31

INTERFAITH SUPPER CLUB

During the summer, we drove from Minnesota to North Carolina to visit family. We were in the car on our final day of the trip, the kids content for the time being, using new markers in new coloring books. For each state we passed through, my thoughtful mother-in-law had wrapped a small present for them to open. Virginia: little action figures. West Virginia: stuffed animals. Ohio: crayons and markers. Indiana: more stuffed animals.

“Are we in a new state yet?” Eliza asked from the back seat, kicking off her sandals.

“Still Indiana,” Josh replied, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. It’s 8 a.m. and we had about ten hours of driving still ahead, not counting bathroom breaks.

We had just pulled out of my friend Amy’s gravel driveway in Upland, where we had spent the previous night. Amy had made us banh mi sandwiches with jalapeños for dinner, and her husband, Jack, had mixed us gin and tonics with fresh lime juice. After our long day in the car and fast-food lunch, I could have cried for gratefulness. A cluster of midsized cats ranged on their porch, some pawing on the glass repeatedly, trying to get inside. Eliza was in heaven, petting them, stroking their backs, snuggling their soft heads under her chin. After dinner, our kids played with theirs while we sat around their heavy dinner table. We asked Amy and Jack about life in rural Indiana. Pros: close-knit community, no traffic, a somewhat idyllic childhood for their kids. Cons: conservative politics, long winters, an hour’s drive to Thai food.

“But tell Josh about your karaoke parties,” I had said, nudging Amy with my foot. She laughed, then described the epic gatherings they sometimes hosted in the summer where friends and their kids would come and camp on their lawn, surrounded by cornfields. They would eat good food and drink wine. Kids would run wild together in and out of the house. The grown-ups would sit on the back porch and play hits from the ʼ90s on their guitars. Everyone took turns using the karaoke machine in the basement.

“Yeah, the parties have been good,” Amy said. “But we are ready to move on.” Though they had made good friends nearby, they longed for life in a city.

We spent the night in their basement guestroom, and the next morning Amy was up early, brewing coffee and baking cinnamon-chip scones for us to wrap in napkins and take on the journey.

We drove along one-lane roads, passing abandoned barns and row after row of corn and soybeans. Occasionally we saw fenced-in corrals with horses or cows, and I would turn around and shake my city kids’ feet: “Look, there are horses! Look, there are cows!”

“I know it has been hard for them to live out here,” I said to Josh. “But those karaoke parties sound nice. I wonder if it’s easier to cultivate community when you don’t have as many options.”

“Yeah, that could be,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. After our trip to North Carolina, where we had been surrounded by extended family, having time to talk one-on-one in the car felt nice.

“I want to build something together,” I said, turning to face him. “Like a community that we would share. Friends that we have together. You have your running friends; I have my mom friends and church friends. It’s not like we can just start a church small group or something.” Josh flicked his eyes over to me, then reached over to hold my hand.

“Why couldn’t we?” he said. “What about an interfaith group? Why can’t we find other people who aren’t all Christians to hang out with?”

“Are you being serious?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “What about Angie and Chris? They go to Calvary, right? Or at least she goes. I know he isn’t a Christian. What about starting a small group with them?”

I took a bite out of my cinnamon-chip scone and tasted its buttery-sweetness on my tongue.

“That’s a great idea,” I said. Josh turned and looked at me, then lifted my hand to his lips for a kiss.

It was quiet for a moment, then Rowan cried from the back, “Are we done with Indiana?”

“Not yet,” Josh and I both responded, in unison. There was still a long way to go.

September is church program kick-off season at Calvary. During the Sunday service, a host of speakers line up on the stage and take turns reading off opportunities for involvement while corresponding slides are projected on the wall to the right of the pulpit.

“Good morning Calvary,” they all begin, and we all murmur “good morning” in response. This is the closest this American Baptist church will get to a communal liturgy.

The announcements tend to blur into each other:

“Good morning Calvary, mark your calendars for the upcoming men’s retreat . . .”

“Good morning Calvary, volunteers are needed in the nursery . . .”

“Good morning Calvary, next week we are having a poetry and spoken word event . . .”

But when the new associate pastor stands up, I refocus.

“We are encouraging people to start small groups,” she says.

I sit up straight in the last row and scan around the room. I can pick out the soft, brown back of Angie’s head, I catch a glint of her cat-eye glasses when she turns her head. She is sitting next to her son, a long-limbed third grader named Max, who will soon scoot off with the rest of the grade school–age kids when they’re dismissed for Sunday school. I don’t really know her, only that she is married to Josh’s friend Chris, who loves biking and isn’t a Christian, either.

At the end of every service, Calvary has an endearing custom of singing a song together while everyone holds hands, swaying to the beat. Every week, I hold hands with somebody new, somebody whose name I often don’t know. I am still new to this church and am relatively shy, ducking out after the benediction to collect my kids from the nursery. I lead my children by the hands to the refreshment table in the fellowship hall, the room thick with people chatting and hugging and laughing. I wave to familiar faces but keep my focus on my kids in front of me, who are now snatching handfuls of Ritz crackers from the plastic platter.

One child darts away while I am squatting down beside the other, explaining why one cookie was plenty. I see Angie across the room, but she is in deep conversation with someone. Once the children are settled with their snacks at a miniature table, I walk over to the welcome table that is stacked with flyers for how to set up an automatic ACH withdrawal to tithe to the church. There are sign-up sheets for the men’s retreat but nothing about small groups.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I duck into a corner to check my text messages.

