A Hopeful Heretic

And a damn fine zinfandel...

I'm taking a break from packing to have a glass of wine at a nice place near where I live.  Well, where I live for the moment.  Come Tuesday I'll be in a whole different neighborhood.

I first came to this place when I was checking out the area, even before I was offered the job at the church.  I think it was one of the things that attracted me to the whole thing, the idea that there was a wine bar in this sleepy little town.  It's as if there was a little bit of elegance among the commuter parking lots, track house developments and farms.

I'm not here to be all meloncholy or nostalgic.  I'm here because I wanted to savor a moment for the first time in months.  This feels to me like the first good breath you take after having a bad cold for a week.  It feels so good to do something you generally take for granted because it took so much effort just a little earlier.

I was thinking about the Sarah Groves song, Just Showed Up on my long drive home tonight (my LAST long drive home):

...I'm gonna live my life inspired
look for the Holy in the common place
open the windows and feel all that's honest and real
until I'm truly amazed.

I'm gonna feel all my emotions
I'm gonna look you in the eyes
I'm gonna listen and hear until it's finally clear
and it changes our lives...

I believe that I've had it with living in the future tense.  Part of healing from all the grief of the last few years is to learn to find joy in the now.  That's not going to come easily for someone who has spent so many years planning for every possible contingency, preparing for a life that has not cooperated.  I think that I've learned all too well how to grieve.  Life teaches you that as soon as you start paying attention.  Now, I'd like to learn, or re-learn, how to celebrate.  I believe that's what I've been called to do for now.  Maybe just for tonight.

So a little jazz in the background, a basketball game on the TV and a damn fine zinfandel.  Beats packing.

Clawing out of the hole...

Has anyone else ever written a really great post and then navigated away from the page before saving it?  Ok, let's try not to do that again.

I suppose that it's just as well, I was probably a little too raw, maybe a little too honest in what I wrote last night.  The point was two-fold: first to explain a little more what's going on with me, second to thank the people who have written comments of support.  I posted my thanks last night and I echo them again now.  It really touches me that so many people understand the experience of loss after loss.

But here's the explanation, at least a partial one.  I find myself in the process of rebuilding my life after leaving a job at a large evangelical church.  That job was a dream for me, an opportunity to support people doing great work to expand the kingdom.  But that dream turned out to be more of a hallucination.  It turns out that the church was dedicated to growth, more people in the cause, more buildings in which to meet, more money to make it all work.  In my mind that's not necessarily the kingdom that Jesus preached about.

I have no doubt that the leaders of that church sincerely believe that they are doing God's work and, to a very great extent, they are accomplishing wonderful things.  But they are also leaving a lot of bloody and broken bodies in their wake.  I'm one of those bodies.

What really hurts me is that I've made this mistake before.  This isn't the first dynamic, growing church that I've committed to only to find that I really didn't fit the mold.  It's one thing to make a mistake about which leaders to follow and which movement to join.  It's another thing to make the same mistake twice.  It tends to make one doubt one's judgment.  It comes at a time when other losses in my world have taken their toll and left me weary beyond description.

I've started a new job that will engage my mind but will not break my heart.  I'm leaving a beautiful home where I planted trees in hopes of a few summers in their shade.  I'm leaving behind a ministry that I'd hoped would have been better prepared for my departure.  All losses.  Not nearly the whole list.

This afternoon I told a dear friend that I feel as if I've clawed my way out of a dark pit and I need to take whatever steps I can to keep from falling back into it.  For now I think that means exploring what it life as a disciple of Jesus without being a Christian in the contemporary, western sense of the word.  It means that I intend to be a monk in a hermitage, not in a desert, but in one of the largest cities on the continent.  It means that I need to learn a new language for my faith.

I can see a little daylight now.

A break from packing...

To Grace and her readers, thanks.  You're like cool water in a barren land.

What the angel said...

You can all kinds of theological observations with a little seminary education and too much time on your hands.  You can look at the world and see the aroma of the Divine in the mundane details.  Or, if you're so inclined, the stink of evil.

Tomorrow I start another chapter in life.  It's funny, thinking of it that way, as if I were the author and I had some kind of control over the plot and the dialogue.  I suppose that I've come to realize that I simply have very little.

In a conversation with someone tonight I found myself making the weary observation that I will simply do my best to act wisely and trust God with all else.  He just said that he'd be there for me.  What a weight that lifts from one's shoulders to know that there are others who have your back.

I can make all kinds of profound observations about community and such.  They all seem kind of lame.  What came to mind was what the angel wrote to George Bailey:

Remember, George: no man is a failure who has friends.

May we all have friends.