Dear Faith-Shifter (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Faith-Shifter,

You hold such a tender place in my heart, you who once felt that everything was sure, you who once felt certain of God and religion, of church and ritual and the blackness and whiteness of rightness and wrongness, goodness and badness. I shifted many years ago and continue to shift—not away from God—but away from some of the certainties of my youth, away from the coded language of a larger religious identity that was shared by a group of people I love to this day. I shifted because too many things felt wrong about our Way of Being. And so much of that Way hung on me like an ill-fitting garment; and, there was too much jargon that those outside our tribe could not understand.

I will always love the Church (of course I love it—I’m one of its pastors); I will always love the way the Spirit has of speaking and moving and wooing us. I will love the Bible, its complexity and mysteriousness and truths-held-in-tension-ness.  But when we love so deeply, Faith Shifter, and are simultaneously so at odds with pieces of the tradition of our forefathers, or at odds with the ways the timeless has been trapped in the temporal, with the distorted expressions of the Love of God, and when we’re in search of some fresh way to express faith, questions, and mystery--it can lead us to loneliness. We belong and we don’t belong. We believe and we don’t believe (certain things). We wonder when no one else wonders. And we wonder if we are the only ones observing as if through a window the party we've long been invited to attend.

I was reminded in my reading this week of how, when we shift, the increased distance we feel from those who were once (or still are) our tribe often extends to a loneliness toward God. When we shift, it may seem that God shifts too. I have felt a distance, yes, over many years and winters and questions, that perhaps stemmed from the belief that Once We Lose Our Faith in God or God’s Church or God's Church's Answers, then so has God in us. But, if I could, I would spare you the necessity of this Distance, dear one. To assert that God has lost his love or faith in us is to assert that God is as splintered and confused and fragmented as my own (in seasons) battered heart. I have come to find out, after and even in the shifting, that God wasn’t far, not even as far as the snowflakes drifting three inches from my December window. No, he was on the inside of the pane, in my breath blown upon it, in the lungs that exhaled all my questions.




***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

On Epistles and Sea Change (Epistolary Wednesday),

As much as I’ve loved our themed epistles on Wednesdays, I’m starting to think that every blog post is an epistle. And every novel, every essay, every poem for that matter. After all, if it’s not written in a diary, then it’s written for an audience, from one person to many others, meaning, maybe I won't identify a fictionalized recipient every week. But sometimes I will. So: here’s me giving notice that Wednesdays are epistolary by nature, whether or not I’m writing to you, my husband, daughters, Jesus, Obama, or the Duggar family. Yes?

But about sea changes. I’m not really a water girl, and probably shouldn’t talk like water words come easily to me, but sea change makes me think of sailors and wet rope and a stern watch on the ocean. It’s the phrase that ran through my mind a few months ago in the middle of weeks of restlessness. Have you ever felt change coming like you feel a storm rolling in? Maybe we don’t know how loud or wild the storm will be, but we know it’s coming nonetheless. And we sit on our perches with cold anticipation and a thrill in our stomachs because we know things are about to Get Interesting.

Well that’s where I’m at, and I’ve been here before, watching for sea change. Sometimes the waters rise up and roil so slowly you can’t tell exactly when it begins. Other times, it’s a flash of lightening and a darkening sky in an instant. I’m not a boater, like I said, but what I hear is that we can get farther if we cooperate with the wind and hike our sails to catch it when it blows.

Sunday night, a small group of friends and I met and we asked each other the question about what was next in each other’s lives. Where did we feel God calling us, where did we think we were going? Funny to find out, most of us in the room were feeling a sea change too—facing decisions about babies and moves and jobs and settling or not settling down. And then we prayed that we’d catch the wind of the Spirit wherever it was leading, that we’d have our sails up at the right moment so we could move along with it.

And then we each went out into a wet and icy November night, to chilly cars, and slick streets, to the next morning's alarm clocks and waking children and meetings and phone calls and family chaos and drama. Keeping our sails up takes some diligence in the midst of the everydayness of our jam-packed lives. It means readying ourselves when we're not really ready for change, when we don't know what change looks like, and when we don't know if we really want it. And then, despite our diligence to hoist the sails, there may be the impossible absence of wind. At least for a time. And there we live: ready but not ready, ready but mystified, ready and going nowhere--all while we try to live like responsible, loving human beings--taking out the trash, greeting our neighbors across the snow-covered yards, praying, giving, blending hemp seed and fruit smoothies for our children's breakfast, and, every once in a while, checking on that cold and unmoving winter sky as it's framed by the window.

