Explanation: I have started going to Grace Church Seattle. It's a great church, with solid teaching that encourages me to have a realistic understanding of my faith and a grace-filled understanding of God. Going there has been a refreshing and deepening experience and I really enjoy attending there. However, there is liturgy. I like liturgy a lot; it is refreshing since it is so distinct from my Baptist background, I love the focus it pays on personal confession wrapped in the setting of the body of Christ, it connects well to the Church past and present, and there is a sense of reverent sacredness that I find lacking in many relevant churches in Seattle. I do feel pressure though. I feel pressure to feel remorse when we start the service with confession. I feel pressure to feel concern for the different issues we pray about in the middle of the service, and I feel pressure to have a deep and moving experience when I take communion. Half way through the service I was trying to piece together a prayer for the children of the church, stringing together fake requests for parental wisdom and obedience and then I just stopped. I stopped bullshitting my way through the required prayer. It felt very right to stop. I took communion and didn't feel anything. Sometimes communion really impacts me but today it was normal and just part of my life, a small blip on my radar screen.
Having the realization that I often try to create holy moments for myself was freeing. My experiences with God are not something that I can demand or create or manipulate. They simply happen. When I rode my bicycle back from Scum today, I had a holy moment. I believed in God and liked them a lot and was deeply happy to be riding my bike. Recognizing the moments when I am intimate with God is far more important of a skill for me to possess than having them on command. Sometimes I initiate with God and sometimes he initiates with me. We give and take and it is very selfish and narrow minded of me to think that I will have a rousing, transformational experience at every religious event I go to. I want a God of my life and my boringness not a God of liturgy or church buildings.
Side note: Today we found a tandem bicycle in the dumpster. It is gorgeous and frosted purple with white walled tires and in impeccable condition. It might redeem my feelings about tandems. We also found beer and doughnuts and sat in our garden and laughed and consumed the loot. Today community was unexplainably satisfying and it is a gift that I am truly humbled to receive. Thanks be to God.
2 comments:
I like this a lot
me too.
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