The artist Steve Emery, who blogs over at Color Sweet Tooth, put up a thoughtful post some months ago about taking some time away from the noise, conflict and complications of the church in order to reconnect with God. Commenting on the impending Episcopal schism, he wrote in March:
Why do we leave a church? Because we no longer consider the worship of the others to be true? Because we fear our own faith or the faith of our children may be damaged by hearing what we consider to be wrong ideas? Because we no longer believe the Spirit moves in the presider, and the Eucharist is thus somehow invalidated?
For now I find these questions beyond me, and not mine to answer. This may change.
In my case I did not leave a church in particular, though it was events in a particular church that precipitated my departure. I left organized church in general. I needed to leave, like a man who needs to clear his head at a concert or a party by going outside and breathing some cold fresh air. I was seeing the defects of organized church in a way that blocked seeing anything else. I’ve become some kind of a cow, I think. Recent visits to church left me feeling sleepy and benign, with dew from the fields still on my shaggy bovine hide. I was OK being there, enjoyed the company and worship, found God there as congenially as elsewhere, but I was happier to return outside. I know God will eventually turn me back into a man…but for now I’m learning by being cattle.
Six months later, Steve writes:
Sometimes, when I’m the most confused or hurt about something, my prayer takes the form of just standing beside Him and reaching up with my little hand to put it in His. I don’t see Him in these prayers, I just put my hand in and try to stand still. I have to do it over and over again, because I’m not good at standing still. But I don’t think about whether God is grossed out about all the mud on my legs, the way my clothes haven’t been changed and are full of grass stains, the way my little hand is wet and clammy, or the way the other hand’s thumb is probably in my mouth. He doesn’t care and I’m too busy just needing Him to give it much thought. That’s the best I can do much of the time.
Or, to shift to my current metaphor, I’m just munching grass over here in my shaggy coat, rain or shine, trying to take it all in and not fret so much. He doesn’t withhold the rain or the sunshine because I’m just a stupid cow or even if I’m a wicked cow. He’s just good and I just love being here with Him. And once in a while I hear a voice like yours and it makes me look up and pause in my chewing. It definitely seems to be where I belong at the moment.
I’ve gone on a very similar journey this summer, having forced myself to defer the question of which church to join (if any) until Labor Day. Steve’s attitude of childlike humility is the essential factor that keeps a church-vacation from backsliding into spiritual individualism and rejection of the body of Christ. I’ve tried to resist the temptation to codify what I am doing as something that everyone should be doing, or even as something that will always be right for me. I put my grubby little hand in my Father’s and say “I need a nap” and I trust that He will wake me up in time for supper.
I very much liked the idea of a nap and being woken in time for supper! That’s precisely the kind of trust I am trying to learn. Thanks for quoting from my blog – and for your additional thoughts.
Your words about spiritual individualism make sense to me. I’ve been to that country several times in the past, and it always felt like a bad place, not enough oxygen there. This pasture life has felt OK, and I measure the OK-ness by how much I feel need of Jesus and the Father. That’s not enough to build a whole walk with God, I think, but it’s OK for a nap.
Just yesterday I mentioned to Moomin Light that I am feeling hungry for the Eucharist. That hunger has led me back before. What I want is the lean, spare beauty of the daily Mass, the liturgy without ornament, and, most of all, the body and blood of our Lord to take with me on the way.
The Eucharist, yes. I’m in a Christian discussion group with others who similarly feel unsatisfied with the current menu of church options, and we’ve been speculating about what makes church “church”. What can you get there that can’t be disaggregated and obtained elsewhere? For good preaching and teaching, there are books, tapes, the Internet. For music, the radio. For fellowship and prayer, small groups like ours, which are little “bodies of Christ” in their own right, bringing together people from diverse traditions within Christianity. But the sacraments are unique. We can commune with other Christians anywhere but we can commune with God in this particular way, body and soul, only in church. That’s why I wish the evangelical churches would rediscover the sacraments. A good book on this is Rodney Clapp’s Tortured Wonders.
It would be possible for another
What a great man today was born? Need a toast!
What a great man today was born? Need a toast!
It would be possible for another
Touchdown! That’s a rellay cool way of putting it!
Good job, author! Good job!
Tomorrow I will open my new blog about the cinema movies. Nice to meet you!
Develop a theme further. It is interesting to learn more!
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