Dear Pastor's Kid, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Pastor’s Kid,

You’ve heard the stories about Jesus and Abraham since you were in diapers. You know that God is Good and Jesus Loves You because The Bible Tells You So. You’ve sung the Sunday school songs, performed in the Christmas programs, and just because you’re you, have corrected the theology of the younger ones who wanted to know if angels and Santa were in cahoots, if the Easter Bunny was as real as Jesus. Also, you take science seriously; you wrestled with creation theory, held intelligent conversations about how the theories of evolution and God-as-Orignator might somehow fit together like a puzzle, and not be at odds as so many people seem to think they are.

And you know so much about the Bible—names, spouses, plot twists, dates—that I’m surprised to hear you casually recounting the stories. You don’t know it all (how could you; how could anyone?), but I’m sort of impressed. You’re invested, in other words, in figuring this whole God-and-the-Bible thing out.

But, you’re also worn out on God Stuff.

When I suggest reading the Bible out loud to you and your sister, or when there’s some new thing for kids at church who are your age, you'll sigh and say, “Do we have to? I already know everything there is to know about this stuff.” And sometimes, when you come home from youth group, or you hear about a church event other kids are going to, you sigh and say, “I’m just gonna feel guilty because they’ll tell me I should be telling people about Jesus. And I just don’t want to.” And not wanting to makes you feel like a very bad person.

I will commiserate with you because--listen--the last thing I want for you (or anyone who loves Jesus) is to feel like you have to perform for Him. It's not what anyone has meant to convey to you, but somehow the message has gotten scrambled over all these years.

Here's the problem I've started to clarify: So much knowledge about God, so much immersion in “church” and the Bible to the exclusion of knowing God with your heart just as much, is counterintuitive if not downright damaging. All of those facts and figures and names and verses could trick one into thinking that they have this God-thing all figured out, that this mass of information is all there is to gain. 

That kind of knowledge is dangerous, love, because like a vaccine, it so easily inoculates us against the most important things--it works against our Searching, against our Hunger and Finding Out With Our Hearts and our Souls who God really is. Those things, dear one, are what I most want you to inherit--not the satisfaction of memorizing verses and references, not a sense that you have "arrived" in church-land culture.

If taking back some of the Vacation Bible Schools, some of the forced Sunday school attendance when you were just not "into it" meant opening up your curiosity and encouraging your questions, I might do it. And even though it's not my first choice, that is why I'm letting you go to the junior high dance and giggle in a corner with your two girlfriends rather than make you go to the church youth conference. Maybe--and this is my prayer--your spiritual hunger will grow best in an echo-y gymnasium full of shy seventh graders. Maybe you will search for God right alongside bowls of Chex mix, cups of fruit punch, and Pharrell Williams through the sound system.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

For Tiny at Bedtime, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For Tiny at Bedtime,

It’s the ritual that I think will stay with you through all the years that lie ahead. I don’t know when we’ll stop, but for now I can’t help but believe, as I sit in your dusky bedroom at twilight, that the repetition of these requested songs every night is somehow building a solid core in you. You never sing along, and you only like the songs sung quietly while I rub your back, but I trust that their rhythms are somehow becoming the primal stuff of childhood memories--that and your mother sitting next to your bed, singing.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.

I don’t say prayers with you regularly like all of the good church-going parents I know. I struggle enough with helping you understand my own hold on this unseen God, an invisible being who doesn’t quite “live” in any one place that I can point you to—a person you can feel but not hear or see or smell. How can I explain God to a four-year-old, to whom "going to heaven"--where God also "lives"--sounds about as appealing as visiting the dentist where she'll get to pick out a "prize" when the drilling is all over?

Naught be all else to me save that Thou art.

Other parents say their toddlers talk to Jesus like he’s sitting across the table at supper time. Not you--this family is full of doubters, literalists, skeptics, question-askers. Which is fine by me--because whatever faith we eventually do claim as our own becomes--against all odds--something textured and made sturdy by that doubt, those questions.

