You can’t go back, they always tell me. But then there’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, with his oh-so-quoted line about “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” So, we end up way back when, regardless.

I’ve previously mentioned the new book about The Process, Love, Sex, Fear Death:

http://feralhouse.com/titles/new_releases/love_sex_fear_death_the_inside_story_of_the_process_church_of_the_final_judgment.php. So, when I found myself needed in New York the same weekend a promotional event for LSFD was on at the city’s Anthology Film Archives, I had to see what kind of reactions the whole business was drawing. With Genesis Breyer P-Orridge leading the reconstructed Process Sabbath Assembly, it promised to be fun, and indeed it was.

And of course, it provoked a mix of reactions, in the two hundred or so people in the audience, and in myself. The audience seemed more bemused than shocked (this was NYC, after all), while I found new light shed on what had become stale thoughts and overtired emotions.

A few questioned whether there was a plot afoot to revive The Process (no, no, and absolutely not, please God); but for anyone who recalled its original incarnation, that is manifestly impossible anyway. It wasn’t a set of teachings or a church, but a lifestyle experience of a particular order and kind that would be impossible to duplicate today. The Sabbath Assembly Band, an assemblage of musicians from other outfits, did some beautiful stylings of the old hymns and chants (Robert Lowe, founder of Lichens, was stunning), but it wasn’t true Processean music. That was umpty-tum singalong stuff, belted out soulfully with melodies set to lyrics about death, destruction and post-apocalyptic resurrection, and you can’t be over 25 and do that convincingly. You can’t do it in 2009, either, whatever your age. You would have to be there, way back when.

Genesis, who turned out to be unexpectedly gracious and generous in person, did a star turn as the Sacrifist (priest or hierophant) of the ceremony, helped by clear delivery from the gorgeous Jody Wille as the Evangelist; but neither was a Processean master, or even a former member, and their pacing was their own.

The old vibe is gone now, banished by the years. As it should be. Those of us still around are starting to forget details, for we have digested the experience thoroughly. Yet two former members both got up to attest that they’d go through it all again, and did so eloquently and passionately.

I didn’t. I couldn’t have without lying. It was terrifically intense back then, involving and entangling, almost as if we had all gone into it to see if we had the strength or vision to find our way out again. Some people never have.

But properly considered, fairly appraised, honestly repented and recanted and then recapitulated, it was all wonderfully … what it was.

I might be in a mere passing phase, but I feel I’m beginning to appreciate finally that living isn’t about finding answers, because there aren’t any that last. Buddha was right about all things being impermanent. Rather, we do our best when we question things more and more acutely, because a question posed is a means of opening to a new answer that replaces the old, outmoded one we got for ourselves on the previous round.

Attending a version of a ceremony that was once, for me, a gateway to the Christ-God I worshipped in very private ways, was both reassuring and estranging. I was borne back a little, as I always am by things Processean, and not at all without gratitude for what I underwent in that time almost four decades ago. But I also acknowledge the purpose of the boat; and that it doesn’t always go against the current, but, as in the best times it also did in The Process, moves forward with the flow into understanding and freedom.