For the first time, I didn’t go to church on Easter; I spent it with drag queens, sex workers, and rock stars instead

(Cooper, Amanda, and me having some Easter morning phone. Photo by Michael McComiskey)

I’m going to be real honest with y’all: Holy Week is rough for me, and I was dreading Easter. Maybe one of the biggest lies I was told as a kid is that “time heals all wounds.” Yet, with each passing year, this week becomes harder to bear. 

For the longest time, preparing for Easter was my Super Bowl. Each day, from Palm Sunday to the celebration of the resurrection, is drenched with meaning and purpose. As I would say the words of institution on Maundy Thursday, I felt deeply connected to Jesus, and on Good Friday, I would weep as I imagined the deep pain he felt at the world he created rejecting him. All of this culminating in the joyous celebration that Christ is risen.

On Easter morning, I would knead the dough for the Eucharist while Matushka Claudia (now Tashina again) would prepare the lamb for our potluck that liturgy. Our life was simple and small and insignificant, but my faith was deep and palpable.

I loved it.

(One of the last photos taken of me as a priest)

Then, in 2013, I came face to face with some realities of my faith that I could not ignore. I abandoned everything I knew to step out into a vast unknown. Every part of my life up to that point, nearly a decade, had been dictated, from the clothing I wore to the verses I read on Sunday. There was no mystery, just certainty and routine. Living outside of that, I spiraled in many ways. I did not know who I was anymore.

It has been nearly eleven years since I left, and every day, it all makes less sense. I deeply struggle with so much of my time in the priesthood. Even now, as deconstruction has become a buzzword and I look around for peers, so few of the voices in this space are former pastors. Most of the folks speaking are former parishioners and congregants sharing their hurt and pain from the pews, but I was the guy speaking from the pulpit, espousing the teachings of that hurt them. Often, I find myself asking, “Do I even belong here, sharing this space? I am the enemy.”

During one of my moments of deep existential crisis, a dear friend told me, “But you were also once someone sitting in those pews.” That is true; I’ve seen this all from both sides now.

In many ways, I have deconstructed my faith twice; first out of evangelicalism and into Orthodoxy, and then again out of Orthodoxy into whatever the f+ck I am now.

In the years immediately following my apostasy, I would hold Christmas and Easter services for those, who like me, no longer had a home in the church but still held onto their faith in Jesus. For a while, this felt healing for me, as I know it was for so many others in attendance, either physically or virtually. Yet, over these years, I had hoped to see the institutional church grow and change to this present time. My faith, it seems, was still misguided and naive. Instead, we have all watched in horror as much of Evangelicalism and other mainline denominations replace their love of Jesus for a traitor, an antichrist.

I have begun to wonder if, even in my leaving, I have attempted to save something not worth salvaging.

Every night, as I fall asleep, I am gripped with fear that today is the day I went too far and some Kremlin stooge takes me out. When that day comes, who will be on the other side to greet me? The God they believe in or the one I hope exists. Who is right, me or them? In the end, it doesn’t matter. I will take my sentence with defiance, knowing that if they are correct, then that creator was not a God worth serving, and I’ll take my punishment with pride.

Someone asked me earlier this week if I would be doing my Easter service, and my answer was, “I don’t know.” My faith is shattered, not just in the institution but in God. I look at all of the destruction happening in the world, children starving in the streets as war rages across the globe, and all I can think is, “Come down here, you coward, and fix this.”

I know all of the answers to this question, from “free will” to “God left us in charge,” but I mean, at some point, isn’t it the job of a father to step in and create peace? Shouldn’t a father stand up for their children? Wouldn’t a father have taken the stripes and the cross? Why is it that the children must suffer for the sins of their fathers, and yet here we are all suffering?

This week is deeply painful for me, both as a reminder of my failures and all that I have lost. Why do I miss this thing that caused so much pain, and will I ever just fall asleep without the fear of the flames of Hell licking my feet and why did it take me so long to leave?

Then, as I cry myself to sleep, all I wish is that my big brother Jesus would wrap his wounded arms around me and tell me that he understands and that it will all be okay and that joy comes in the morning, but instead, I fall asleep in a cloud of haze as I take another puff of the tree of knowledge before I pass out to a dreamless, joyless, slumber.

