A Nut Searches for Her Inner Light

Today, sitting in the balcony at a church in town, I noticed that the chandeliers looked like heavily pregnant spiders. The pastor's wife asked me how I was and I said, "Oh, this winter! I feel like a nut, in a shell, and I'm knocking for spring." I noticed Martin looking at me askance.

Maybe it is the snow, and the long winter, that makes me restless. I wandered from the sermon to the window and beyond, where the snow was blowing. Looking sideways, I felt like my daughter Merry must when I take her face between my hands and say, "Look at my eyes when I talk to you!" Merry's eyes dart and then fixate on something fascinating on her right.

I don't think that God had my face crammed into his hands and was willing me to look forward at the pastor. I think perhaps I was gazing sideways away from my own guilt and out to God in the swirling snow.

The service ended with a hymn I disliked so strongly that I refused to sing part of it. There was war imagery, which of course is "Biblical" (along with a whole host of things you don't want your children knowing about) and Western, and also filled with requests for God to shake us from calmness and contentment. If anything, I thought, we need to stop fighting, release ourselves, and find contentment. And that does not come from striving and squinting and begging. It comes from letting our hands fall open, and it comes from being silent.

Quaker meeting, anyone?

Martin would love to celebrate the Inner Light and join a Quaker meeting. We actually visited a Quaker meeting in the next big town over. It was good to be silent for an hour, and I wondered what profound thoughts everyone was thinking during the calm. When the optional sharing time came at the end, I was disappointed. One lady said she liked gardening. (And why would this have disappointed me? I love gardening, too, and feels it draws me closer to what is real and true.) Another man recounted a rather bizarre dream about his mother and roses, and now that I write this I can't think of exactly why that was disappointing, either.

Episcopalian service, anyone?

Perhaps I am still an Episcopal at heart, and want the structure, meaning and otherness of the liturgy. The liturgy says all my insides long to utter but cannot articulate.

I am one of many of my generation who grew up in churches, still love God, but do not love churches. We want to serve Jesus but wonder if Jesus would darken a church door if he were around now. But we join the many who go anyway, because there are few acceptable alternatives, especially when you have children--and especially when you feel guilty and disenfranchised if you don't go. But as the pastor talked about hypocrisy this morning, I suddenly woke up and thought, Ah! That's me. Here I am sitting in church.

Of course it's complicated.

Bruderhof community, anyone?

Anyone up for a house church? By this I mean everyone eats brunch at a long table, and a person reads from the prayer book, and we sing a few hymns. But we eat lots of pancakes and share grace by soaping dishes together.

Catholic conversion, anyone?

Martin and I briefly considered becoming Catholic. We became envious of the Catholics sitting around us in mass, who had never considered being anything else. For people like us (evangelical kids-turned -Episcopalian) to become Catholic, we have to become Catholic hook, line and sinker. We have to wrestle with every doctrine and sweat over whether we can truly convert or not. And then when our parents (who are worried about their children converting) visit, they can't take Eucharist, and by then we've stopped birth control and are having babies up the wazoo. If you are born as a Catholic, count your blessings. You can stay Catholic and use birth control and disagree with the Pope. But if you are not a cradle-Catholic and you decide to convert, you have to sign on the dotted line under every doctrine. At least that's how we felt. And we couldn't do it.

So now we're easy-going but fraught-with-questions/ evangelical turned Episcopalian/Catholic-Mennonite-Bruderhof-Quaker wannabees/ attendees at a Presbyterian Church. While we would have liked to have tea with Calvin, we would have kept the conversation on the snow and the spider-like light fixtures and away from predestination and perseverance of the saints.

Nevertheless, Martin and I are going to sing in the choir. Go figure. Life is a series of tensions.

So, I'll close with a song from Merry, who has no doctrinal issues. (During this song, Elspeth, who is the more pragmatic of the two girls, grunted along audibly in a concerted and stinky effort, but this did not dim Merry's Inner Light as she sang):

Jesus is a-somewhere.
Where? I don't know!
In the clouds?
He's not here; I don't see him
But every day he's here with us
Even though you can't see him,
When you go to bed he's there.

The angels will be here,
Even the angels.
If you look up into the sky at night
You'll see 1,000 stars.
Jesus is made up of stars.
I love Jesus my light!
Jesus is my star and the sun.

Oh, that Merry girl would make a great Quaker.