Annemieke Dannenberg
Listen to Annemieke reading her own Mammoth in Dutch:
1.
Someone told me that God could be an orgasm. The sun in your face, a trembling subwoofer, the colour blue. Sky blue, to be exact. A family member started singing a psalm. A friend said: ‘But the word God is short and blunt and hard, and unwelcoming, though God should be warm. And colourful.’
I received the responses on my phone at random moments. After going to view an overpriced and run-down apartment, while grating differently coloured carrots, in a hospital corridor, and while standing in front of the shelf of milks you need a mortgage for. I was confronted with God at breakfast. I was confronted with God on the train. God confronted me on the sidewalk in front of my best friend’s house. With every answer I received to my question, God invaded my house and body.
How do you picture God? What do you see in your mind’s eye when you think of God? Does a song come to you, a sound, an image, a vibrating sensation in your belly or chest?
I sent my question out to the people around me, without precisely knowing why. Every response gave me more insight into the rhizome underneath the withered tree in my backyard. Every new perspective made me conscious of the god-image I had constructed, based on the experiences I’ve had and the knowledge that was transferred in the place I’m from. Why hadn’t I done this before?
2.
‘I just woke up and thought of your question about God. I thought: I’ll just record a voice memo right away, because this question is actually too big for me.’
3.
In novels containing characters who release themselves from their religious background, it’s often about emancipation from the narrow framework that has created a certain world view. Now that I’m writing a book that fits into this tradition, I have been thinking a lot about the story that God has become, the characteristics that people have allocated to him over centuriesand the consequences of it on people’s lives.
The deconstruction of the presupposed world in which God plays the lead role can lead to freedom, but it can just as well set a grieving process in motion. In a conversion story, sociologist John Barbour claims, movement is made towards something, whereas the process of ‘deconversion’ is about losing an all-encompassing story until you’re left with a god-shaped hole.
4.
When I was a spiritual caretaker, I once talked to a man who was deeply ashamed of his physical pain. He had drafted his request for euthanasia that day and believed that he had disappointed Jesus by doing so.
‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘in the garden of Gethsemane, also knew that he would have to endure hellish pain, and he kept going. But not me. I can’t do it anymore.’ To him, it meant that he no longer believed he had any right to heaven. Not only would he die soon; he was also terrified of what would follow.
I recognised the God beside his bed. It was a dark shadow cast across the man’s body, whispering bitter words to him, its fingers clenched around the IV pole. The conversation that unfurled between us was about who else God could be. Because even though I walked away from this punitive God, interactions like these make it necessary to search for different interpretations of, for different types of meaning within, the belief system.
5.
‘God can be a voice trying to catch you, while your eyes are closed and your heart is wide open.’
6.
Psychologist Marlene Winell (who is also the author of Leaving the Fold) compares church abandonment and loss of faith to cultural migration: you’re traveling from one world to another. Sociologist and ex-nun Helen Fuchs Ebaugh speaks of a radical role change, where someone finds themselves mid-air for a longer period of time. During this period, you’re anticipating the values belonging to the new role you’re about to take on, but they haven’t been integrated yet. The way you move through the mist is vulnerable: it can be a time of fear and make you feel completely uprooted.
7.
I told a colleague about the god-image project. He said: ‘All God wants from you is that you keep searching.’ He fell silent and tipped two bags of sugar into a paper cup of tea. ‘Are you sure you’re not religious?’
8.
It was late September when I travelled to Eck en Wiel. The house of L’Abri was hidden among reeds, water and apple orchards. I had been walking on the verge of a provincial road for a while with my trolley, towards the cars driving past at seventy kilometres an hour. I had planned a week-long residency to get in touch again with a community I had formerly felt myself a part of; to understand what it means when God and his will are placed like a star in the sky.
9.
On the way there, I receive a message from someone who doesn’t have a picture of God, but who has thought about Satan and John Daniel.
10.
As soon as I arrived at L’Abri, I saw someone from my old congregation. A woman with raven-black hair and a bleached tuft. When I was about to go to art school, she had put me in touch with a landlady. I could live with her, as long as I didn’t let my non-religious partner sleep over.
They had just held an art conference at L’Abri about the ways in which you can incorporate God in your work.
