Words, Crazy Words

Habits are hard to make and easy to break. Pre-pandemic had a weekly habit of attending worship. When safety measures were needed, and our church joined the country in shuttering its doors, I lost the habit. Oh, I tried to form a new habit of online worship, but the weekly nourishment of participating in church slipped out of grasp. I felt alone on the couch rather than connected in the pews.

Coinciding with the pandemic, we began spending many weekends in the north woods through all four seasons without internet. I lost touch. When we let go of habits that are good for us, there is no immediate consequence. I didn’t suddenly stop being a Christian or stop spending time with scripture. Gradually, however, my spirit weakened. I didn’t get the dose of bread, which is shared in word, song, and fellowship. I don’t mean literal Holy Communion, but rather the symbolic gathering of hearing the same message seeing the same faces and knowing we all would go forth stronger in faith and determined to fully rely on God for the days ahead.

About this time, our ministry leaders were putting out the message that church was not a building, but rather we need to be the church. Live God’s mission to love one another. Somehow, for me, I gain strength from attending service. I am not strong enough in independent study to know how to fully live my faith. I need the weekly lessons and reminders and context of the ancient texts to the modern world.

In my small community, a dual ordained reverend doctor serves two churches, a United Church of Christ Church and a Presbyterian Church. I came to this cooperative ministry from the Presbyterian side, which has a longer history than the United Church of Christ in our community. This partnership formed as a solution to a world wide issue of fewer pastors and fewer parishioners.

As a result, I began to occasionally worship in a different building and my eyes would often rest upon a banner with an oversized semicolon. Beneath that giant punctuation mark were the words “God is Still Speaking.” Grammatically, the semicolon connects two complete and related thoughts in a single sentence. It prompts the reader to pause between these. In the context of the banner, I came to understand it as Jesus and His resurrection as not the end of the story. The teachings of Jesus didn’t cease with his execution; He lives on in the holy spirit. I have learned this spirit lives in me and mankind. I believe God as the Creator of all that is seen and unseen. As such, I believe all people are created in love for the sole purpose to love and serve the Lord. Since God has created all, we must serve all without discrimination and to the fullest of our potential. This is radical love. It is also a tall order. That is what our pastor means when he preaches to be the church!

As, I am now a fair-weather churchgoer, I heed this recommendation with reverence. While I am at the lake surrounded by natural beauty, family, and often friends, I give thanks. When I am absent from church without internet, I take up my notebooks and devotionals to access the part of me which is holy. When I am occupied at day job, I recall to live in service to my colleagues and the community in which we work. When I am about running errands, I treat each person with kindness and respect. I welcome friends and my kids’ friends into my home with hospitality. I cherish life and all those who enrich my days. I seek to understand and am open to ways to contribute to the greater good.

This is how I interpret being the church. To me, though, the walls of the sanctuary remain sacred and inviting. I support the general fund, I trust the work of the worship team. I smile at familiar and unfamiliar faces when I am in town and able to attend. Yes, we must be the church. Also, we must keep the church buildings open to all welcoming the believers and seekers alike.

There are countless times where I have found comfort, inspiration, friendship, relief, and shed tears. So many transformative teachings have been absorbed in the stained glass light with the hymns filling the organ’s pipes and carrying through the pews. I recognize we must be the church. My hope is to light a path to allow others to discover the good work that happens inside the brick walls. The steeple serves as a beacon to those who are lost or weary.

Our community is blessed with a dynamic pastor who fully embodies this lesson and works tirelessly and joyfully to betterment of our community and mankind.

I’m too hard. Mostly, I am too hard on myself. I was raised to confess my sins and to need salvation from my wicked ways. Oh, there was much more beauty and love than that in my Catholic traditions, but that subtle upshot was constant and powerful during my formative years.

Well, well, well into adulthood now, I have no resentment for learning this way of destructive self talk. I am enlightened enough to have learned to be more kind in my view of myself and my efforts. What disappointments me is other contemporaries of mine have let go of Christianity all together having learned only of a suffering Jesus who saves.

There is much more to the story. He LIVES! The tomb was empty. He ascended into Heaven and lives. Radical is that he lives in the Holy Spirit and lives in us. He is living throughout our body and we can chose how to express His love in our lives and in our interactions with others.

When we choose to believe, we can take it easy. We can let go of the hurt and hatred. We can let in the light and the love. This then lightens our pack and life becomes easy. It is so simple really to love as Jesus loved.

It is the season of graduation. As parents we say, “where did the time go?” As teenagers and young adults, we say, “Finally! This took forever!” The more years behind us, the faster time seems to move past us. It’s funny. We can’t store it or stop it. It does not wait for any of us.

We can budget it, plan to use it wisely. We can live in the moment and cherish it. We can remain idle. We can keep busy to make the most of it. Still, we cannot stop its constant motion from present to future.

I often hear people say, make good memories! I have been prone to this type of thinking capturing moments in scrapbooks and, of course, in the written word. These pursuits hold time, transcend it. Yet, both rob us of the present moment as we yearn for yesteryear.

I am an off again, on again writer. I keep steady journals as the practice places me in the moment and sets my intentions, and makes sense of my days. It is a way to cheat the ticking clock. It is a way to withstand the constant forward motion.

At the moment, I am resting on the corner of my loveseat, one dog at my feet and the other on the couch across the room. I have a laptop where I hear the steady rhythm from my fingers running over the keyboard like a pianist plays a tune. I plunk, I backspace, and at times the words come fast and coherent. Spelling always slows me down.

Writing is bold, to assume a moment or idea is worth cementing into place rather than swiftly passing by. I am under no delusion that this practice yields anything that is valuable to anyone other than me. For me, though, I can reach flow state from time to time. In that state, time stops. I am not racing from activity to activity, thought to thought. During flow, I am a vessel of something much greater than myself.

In this season of graduation, new beginnings, happy endings, we mark a crossroads in time. We pause at the arrival of an award. We rest or celebrate for a spell. Then, we resume the pace. Carry on. Forward busy with our next pursuit. We will measure the year of milestone moments as a benchmark as to what came before and after. These landmark moments are a rest stop. A time to reflect on how far we have come and set out for the next leg of the race.