Church

I had a beautiful run in with church recently.
The service that I had normally been attending (and loving), The service that might be responsible in part for making me love church (in its institution?) again, was coming to an end. The service took place on saturday nights and was not a thing apart from the congregation that met in the same building on Sunday mornings. The saturday night service had been something of an experiment in expansion and a trial of creativity. It was not a separate church from Sunday morning if you take my meaning. It was, however, a different format that i found myself very engaged in. The sunday morning formats were different, and I hadn't been regularly attending them, for various reasons, for 2 years. I had actually been frustrated with it all about 2 years earlier, and felt at the time that I needed to take a break- not from resentment perhaps as much as from a sense of needing something fresh which i could give and take more to and from. Now, with the saturday night services ending, which i had started attending consistently about a year earlier, I knew my next move.
I had showed up on the occasional Sunday morning here and there, but things were entitled to have changed. Would people even remember who I was? I wanted to make sure they did.
The Saturday night before I would be making a comeback to the sunday morning service, I was driving home with a friend from Victoria. She was going to be staying at my family's place overnight and i was going to drop her off at her church service in the morning before going to mine.
"Won't you be late for your service then?" she asked.
"I don't mind being late actually." I countered. "actually, to tell you the truth, i've shown up late on purpose lots of time to church. No-one seems to mind if I do, and it sometimes just makes it much easier."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I don't know. I guess i just get closterphobic when i'm sitting in a room full of people for more than an hour. I start getting fidgety and scetching out. Especially if the Pastor decides to speak overtime, as he often does.
"Oh"
"Plus, i guess there's also the fact that sometimes the music just drives me crazy at the beginning. I mean, it depends and it sounds terribly rediculous or selfish i'm sure, but i can't get around it driving me crazy sometimes."
"Oh i see" she says, "So if you're only here for a few weeks more before you leave" (this is a few weeks before my departure to the Philippines, which is supposed to keep me away for about half a year) "...and if you don't like your church that much... why don't you just go somewhere else?"
The question was fair. But my own indignancy suprised me.
"Go somewhere else?! What?! I don't think you understand me at all! This is my church. This has been my church since i was 15! I cant just walk out on that! No, i might not like the pastors speaking sometimes and sometimes i even disagree with points, and i might not like the country ballad versions of songs that proceed it- but the pastor and the music leader are my church. They are guys that love me! I leave in a few weeks and i need to be at church to remind them (for those that haven't been attending saturday night services) that I'm still around, I'm still one of their family and that I need them now as much or more than ever!"

As an aside, this conversation is a paraphrase, and i should apologize to my friend because its probably an unfair depiction of a conversation that this friend really helped me process with... and i hope it didn't seem like i was yelling at you. Anyways, thanks for listening.

Next day at church was amazing. I felt so at home. I felt so supported. Two or three old ladies whose names i can't even place came up to me and told me how nice it was to see me back around again. It was a great time with a great family with definite quirks (but we're all human?), and i think it might have marked a healing step in coming back to church. I wasn't alienated or resentful, and i was a part of that church (just in a different setting with different people) but I might have been a little lost. A conversation solidified in me what was important. The important part as i see it now is the fact that the people who make up My Church are the people who have been there the whole time; loving people, as faithful as the ocean when you return to it for peace.

post concieved Jan 10. written mar 1