It’s from Josh: Done with my run. Want me to pick you up?

I turn my back to the room and type back: Yes. Now is good.

It had been over a month since I spoke with the Visitation Sisters about Nuns and Nones, and I still didn’t know whether they were interested in starting a new group. The next day I was invited to meet with them at their weekly community meeting to talk about it further. I was not sure what to expect; Sister Karen hadn’t been too keen on the idea back in August.

The meeting was at the Girard House and, after an opening Irish prayer, I was the first agenda item. To my surprise, the meeting went well; overall, the sisters like the idea of fostering more conversation with young adults about religion. They had questions about connecting with other Catholic sisters in the area, and I took careful notes so I could follow up to plan our first meeting, which we intended for early January.

When the meeting was over, I shut the glass door of the monastery and stepped out to the sidewalk, making my way to my coworking space on nearby Broadway Avenue. I inspected a Free Little Library and snagged a Magic Tree House book for my daughter, who had started reading chapter books in earnest.

As I walked along Fremont Ave., I thought back to a conversation I recently had with Josh. When I asked him if he’d like to attend a group like Nuns and Nones, he just shrugged.

“That’s not something I’d sign up for,” he said.

My contacts at the national Nuns and Nones movement admit that most of the millennials who are joining local groups are spiritual seekers or are interested in exploring and deepening their understanding of religion.

“Yeah, that’s not Josh,” I reply. He was on a religion break altogether. Just walking into a church with a deep crimson carpet or hearing the notes from an old Baptist hymn (“nothing but the blood of Jesus”) triggered negative memories. Joining a small group of nuns for conversation, even with other agnostics, was not particularly appealing to him.

When one-third of millennials checked “none” on the most recent Pew Research study on religious identity, what did they mean by that? No one wants to be defined by something they are not. The research indicates that nones can be broken into three categories: atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular.” Those who identify as “nothing in particular” are more likely to believe in some kind of God. They are more likely to be interested in hanging out with a group of elderly nuns, attracted to the stable rhythms of lives formed by one form of spirituality.

I am never quite sure where Josh is on the spectrum of belief, whether he is an agnostic, atheist, or a none. Some days he reads books by Richard Rohr and tells me he loves God, which he defines as mystery, or takes Communion at church. Most of the time, he is ambivalent. Uninterested. Unwilling to engage me in conversation about faith.

I kicked at a sample-size liquor bottle on the sidewalk. There I go again, I thought. Getting invested in Nuns and Nones because I think Josh will be interested. Always trying to pull him along. Now I have to relinquish him all over again.

When brought up in a tradition that explains salvation as intellectually agreeing about certain core tenets of orthodox Christian theology, is it any wonder that many young people have taken that literally? That it’s either this or that, saved or unsaved, Christian or non-Christian, all depending on one’s mental understanding of faith and its core tenets? When Josh could no longer intellectually agree to Christian beliefs, he was out of there. He lost so much. I have always been more comfortable with living in the gray.

I thought back to church yesterday. I thought about small groups, about Josh and our conversation driving through Indiana. Maybe what we need is a place where we can just be who we are: an agnostic who sometimes takes Communion; a Christian who sometimes questions whether God exists. A place outside the walls of church where everyone in our family feels totally at home.

At work I shot off an email to Angie with the subject title “Interfaith family small group?”

Later, when the kids were in bed, I checked my smartphone: “I absolutely love this idea!” she wrote, then listed off a number of couples at church who are also in a Christian-to-none relationship. I didn’t know any of them.

Our first Interfaith Supper Club is on a Sunday night, and I am playing the nervous hostess. It doesn’t help that we never clean the bathrooms or vacuum the dust bunnies unless we have guests coming over. I whip up and down the stairs, carrying disinfectant spray and paper towels. I lug the vacuum cleaner in and out of bedrooms, cajoling the kids to put away their library books.

“You’re making me tired,” Josh said, lying on the couch. If he hadn’t already washed the dishes and scrubbed the toilets, I might have snapped. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

“I know. It’s just that we don’t know these people,” I reply, plopping down on the loveseat.

“You made delicious food for them,” he said, standing up to stretch. “What’s not to love?”

In a few hours, people arrive. I shake hands with Christian Julie and atheist Pete. I wave hello to agnostic Chris and give Christian Angie a hug, while their son, Max, wanders off to look at our bookshelves with my kids. I say “Welcome!” to agnostic/Jewish Jessie and Christian Savannah, offering to hang up their coats.

Everyone stands around, introducing themselves, while Josh and I move in and out of the kitchen carrying food. We dish up pumpkin chili and spinach salad with pears and candied walnuts. I stir the slow cooker with mulled cider, and Angie places a bottle of rum on the table beside it.

The kids are loud, and we decide to put on a movie for them in the other room while the grown-ups gather in a circle in the living room. We balance soup bowls on our knees; we scrape crumbly goat cheese with our forks.

I sit on the corner of the carpet and listen to people go around the room, sharing their own faith backgrounds. The how-we-met stories. The first-time-in-my-partner’s-place-of-worship fiascos. I see couples that look like Josh and me. I hear stories that resonate: how our families of origin welcome or don’t welcome our spouses, what we have learned from our partner’s understanding of God (or lack thereof), how we struggle to find new rituals for our children.

We serve pie and coffee but run out of decaf. I sip my cider spiked with rum and feel the warmth spread down the full length of my body, tingling into my toes.