JINXED: Solomon's Porch and My Leap From Faith into the Arms of Yoga

I first heard the news about 9/11 half way through the day while driving along and rocking out to 93XFM heavy metal. I immediately turned to NPR for more than just a blurb about “the NYC tragedy” between angsty thrasher songs.

I also turned to Jesus.

The night of 9/11 I attended an impromptu prayer service at my favorite “church”: Solomon’s Porch. Under 12 people showed up. We talked and prayed and consulted scripture. I, who never liked praying out loud, a form of improv on one’s knees, prayed aloud, fervently asking God to keep our nation from resorting to violence in response to violence.

Solomon’s Porch was there when I needed it the most. I was settling into a church, which was a Big Deal for a girl who had seen church politics at its worst, a girl who grew up in a family known to attend dozens of churches, from months to maybe 5 year spurts.

Often we whored ourselves out to more than one church at a time. We filled the whole pew. Churches LOVED to see our family walk in the door. Notoriously late, I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed deacons rush back to the attendance score board with foolish grins on their faces as they re-counted our heads with a mixture of shock and awe.

Everything I learned about making a dramatic entrance and being fashionably late, I learned from entering a new church for the first time… dressed to the nines, carrying a baby and/or holding a toddler's hand, myself under the age of 10.
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There I was, 9/11, party of one, attending a prayer service the size of my family at a church I was beginning to think of as family.

Full disclosure: I was still whoring myself out between churches. Sunday mornings I attended a scripturally sound evangelical mega church. However, I most looked forward to my Sunday pm services at Solomon’s Porch, which was (and is?) anything but a normal church.

Solomon’s Porch is on the cutting edge of missional or the Emerging church. It was a lighthouse for artists of all stripes. Doug Pagitt and his wife were down to earth, highly intelligent, and determined to spread and keep the gospel going among the urban hipsters.

They had regular artist openings. All the music was original compositions. The women, including Pagitt’s wife, were not afraid to bring Christian principles into the practice of yoga. Services were held in an “upper room” above a neighborhood shop. Candles were allowed because catholics and spirituality seekers were allowed. Couches and cushy armchairs were the pews.

It was intimate. It was informal. It was sincere. It was what every liberal-at-heart young fundie craved: in-depth study of scripture and the Church’s history and doctrine in a creative, beatnik setting.

My family questioned my attendance in a church that didn’t stick to the reliable Evangelical Free/Baptist way of presenting the gospel. I was a rebel for attending it. For example, I had been taught that yoga was more or less a form of devil worship. I now love yoga more than almost anything I’ve been exposed to. A sometimes-dedicated yogini, I study for the scientific accuracy of the mind-body connection… not the new age spirituality. Just knowing strong Christian women at Solomon’s Porch practiced yoga was the push I needed to hold my head up and enter my first “tool of the devil disguised in eastern religion” yoga class.

As I defended my choice to attend Solomon's Porch, I argued that my Sunday morning service helped provide a perfect balance. I willingly engaged in discussions about church doctrine and admitted that not all aspects of Solomon’s Porch were in line with my fundamentalist upbringing. But I also urged them to Please Understand that I NEEDED Solomon’s Porch!
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At the millennium, I was a prairie girl raised on classical, jazz, and gospel music transplanted into the Big City on the Prairie. I had left behind my chosen career to pursue my talents/curse as a musician among jazz and blues clubs and thespian wrap parties that encouraged the consumption of alcohol.

Being a seriously trained singer, I always found it useful to turn down drinks, smoking, orange juice, coffee, and milk on grounds of protecting my voice without risking sounding like the self-righteous diva I was.

Heck, I was so dedicated to my voice, my instrument, that I turned down adenoid surgery for fear that it would affect my sound, which arguably could (but won't) make Amy Winehouse run for her beer. (I heart Winehouse, and her influences.)

I needed Solomon’s Porch. I hung out with the SP musicians a couple times (all male and very talented) to help establish my desire to use my talents for the Lord, something I'd done in other communities and churches.

SP dedicated segments of their service to people interested in telling their “story”. Sharing one’s testimony has long been a step to publicly present the legitimacy of one’s walk with Christ.

After careful consideration and prayer, the Spirit moved me to tell my story, something I’d never done before. Though I’d been singing solos in church my whole life, I’d never spoken so publicly about my dedication to Jesus.

The time had come. I was ready to not only tell the difficult details but publicly express my desire to use my voice for Christ.

And I was encouraged to do so.

In typical perfectionist-musician fashion, I earnestly told my story mixed with one of the Jesus songs I’d written, sung acappella. I’d long had a way of going from that quiet girl sitting in the back of the room, to being a Force to be reckoned with once on stage. Apparently I left the SP “audience” dumbfounded.

After the 2nd service that night, Pagitt came up to me and said the fateful words, liberally tainted here:

“Jesus fucking mother of god! Where the hell did you get a voice like that?!? Thank you So much for sharing your awesome story. We are blessed to have you. Now, don’t you be leaving us," he scolded. "We want you to stick around. I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of you. People who share their story tend to inexplicably disappear. We lose them. We don’t want to lose you.”

9/11 didn’t jinx my fall from Faith, Doug Pagitt did. A perfect storm soon carried out the jinx in beautiful and bloody full regalia. I made it back to SP maybe once after speaking, and singing, my story.

And I haven’t set foot in a church since.

And I have no regrets or doubts about that decision.

Solomon’s Porch would have allowed me to fly my beatnik Jesus freak flag with WWJB?, yoga, and all that jazz. Ironically it was the perfect place for me to make that last leap FROM faith.
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As a young girl, I helped start a southern Baptist church in northern Minnesota, with months, if not years of church/bible study in homes. Solomon’s Porch helped me revisit my thirst to experience Christ in a Real, non-institutional manner similar to those home-churched days. It was the kind of place where people prayed in circles, hovered over the bible, passed around the coffee while dad whipped out one of his saxes to play a favorite old-school hymn.

Solomon’s Porch helped many young Jesus hipsters unlearn some of the fears and hypocrisies from growing up in mega evangelical churches and small town fundamentalist churches. Though I’m willing to rip into some of the other churches I attended, I have yet to have the heart to rip into Solomon’s Porch.

Nevertheless, it is a prime example of the evolving Emerging church which takes in everything from jaded born-againers to disgruntled catholics.

Folks, this is not a false alarm. We’ve got a live one on our hands.

Recent Star Tribune articles:

Rock of [younger] ages (includes reference to Solomon's Porch and Pagitt)

When campaign and cross unite.

msnbc:

Yoga causes controversy in public schools: Some parents say it violates the separa

tion of church and state