Fran led me to two new blogs today, ChurchHouse and TallSkinnyKiwi:Emerging Church Definitions. Bothw ere discussing where they find "church" in their lives. I posted a comment that “church” to me included sitting on the beach at Cape Cod, my family scattered around me, the gulls wheeling overhead, and a book in my hand.
Where else has church appeared in my life in the last year? And can church “appear” or must you consciously seek these moments of grace? Church can appear with surprise and delight, but you can’t rely on these splendid moments to pop up with regularity if you keep your back turned to it and your head sunk down watching the path of your feet on the sidewalk of life.
In other words, if you watch to watch sunsets, get outside. Place yourself in the crosscurrents of your life and look for where the eddies pool. Where do you find yourself returning for satisfaction? What are the moments in your week that sustain you, that keep you turning back the covers each morning and placing you feet on the cold floor ?. What enables you to punch the clock, buy the groceries, clean the toilet bowl, and not lose your mind year after year?
Moments of church illuminate my pedestrian life with clarity and joy.
I dance to the tune of summer in my head, reading a book about living in a shack on the crooked neck of Cape Cod and painting landscapes of sand and sea.
I rip open a battered manila mailer and out tumbles a book about finding the magic that lies outside in the parks, streams, and even the telephone lines that criss cross the cities, lines that we can trace back to the Industrial Revolution and forward to the Internet.
A member of my artist’s email lists posts that she is ill, and a church of posts appears, with recipes for chicken soup, suggestions for homeopathic remedies, and just the plain words of we are here and we care.
One night before my daughter goes back to college, she plops in the middle of our bed like she did when she was five. Soon her little sister appears and finds a spot against her father’s knees. Then the cat bounces on the bed and curls up between my legs and my daughter’s. Our son comes in and snorts that no one left him any room but he is appeased with the offer of a chair pulled up next to us and we watch something silly on TV, shutting the lights and lowering the sound when their father’s snores begin.
Finding church in these moments is more important than ever for me because we’ve never found a spiritual home here. We’ve sampled several churches, there’s a Catholic church on every corner in this area of the Northeast. But we’ve never found a spiritual home that offers us the fellowship and ministry that we hd before. Maybe we will never will. Going to Mass has become a duty, like adding extra quarters in the meter so we don’t get a ticket. Some Sundays we risk the chance.
I try to make Sunday a more intention-directed day, so that I may see the pattern of our church appearing outside the four walls of the stone edifice we frequent.
This Sunday, church begins with the feel of warmth of the sun through the French doors in my bedroom - the sun is out! Today will NOT be gray and overcast for the first time in weeks!
The redolence of coffee fills the house and my husband appears bedside with freshly brewed coffee, a warm bagel, and crisp Sunday papers. I know it is Sunday and we will scan the papers and watch Sunday Morning on TV.
Later we will go to Mass, visiting the church where we were married, where I received the sacraments, from where my father was buried. We will sit behind my mother and her life-long friends, exchanging the handshake of peace with them later in the Mass. Afterwards we sit together at the diner, ordering eggs and grilled cheese, toast and juice, lingering over coffee, knowing errands must be done, footballs games need to be watched, but for a moment we are joined together in a little nest of food and fellowship.
And in a grace-filled day, I will find the time to sit at my laptop, feeling the warmth of the motor under my wrists, enjoying the clacking of the sleek, black laptop, and run down the list of my blogroll, checking in with friends all over the world. Their posts will inspire me to write my own, giving me the place and time to express myself and add to the rich vein or prose and poetry that spreads across the cyber ocean like buoys bobbling gracefully in the sea.
I am aware, I am grateful, I honor and offer praise and thanksgiving from That from whom all this flows and I ask simply that it continues.