Thou my best thought, by day or by night.

I wonder if, when you are grown, these words will remind you of your mama, of the way she surrendered to an unseen God as her best Thought and Vision? 

Waking or sleeping, They presence my light.

I don't always hold the vision before me, though. My awareness of God ebbs and flows like the Pacific current against the west-coast shore, and sometimes my sense of God's presence is all tangled with distraction like seaweed around my feet. But my vision is there and my vision returns and subsides and visits me again. And somehow I'm changed in that process, by the many returns, by all the reminders of God-with-us. I can't explain how this works, Tiny. I can't explain God to you. I can only live before you while I try to know God--in the best way I know how.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (Monday, September 22)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Well, in case you were paying attention, I missed posting must-reads last week. I was jet-lagged and a little windswept by an amazing trip and conference at Higher Vision Church in Valencia, CA, where I had the opportunity to speak at their Masterpiece conference. In between and amongst all my travels, I enjoyed reading:

For you mamas struggling to love yourself: Sarah Bessey's Dear Body.

For you theologians: "Act Like Men": What Does Paul Mean?

For you Christians who want to compassionately understand the "other" side: What I Learned About Atheists from God's Not Dead. (And, thank you, Neil Carter, for putting into words what troubled me so much about this movie.)

For anyone alive: Glennon Melton's How We Live a Hard and Good Life.

For you bloggers: insight from Jamie the Very Worst Missionary on how Not Everyone Likes You.

Dear Anonymous Facebooker, (Epistolary Wednesday, August 27) #tbw

On Wednesdays, I write letters. (And this one's a throwback to my original post in 2012.)

Dear Anonymous Facebooker,

I saw your post today. The one about believing in Jesus Christ and challenging other believers to put the same post on their wall. You said Jesus said he would deny us in front of God, if we deny him in front of our “peers.” It’s a simple test, you said. If you are not afraid, then re-post.

You probably don’t know this—probably you had no desire to have this effect on me--but your post makes me want to do the opposite. Because it inspires guilt and fear in me, a lover of Jesus who gets by in the world because of and out of the conversations I have with him daily: the questions and answers and simple moments of divine presence felt. Yet, Jesus never told me—he didn’t, I promise—to copy and paste your status update on my Facebook page. And I wonder at the audacity of a mere human trying to boil down a relationship with divinity (and everyone’s afterlife statuses-to-be) to whether one hits cntrol-c followed by cntrl-v on a keyboard. It seems so black and white. So cut and dried. So harsh, really. Do this, or else. Or else—what? Damnation? Eternal Punishment? Separation from God for eternity?

I don't believe in this kind of God. The kind that is upstairs devising tests by which he can damn us all quickly. Hey—using Facebook for the job is so efficient. All he has to do is count.

Do you remember that Peter denied Christ three times--and yet. Peter was also martyred for his love for Christ, crucified upside down. Because of love. For Christ.

Anonymous Facebooker, I want to introduce you to Wiggle Room. If you peer into the economy of Christ’s kingdom, I believe you’ll find an X factor,  so that a man like Peter, who denied him three times, and then testified for Christ, died for the sake of that testimony, is welcomed by Christ—not denied by him. The X factor: can we call it Grace? Grace that doesn’t damn us to hell the second, the moment, we speak or don’t speak, act or don’t act, repost your silly status on our FB page or not.  Because there are a hundred times a week I speak or don’t, act or don’t, and yet I know this Grace that looks at the whole picture of my heart, Grace that gives me an opportunity to be in process, to make mistakes and recover, to arrive at my own understanding and final revelation of divinity or not divinity in my life.

Maybe I don't sound very gracious toward you. I'm sorry. I need to take deep breaths and back away slowly when I see status updates like these. I have to write an entry like this over the span of a week because I'm working on telling the truth as I see it with love.

And here's my bottom line: God’s not riding Zuckerberg’s coattails..  

Dear Desert Dweller, (Epistolary Wednesday), July 30

On Wednesdays, I write letters.

Dear Desert Dweller,

It’s dusty and hot here, I know. And sometimes we wonder, in the desert, if we’ll die before the next rain, the next bottle of water, the next splash in a puddle. It seems though, that there is, eventually, a next rain, a next water. But sometimes, like the Israelite’s manna it’s just enough to barely get us by.