I used to love Holy Week, and now I am forever wounded by it. Am I Judas or Pilate or Peter? Have I abandoned Jesus, or did he go out for a pack of smokes, never to return? Did he exist at all, and I am just the fool with Easter egg on my face still being a Pollyanna for a God that thinks of us all as collateral damage?

At this point in my journey, What Was I Made For is a far more appropriate hymn than any Hosanna I could sing.

Maybe one day it will all hurt less, but after nearly a decade, I don’t know when that will be because today hurts worse than any day before it, and I’m only on Tuesday.

I gave my youth to Evangelicalism and true love waiting. I gave my life to the church, both inside and outside of it, for two decades now. I think, at some point, it might be a good idea to live a little bit of this life for me.

This weekend, one of my dearest friends played a show at The Brooklyn Bowl. I live outside the city by a good bit, but I came into town to see Amanda, because that’s what you do. I arrived on Good Friday and spent the day running around with my friend Suzanne and her Thomas. We went to one of my favorite bars in town called Play for the Drag Show, where I got to cheer on Arsyn and Blush, two of my favorite people in the whole wide world. When the night was wrapping up, I snuck over to the strip club.

(Me, Arsyn, and Blush at Play Nashville)

The next morning, I stumbled out of bed, made an irreverent joke on the internet about Jesus twiddling his thumbs on Holy Saturday, and then it was off to do a meet and greet with over a hundred of Amanda’s fans at the park. The topic of church hurt came up during the Q&A; Amanda asked me if I would respond, “One of the big problems with church is they weaponize community. They tell us we have a family, but they will take it away if we aren’t compliant.” But what I saw that day was church: Amanda played some music while everyone sang along, some of us spoke, and everything was wrapped up in about an hour and a half.

The difference is it’s honest. Amanda is a rock star, and she wants to make more music and says things like, “Buy my music so I can make more music.” She is honest about the transactional nature of the relationship. She doesn’t pretend that God needs the money or that she doesn’t want the money. Everyone knows what the gig is and how much it’s going to cost, and in exchange, they receive community. No one is being lied to; they know exactly what they are getting. Plus, during the question time, it was actually asking and getting real answers, not just compliance.

The Dresden Dolls show was the same, just bigger and louder and more the mega-church than the small home church of our time in the park. Yet, it was the same thing: an honest and clean exchange of money for dopamine and a community of like-minded weirdos. Brian led the crowd in a liturgical rendition of War Pigs before adjourning us all to our normal lives.

During the after-show, Amanda introduced me to her friend Cooper, a fiery woman with a Southern bite ready to take on the world as soon as she figures out which thread to pull next. Exhausted, everyone went back to their respective hotels. Well, except me, who ended up at the strip club, again.

My Easter morning was spent sitting around a coffee table with Cooper, Amanda, and her assistant, Michael. I listened as Cooper shared harrowing stories of her life as a rogue burlesque dancer surviving the pandemic in an old gold rush town. Her whole life sounded like a movie I couldn’t wait to see. I was trapped between wanting to ask a million questions and not wanting to interrupt.

Around that coffee table, we fixed all the world’s problems, from the patriarchy to potholes. We laughed, cried, and took silly pictures in front of backdrops left up in the lobby from a party the night before.

I didn’t go to church.

I didn’t take communion.

I saw titties and drank beer.

I banged my head to War Pigs.

I made out with a stranger.

I found something like church.

It’s nothing like church.

I love all the ways it’s not like church.

This has no point; I have no answer or deep wisdom to give you. I wish I could wrap this all up in a pretty bow and tell you that it all gets better from here. But I am out of wishes and prayers and fairytales with happily ever afters. I didn’t do an Easter service this year. Maybe I will next year. Probably I won’t. But I still believe in community, in reconciliation, in resurrection, grace, forgiveness, and above all; love.

I don’t know what that makes me. I’m not sure I care anymore, and that’s pretty okay.

(Cooper showing off her Easter eggs while Amanda lounges around upon my lap. Photo credit Michael McComiskey)