to the ferry terminal, then the ferry, then a bus from the ferry to the church, with Sunday morning intermittent bus and train and ferry schedules (everything was messed up or straight up canceled on Sundays). One Sunday the ferry was late. When he walked in to sacrament meeting, he saw the relief in the bishopric’s eyes and walked directly to the podium to give his talk.

24. Sean gave talks in Spanish to the Spanish-speaking wards, whose members would often shout out corrections to his Spanish or help him when he couldn’t find the word.

25. For a time, Sean attended a special sacrament meeting with a friend of ours, Chip, who was in the stake presidency. It was held in a woman’s home in Bensonhurst located on the southern tip of Bklyn. It was so remote public transportation-wise, the few members there had a hard time getting to church, so they made a special church meeting in a woman’s home. One day, the woman had to go to work after church so she was dressed up in her uniform. Her job? She performed as a clown at children’s parties. So she was in full clown costume and makeup at church. Today it was just the three of them at Basement Church: Sean, Chip, and the clown.

    

    We lived in Prospect Heights and attended the Park Slope ward in Carroll Gardens. Image borrowed from this site.

26. This clown member was from the West Indies and once made the most amazing goat curry they were blessed to enjoy after church one day. I was very jealous.

27. Our bishop at the time and one of his counselors were both in the FBI and had a gun on them at all times.

28. Our ward was full of graphic designers. Whereas Manhattan, especially upper west side area got all the professional opera singers and musicians performing down the street at the Lincoln Center, we Brooklyners got the designers which, in case you don’t know = someone who is insanely creative and makes everything beautiful. It was very inspiring to live among them. Every flier or activity was blessed by their talents and I always joked about how you know when I’m in charge because the flier was a post-it note, because why even try. My baby shower was thrown by a designer friend who worked closely with Martha Stewart. It was carnival-themed. She had gone to the ends of the earth to find every carnival-themed food/decor item imaginable. Her entire apartment filled with cotton candy, popcorn in classic containers, corndogs, a soda machine, all of it looking straight out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine. I wish I had pictures because it was and remains to this day the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
    
    (They have since moved but if you want to see what her apartment looked like, click here. Best apartment.)

29. We also attended service with filmmakers, authors, illustrators, lawyers, architects, advertising people, famous bloggers, finance people, copywriters, photographers, actors, and so much more.

30. We knew a family who moved to Brooklyn with four kids and then had another. Five kids in a two bedroom apartment on a fourth floor walkup. Even now, this makes me want to cry. When they moved in people raised eyebrows because usually people move out when they get up to three kids. Eventually this family wisely moved to the suburbs because this life was brutal. But I know of a family of six kids who I think still lives in Bklyn. But they are unusual warriors. (Click here to see their living situation with, at the time, four kids)

31. I was part of a ward band. We named ourselves Bluegrasstastic and played songs like Give Said the Little Stream and Oh My Darling Clementine every year at the chili/pie cookoff. This was intense competition and the winner received an apron with a winner’s logo borrowed from Tobasco sauce (by a clever graphic designer, of course). I have now brought this to our Utah ward and I can’t even attribute it to the original designer because it had been passed down from year to year since the dawn of time. My small way of transplanting and keeping alive the Brooklyn designer legacy.

    

    Berry Lemon Soufflé Pie, our winning pie. Recipe has now since been retired.

32. I played music with friends at a rooftop wedding reception of a fellow member. This was maybe a year and a half before we left Brooklyn and I can remember looking out over the rooftops at the glittering city lights and told myself that this was a Brooklyn moment and to remember it always.

33. My ward Relief Society had a regular event called Women of Faith where women were asked to share their stories of deeply challenging events in their life and how faith has sustained them. Cancer, mental illness, abuse, infertility. With time for people to ask questions afterward. There was space enough for anyone and anything they wanted to share. Anything. One woman talked about her journey as a gay member. She had previously left the church and married a woman. That relationship didn’t work out and she realized one day how much she missed the church and game back and since then, openly shared who she was with anyone who was interested. She was so great and I cry when it think about the fact that she felt safe enough to attend and to be who she was. I obtained a true testimony of Relief Society in Brooklyn.

34. One man wrote a letter and sent it to the leaders in our stake and ward coming out as gay. He was married with children. His letter was so open and honest and he shared his pain from living with this secret for so long. He just wanted people to know. His family stayed together and he continued attending and still does, as far as I know. He really loved the church. I think about his courage often.

35. We had a gay bishop who was beloved. He didn’t come out until after he was released and he later divorced and left the church. He was one of the most loving, compassionate bishops I’ve ever had, as you can imagine a bishop living in the margins might be.

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This list is making me cry now so this seems like a good stopping point.

Though it has been a great adjustment (when we first moved here, a “boat sign-up” was passed around, for the use of people’s boats for a youth activity) there are many good things about attending church in Utah. One is knowing that I will never have a high profile calling, a great relief! Seriously though (I am being serious), the great number of people means a lot of resources and talents to draw from.

I have seen people here try very hard to be open and understanding. It’s not easy with the lack of diversity. As someone who immediately felt like a “fringe member” by default upon arrival, I can see people trying to make space for others who aren’t like them, to extend love and friendship even though we hold different views. Living here has taught me to do the same.

Leaving a ward where I felt like I’d finally found my people was so difficult, but attending in Utah has taught me what it feels like to be on the outside. It sends my thoughts to those in New York who might have felt that same way. It sends my thoughts to those here. This has been very good for me, truly.

So yes, church in Utah can offer really good things. But oh, how I miss church in Brooklyn.

2014

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