In the meantime, so much beauty flourishes where it's so dry. Like the work of the L.A. Dream Center—in the middle of poverty and homelessness, there’re a million pounds of food (that’s 16 semi trucks) going out to in-need neighborhoods where young mothers and trembling old men fill their carts-with-wheels full of cherries, avocados, whole wheat pasta, and organic apples. Every week to the same neighborhoods all over the city.

Here, in the desert, women go every Thursday afternoon to a park in the projects (and on other afternoons to other parks) for Kidz Club. They sit in the baking sun, throw water balloons, hug children and tell them there are no limits on their lives or to their names. They are there every Thursday and the kids come to expect them. These women remember their names. This is the water.

In the yards in the projects, where the many mamas tend actual green in the heat of their children’s neediness, there are so many signs of life.

There are always signs of life in the desert. Promise comes in hues of orange and gold. And, wouldn’t you know it, some of the most glorious things grow when the sky is blue-bare and cloudless.

Most of us don’t pick the desert. Instead, it chooses us, claiming us for seasons and, sometimes, for what feels like forever. But, there are streams to be found, there are flash floods to fall. Watch and see what grows out of loneliness and loss. Watch and see what flourishes where there is no abundance, where you strain toward heaven with questions unanswered, wondering, waiting and thirsty. Something will spring up. It has to.

The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy...Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.

Isaiah 35:1-2, 5-7

Must-Reads and Watches

It's been a week of inspiring, important, and simply moving video and blog posts around the internet. I wanted to share some of what moved me.

If you follow my Facebook updates (or anyone's FB updates), this will probably look familiar: Bloggers and tweeters everywhere are trying to get our attention about the kidnapping of almost 300 teenage girls in Nigeria. On Rage Against the Minivan, Kristen Howerton explains "Why Girls in Nigeria Should Matter to You." Sarah Bessey added a prayer to the conversation: "In Which We Pray: Bring Back Our Girls."

For you married readers, Glennon Melton offers a true-to-life portrait of what happily-ever-really means: "The Lie and Truth about Marriage."

And then, I happened upon this little gem of a happy ending--the sort of thing that sounds too good to be true, so good its's probably made up. But it wasn't. This was a real deal--a preemie twin born at 27 weeks, pronounced dead, but comes back to life over the two hours that his Australian mother practices Kangaroo care.

And for those of you who've been wondering at all the feminists springing up in your churches, this talk about the compatibility of faith with feminism, given by the so-smart twenty-something, Sarah Schwartz, from Biola University, is a wonderful place to start your investigation.

Notes #20 In Which I Stay Rooted

A few weeks back, I got a headache that grew louder than the voices of the four women who joined me in a women's retreat planning meeting. My eyes were aching and I just felt wiped out as we talked about themes and speakers and women's issues--and I didn’t know why.  I was juicing a lot that week for heaven’s sake. I was eating tons of greens, no sugar, no meat (...except for those two GF brownies I ate after a day of only juicing). But anyway, I was in this meeting feeling like my progesterone levels were taking a nosedive off a cliff into a rocky canyon, trying to keep up with the ideas, the different directions, which I couldn't do. So I wrote them down and thanked the ladies and prayed and said I needed time to process. 

I got in my car and drove to the preschool parking lot where I would pick up Tiny and I just sat, with my head on the steering wheel and I thought I can’t do a women’s retreat. We should scrap it all. This is too much work! And right there was my second clue (headache being the first) that I was Not Okay--because planning stuff is sort of what I live for. And then my head started spinning through the engagements and deadlines and speaking commitments and classes to schedule and I could feel the anxiety mount. But how did I get there? How does one go from walking at a brisk pace to running out of breath with no chance to stop? Because that’s what it felt like. And my body was boycotting, having it’s own little Revolution Against Over-Extension.

Of course, there’s no one but myself to overextend me. Everyone I work with is gracious and we are mutually protective of each other's energies and abilities. But I often feel this urgency, this urgency to get to the next thing, to build and keep building—a new class, a retreat, deeper levels, better curriculum, more supportive structures for particular areas of church life. There are so many things in the distance, so much possibility for the future. And I want to build it all right now. And yet, I can’t get to them until I set down these foundation stones in my hands, in place and in order, one at a time.

