fellow travelers

I don't know how to express what I experience on Sunday mornings at the church I now attend.  Sometimes I feel completely overtaken and I cannot find any words.  Sometimes I'm afraid that if I try to put it in words, the depth of the experience and the meaningfulness might be lost.  But I sit through the services with tears dripping, dripping...I can't explain why, except that all that is burdensome wells up and floats away and all that is good washes in and over and so the tears drip.

I enter the building like everyone else.  I bring with me the cares and concerns of the week like everyone else.  We sit in gray, padded folding chairs from Costco.  Most often there are lit candles and there is a warmth and comfort in the way the people gather.  I look around and see gray-haired seniors, teens, parents with little ones, middle-aged adults...an assorted and mixed bag of travelers. 

Sometimes it's the very small things...the way the pastor stands with his back to us when he prays over the communion table.  He stands as one of us while he prays, not apart from us, not grander than us, but with us. It's that the seniors seem ok with the teens being there and the middle-aged adults seem ok with the couples being there with their infants and the fact that the teens want to be there at all.  Sometimes it's the simplicity of the services and the worship and even the building...it doesn't feel like a show.  Maybe that's why the tears come...I feel a part, I feel at home...it's not a show, it's a band of followers showing up together and remembering what we have in common...our great need and God's great provision.

Then there is the explicitly expressed reassurance from the pastor that there is room in this church for introverts.   Really?  Have a ever heard this in church anywhere?  In a culture that applauds the go-getter, the confident, the out-spoken?  Do I really not have to convince you of my spirituality by being outwardly demonstrative in worship and the first to smile and greet strangers?

Sometimes you don't even know how heavy your burdens are until someone lifts them from you and you find yourself in tears because of the wave of relief that washes over you.

It has also been the absence of expectations...no need to apologize for life, the associate pastor told us when we tried to explain why we didn't show up for his mid-week group.  It was that the entire church was invited to a baby shower for a pregnant teen in the youth group with no need to mention how she might have ended up in her circumstances, just that she was in need and that was all that mattered.  It was when a new round of small groups started up and all were invited to a potluck meal on Wednesday nights and it was also announced that if you weren't in a small group and just wanted to come eat, you were also welcome, and, in fact,the pastor announced, if you're just too tired after work to fix dinner, come join us...no need to stay for the group.  You're welcome here...just as you are...just join us, won't you?

It has been the messages on Sundays that remind us that what the people around us really need is genuine friendship (and that includes ourselves), that connecting with others over a meal is a form of worship, that a couple raising two autistic children is supported and is as respected for their calling in life as the couple who has decided to be missionaries overseas; it's that the pastor often explains that there are questions that he simply does not know the answers to, it's the respect for and valuing of people in real-life jobs (divinely appointed, says the pastor) as teachers and waitresses and government workers and university professors and stay-at-home moms where they live out their faith and values and sow peace like flower seed on the rocky roads we're all traveling together.

It's the raw honesty of the youth pastor who can get up in front of the congregation and say he's wondered if God was really real or not, how he's been in a valley so low he's written his resignation letter, that he's felt abandoned and alone while in church and on staff, that some of the most biting criticisms have come from people he least expected it from and yet he still has hope.

Anne Lamott says the greatest sermon of all is, "Me too."  I've felt for a long time that the church could learn a lot from the lowliest of twelve step groups...groups where the emphasis is not on our differences but on what we have in common, where it's assumed that God can speak to any of us through any means at anytime, where great courage is sometimes found in just getting out of bed the next morning and being willing to try again.  The vast majority of people will never be applauded for their greatest sacrifices, but it's a great comfort to find myself among so many of them on a Sunday morning in my town, in my corner of the world.  So I'll keep showing up and if the tears keep dripping that's ok with me...the experience makes life rich and deep and meaningful and allows me the chance to touch those thin places--the places where heaven and earth meet.  I'm pretty sure that's what church is meant to be.  And so I sing along with the other travelers...

Earth has no sorrow
That heaven can’t heal...

So lay down your burdens
Lay down your shame
All who are broken
Lift up your face...

So lay down your hurt
Lay down your heart
Come as you are