“We don’t drink and we don’t chew and we don’t go with girls that do.” Or is it “We don’t smoke and we don’t chew” or “we don’t dance and we don’t chew.” I don’t really remember which it is, but any of these would work equally well for a group with with certain fundamentalist principals. Movies and long hair, and these days, tatoos and piercings might be added to that list of prohibitions. I am so intimately familiar with this list because in many ways I owned its principals for myself at one point in time. Even now, I have not simply overturned my previous views and wholeheartedly and unthoughtfully embraced all things which it prohibited. Nor is the impetus to make such lists wholly bad. Often it is done out of a desire for holiness. More often than not, though, it leads to legalism, which binds and cuts and smothers the self, and, even worse, another person, robbing them of their dignity and freedom.
The issue of fundamentalism is important to me, and I suspect to many. An excellent starting point to tackle the issue is Stefan Ulstein’s book Growing Up Fundamentalist: Journeys in Legalism and Grace. It is, unfortunately, out of print and purchasing a used copy may set you back a bit. But you may try your public library and see if they can order it from another library. Tell them a librarian sent you! I, myself, want to try to discourse with this topic in my own writing. The Full Banana, for all its oddness, is a beginning to such wrestling. The poem which follows is another. Hopefully more will follow in the future.
dance tent, cornerstone 2000

i went alone
while she slept
to the dance tent
it was a hot, steamy building actually
i stood withdrawn
in shadows on the side
and watched and wondered
the life in the lights
and not only with judging scorn
as she might suppose
but wondered what it would take
to free my soul enough to dance
to free it of its associations
with sex and lust
enough to trust
enough to just move at first
and then to Move
with glad abandon
as all Dance was meant to be
there
as i watched the bodies shake and move
as the dj sprayed the crowd with water
like Job sanctifying his reveling children
i was torn
and she slept
knowing,
without ever having to learn,
the sweet secret of that freedom