During the first meal, I sat down next to a woman. She wore a colourful scarf in her hair and had tied a scarf around her neck. I had become estranged from the words I caught of the prayer that initiated the meal. The woman turned to me and because I didn’t want to cheat, I told her I wasn’t a believer today and started talking about tarot cards. Late that evening, she gave me a little homemade book containing a Bible quote that said that all the hairs on my head were numbered. On the back it said: ‘xxx, your sister M.’
11.
‘I didn’t want to respond at first. I noticed it involved conflicting feelings, especially because it’s you asking the question… Because I know your life contains a lot that relates to God, to the religious doctrines that were installed and that have had certain consequences.’
12.
During tea time, a woman with drooping eyelids introduced herself to me. She had just baked an orange cake with burnt pecans on top.
‘There’s always something happening here,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t have a husband or children.’ She cut the cake into pieces and placed them on a large plate. ‘Do you have someone waiting for you?’
I answered with a heavy heart.
‘Yeah well, I’m simply too old,’ she responded. ‘When you’re thirty-five, there are few Christian candidates left.’
She looked at sister M., who was dragging her suitcases outside and was helped by a man who had tied his long hair into a bun. This time, M. only wore a scarf around her neck.
‘I think something happened with those two. I sleep in the room next to his, so I heard it.’
She grabbed the plate of cake slices and walked up to them.
13.
‘When I was young, I pictured a hazy figure in the clouds with a beard. Now I think it’s a force inside of us, longing for life.’
14.
Winell describes how some believers adopt techniques to keep themselves from thinking independently. But when doubt does arise, it causes a battle between the learned norm and someone’s autonomy. By staying in the religious community as a doubter, you may feel like you’re playing a role that no longer fits. When that happens, it’s necessary to regain a sense of what you believe in, to make sure that your identity stays congruent, and to transform the experience of hypocrisy and estrangement within the religious community into something new.
15.
The man with the bun sat down opposite me at the picknick table. He told me he once ran a night club and asked me why I was here.
‘We’re actually quite alike,’ he said after I shared a bit about my life path. I wanted to believe it, but by the time I started to marvel about feeling a sense kinship in this place, his story shifted.
‘Everything went dark before my eyes,’ he said. ‘The meditating seems nice enough, but before I realized it, my heart sank through my body into the floor.’ He took a sip of coffee.
‘Your heart sank into the floor?’ I said.
‘Yeah, I lived without God for a long time, trust me. So I was completely empty inside. It was a darkness I had never known before. All that was left for me to do was pray.’
‘And did it help?’ I asked.
‘Look, I picture it as spiritual flies,’ he said. ‘They were circling above my wounds like vultures. That I was never seen as a kid, you know. That pain. My mother was always depressed. And the flies drove me crazy. At some point, I was attracted to men, you see? So when I started praying, God swatted the flies away.’
‘You mean you don’t see it as a part of yourself, that you’re attracted to men?’ I asked.
‘No, of course not. That’s not how God intended it, right?’
‘Isn’t it okay to be attracted to both men and women?’ I said, just a tad too loudly. One of the L’Abri pastoral workers walked over to us and asked if we could help picking apples.
16.
‘When I picture God, I think about the cat we used to have at home: Kitty.’
17.
When cracks begin to show in the structure that provides meaning, it can be difficult to imagine how life will go on. You need a sense of imagination to bridge the fault line. By writing and sharing stories with each other, you can string together seemingly disconnected parts of the self. And in that attempt, your identity can be formed anew.
18.
‘Sometimes I feel a drop on my forehead. Then I look up and hope for a downpour, for a sign that he didn’t disappear but simply shape-shifted. Like every living thing does.’
Thanks to all the people willing to share their god-image with me. The god-image project is an independent, ongoing piece of research by Annemieke Dannenberg. Would you also like to share your god-image or respond to this essay in a different way? Then send a voice memo or email to amgdannenberg@gmail.com.
Annemieke Dannenberg writes poems and stories. She studied Creative Writing in art school and spiritual caretaking at Radboud University. She carried out research into loss of faith and church abandonment as a crisis of meaning. Annemieke has performed on different stages, exhibited audio installations and published her writing in, among others, Op Ruwe Planken, Samplekanon, Hard//Hoofd and De Optimist. She is currently writing her debut novel for Lebowski Publishers.
Author photo: Fenna Jensma
Translation: Fannah Palmer