The headache worsened that night. My whole body ached. I had trouble explaining it to my husband, to my friend. I’m sick, I think. And I feel stressed and anxious too. But which caused what? Chicken or egg?

In periods of stress and on the days of Revolution Against Over-Extension, I often have to just bear the revolution out. I don’t always know how it got started or what my soul is trying to tell me or what message it is I need to hear. And so I just wait with my head on my pillow and a questioning eyebrow at God—what? What do I need to know?

Last time, after a day of that posture, there were two things that broke through my frenetic internal buzz. One, I played the audio of my YouVersion online Bible app. I love the NIV, read aloud by some William Branaugh sound-alike. So Shakespearean and poignant, he chided me (and I cried):

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

And…

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

I know that, if you’re not familiar with everything the writer of Hebrews wrote of up until chapter 12, that this sounds like a bunch of cultish gobbledygook. Spirits of the Righteous Made Perfect. Sprinkled Blood that Speaks a Better Word?

The writer is saying, in my plain Iowa English, that our God isn’t distant or untouchable. That we have access to a joyful, welcoming God and all of heaven supports his welcome of us.  We are welcomed by God the Judge who judges us as “right” simply because of our trust and faith in Jesus, who helps us continue on in our lives of faith.

Why did I cry upon hearing this? Oh the mystery of our own souls--maybe because it was a spirit-touching-heaven moment, a reminder that all the stuff of our lives—the bills to pay and forms to sign and the offspring’s favorite clothes to launder and the class curriculum to write and the marriage to maintain—is not the endgame, is not the reason, is not the why. 

He loves me. He just does. And that is Something.

And then, the second thing that broke through the noise in head:

I read two blog posts from two of my favorite bloggers, women negotiating writing and blogging and speaking and ministry and parenting. One wrote about reassessing her commitments. It was so helpful to know I’m not the only one asking these questions about what is and is not working and what I’m supposed to be doing in a particular season of life.

The other blogger wrote about criticism, a bad review, of her book.  It was a comfort to remember that I will fail--especially in other people's perceptions of my endeavors--and that this is Okay.

No matter how hard we try and no matter our whole-heartedness in trying, we won't please everyone and we won't always succeed. And so, we must stay rooted in What Has Been Revealed and What Is, and grounded in our purposes, our callings, and the intentions of our lives. 

Frustrating Things (About Church)

There is minutiae. The stuff that, if we didn't know better could derail a person, a ministry, a team, an entire church.  The minutiae in a growing church in a too-small building can look like things gone missing for weeks or months. Like my class supply box frequently disappearing. Like snacks for Sunday morning disappearing. Like holes in communication: the wrong person getting the right information and vice versa. Like our functioning women's toilets in the building have decreased to 50% for a short time and are now back up to 75% of prior capacity. Like we have no personal offices and no great meeting spaces on Sunday mornings, and I'm about to commandeer the out-of-service women's bathroom for strategy sessions. Like my "stuff" is divided between four different closets and rooms in the building. Whatev. Like I said, these little things are easily overcome with a dose patience and sense of humor. 

Others things are harder. Like learning to be comfortable and respectful with disagreement and different temperaments. Like gender and racial stereotypes that linger, spoken or silently present. Like how church systems and governments don't always seem to adequately reflect or express the Kingdom-come. (Oh, we're trying to get there, we are). Harder still: People scare easy and run away--right about the time I want to coax them to “come toward, come toward.” There are misunderstandings that could get resolved speedily through brave communication, but brave communication sometimes takes a while to work up to. Weeks, months. Years. I have been guilty of this. Also, feelings get hurt. Things are said that shouldn't be said, and there are consequences.

Most profoundly difficult: With church (and the Gospel), there aren’t provable answers for everything. We have to live in this liminal space of not-proving and not-being-scientifically-sure of certain things in an age when so many want to form beliefs upon the foundation of empirical truths. But the Bible is not an almanac, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a science book, a rulebook, a treatise, a constitution, a manual. It’s more like a traveler’s map. With hundreds of important landmarks—places where important things happened to people and people groups and where God happened to people and their groups. And somehow these landmarks are all connected. There was a journey from one place to another, from Adam to Christ and from Genesis to Revelation, and the journey was messy and complicated and filled with confusion and people running here, there and everywhere and worshiping the wrong gods and killing and oppressing other people groups and making rules that ultimately didn’t do any earthly or heavenly good. And one has to look at all that and work at deciphering truth out of the relationships between historical events, between narratives, between the story God wanted to write and the story of human action and history and the way in which God entered history, anyway, and did something good. And, oh boy, relationships are complicated (just ask anyone who's ever been in love); they are subject to interpretation; they are sentences eluding grammar, impossible to diagram.

Sure, some things are fairly self-evident when we look at the Bible's big picture, and we preach those things, we teach those things, we celebrate those things. We teach Jesus as God. As light in the darkness. As hope for the hopeless. And a bunch of other foundational assertions about this thing Jesus called the Kingdom of God. These assertions are like little pins on the map. Places of [unprovable, faith-filled] certainty. On one hand, this faith-infused surety about the pins on the map is oddly satisfying: I've lived with faith long enough to see it as the substance that keeps me connected to God, that keeps my eyes open for the ways in which prayer is answered, in which provision is offered, in which hope shouts louder than the sick child, the broken marriage, the mother's tragic death.

But, all of those things (the child, the marriage, the death) speak of mystery. Frustrating mystery. Disappointment. Oh, elusive answers! Oh, suffering in the midst of eternal hope. And we can only walk alongside and ask the questions together, digging for answers we may never unearth. 

All of this--the map, the pins on the map, the questions, the interpretations--is what we have to give away, to hand to believers and seekers. There is no manual when we want one. There is no cosmic Google search or ASK.com when it comes to the ways of the Kingdom. No mechanism for generating tidy answers and step-by-step instructions. Ultimately, what is frustrating about Church is also what is so beautiful: We have only this invitation from living words and a living God and a living Church. Listen. Pay attention. Come close. 

**If you missed it last week, catch up on the first post in this (About Church) series. 

Beautiful Things (About Church)

So many things have me thinking about church and church stories lately, especially Rachel Held Evans, who recently solicited readers' stories about church. I love her questions and I love her idea of swapping stories, so here's me daring to say that this is just one in a beginning of posts about church. And, if you're wondering, I did submit RHE a little something. If she doesn't end up using it on her blog, I'll share it here.

But for now, I'm drawn to her question: Tell me a story that encapsulates everything that is beautiful about your church.

I have too many stories.

Church is a constant reminder to me that God loves people better and more capably than I ever could. That I am a privileged witness, a pray-er and an exhorter who sometimes doesn't even have faith or hope on par with whatever healing or restoration that God eventually weaves into a mess--my own or anyone else's.  In other words, I can't even imagine the amazing God-fix that he applies to the seemingly hopeless situations and mindsets and people. And so, it's a delight every time to see him do it.

As a I work with other church staff to create atmosphere where people can become followers of Christ, it's beautiful to me when people show up and say, I'm here! in every aspect of those words. I'm here to give, I'm here to love. I'm here as a brother/sister/mother/father to anyone who needs one, I'm here in need of healing, I'm here to receive. 

Beautiful when someone moves from the shadows of destructive choices and behaviors to living in the light, to using their voice, to telling their story, to helping others heal.

Beautiful when a woman whose been accepted in no other community of faith turns to me and says, "I love this place. This is home." Beautiful that she fell in love with the real Jesus because real people loved her with real, unconditional love. Beautiful that she gave up the old life, the running, the throwing-herself-away so that she could drink of this community, of the strength of its relationships and of the water Jesus has to offer.

Beautiful, too, that I/you/we don't need to own everyone else's problems. We can love. We can pray. We can help. But we're not responsible or in charge. Except for ourselves. But that's another story.

Beautiful to let people live free this way. Without us reminding them of rules and shoulds and shouldn'ts.  Beautiful, instead, to ask questions, to point them to Jesus and let them follow his Way.

And beautiful is the relief of knowing I/you/we don’t have to have all the “right” answers, that we can embrace the mystery and tensions in the Bible and in the ways of the kingdom, that we can live in the middle-ground of the now and not-Heaven-yet with promise here and promise coming. That we can say “I know some things...I don't know everything...I don't know that." But most important: "I just know Jesus."

What's beautiful to you about church?