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Nativity pictogram

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I saw this little image of the Nativity yesterday and it started me thinking. It is kind of like a pictogram, or a Chinese written word. It has all the basics of the scene in a compact version. The idea is transmitted in a sort of shorthand.

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It shows Mary and Joseph with Jesus in the stable. It is a humble place, nothing fancy. It was probably drafty and simply put together. It wasn’t meant to be a holy place, but it became one.

Isn’t this like us?

The stable is our bodies, while our souls are inside. We are lit by the light of God.

God in us is the same as that image – Jesus being born in a stable.

Be that image. Let your body be that stable. Let it be that humble, worn, unexpected place where God gets in and makes everything different.

Nothing was the same after that moment.

God shows up in the most unexpected, unadorned, unusual ways. God shows up in the muck and mess of our daily lives. We don’t have to be special for God to come to us. We already are special. God loves us as we are – God made us this way.

I miss church.

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I miss going to church. It has been 8 months since I have been to church. I miss church in the same way I miss my family. When holidays roll around I miss the warm fuzzy feeling of family that I never had. It is part of why Mother’s Day hurts so much. I miss the never-was, or the might-have-been. When the holidays roll around I miss going to church even more. I feel like I’m missing out.

I think a lot of people go to church because of those very same feelings. I think that church fills a hole in them that family couldn’t. It provides a sense of belonging. It is an artificial construction, but a good one, usually. Family is an accident. Friendships are chosen. Church, being (hopefully) a conscious choice, is more like the latter. It provides some of the same kind of support that family should provide but often doesn’t.

The problem is that I can’t go back to my old church. Even if the priest there leaves, I can’t go back. I’ve seen behind the curtain. I know too much. The magic spell has faded away to tinsel and mirrors.

I can’t go back to church as it is, because it isn’t what Jesus meant for us to be doing. But every now and then I have a hankering to go back.

I know three families who left that church before me (because of the same priest) and attend another one of the same denomination. I know that the priest of church A has called the priest of church B to tell him about those families. She told me this back when I was still on her side. She thinks she was “smoothing the path” and “building bridges.” If she was so good at doing that, then how come she couldn’t do that at her church with these families? Now I wonder if she has called the priests at the other local Episcopal churches to warn them about me? I wouldn’t put it past her.

I went to a “Lay Ministry Appreciation Day” at the Cathedral last year. It was the second one they had. I went to the first one too. I felt that something was wrong when I went to the first one, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After the second one I figured it out. At the end we were asked to write our impressions. I wrote that I was very sad to find that we’d spent the whole day learning how to “do church” and not learning how to be better Christians.

There were classes on how to be an acolyte, a chalice bearer, a person who administers home Communion, a lector, and an altar guild member. There wasn’t a single one on how to serve Jesus outside the church. There wasn’t anything about building up the Body. If you wanted to know how to wear vestments or hold a candle or prepare enough Communion wafers for a crowd, they had a class for it. Everything else, forget it.

Here are some examples of things I saw at the Cathedral that opened my eyes.

These are kneelers at the altar rail.
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I wonder how much time was spent needlepointing them. Wouldn’t it be more Christ-like to spend that time visiting the sick and those in prison?

This column is one of many. The marble is imported from Scotland. They are at least twenty feet high, by my estimation.
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I wonder how much that cost? Wouldn’t it have been more Christ-like to spend that money housing the homeless?

Check out the stained glass window and the pipe organ.
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There are stained glass windows throughout the building. One is from Louis Comfort Tiffany. The tour guide says that the Cathedral paid for none of them – they were donations. He’s missing the point. If someone can donate 5 to 10 thousand dollars for stained glass, they can donate the same amount to feed the hungry and clothe the naked instead – you know, the stuff Jesus tells us to do?

God didn’t come down to Earth for us to spend time and money prettifying a building. Jesus didn’t die for us to debate over where to keep the reserved sacrament. The more I went to church, the more I realized that I wasn’t serving Jesus at all. I was serving the administration. I was serving the institution.

Sadly, there are a lot of us who are stuck in this hamster wheel. There are a lot of people who go to church who have invested a lot of their lives and their egos in what they thought was being a good Christian, and what they are doing isn’t Christ-like at all.

It isn’t un-Christian. It just isn’t what Jesus would do.

Breaking out of this mindset is very hard, especially for people who have spent a lot of their time and money in and on the institution that is church. It is especially hard for those who get paid to lead. They have the most to lose. Yet, the way I’m seeing it, they have even more to lose if they keep on following the wrong master. We can follow only one master – make sure it is God, and not the institution.

So yes, I miss church, but it is more like I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. I can’t miss what I never had. There are a couple of options I’m looking at that have a lot of the qualities I feel Jesus meant. I think they are a good start. But I’m wary. I’m wary of getting sucked in and fooled again, like I was last time. I’m wary of letting down my guard and getting really hurt.

Not one stone will be left.

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I read “Forward Day by Day” every morning. It is a quarterly periodical that has a commentary on every day’s Bibley readings. Sometimes the commentary adds to the meaning. Sometimes it takes away. I think today’s commentary got it entirely wrong and took it literally. The author took today’s reading to be about the literal destruction of the Temple, and of church buildings today that get burned to the ground.

The reading is Matthew 24:1-14, but for brevity I’m just going to quote the beginning and sum up the rest.

Matthew 24:1-2
1As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2Then he asked them, ‘You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’

He goes on to explain to his disciples the signs that they will see for how to know this. It is all pretty apocalyptic, with “wars and rumors of wars” etc. The author of today’s Forward Day by Day says that ultimately there is hope in the end, that God will prevail. Sure, that is in there. That is always in there. But I don’t think that the literal destruction of the Temple is what Jesus was talking about.

Remember, Jesus came to tell us that we are the temple. We are the Body of Christ. We aren’t supposed to build up our treasures on Earth and build buildings to worship God. We are to love and serve God, and if we are going to build buildings, we need to build them to house the homeless.

So Jesus wasn’t talking about the Temple, or modern church buildings at all.

Jesus was talking about the WAY we worship God. Jesus came to strip everything away – all the rules and regulations that kept us from seeing God in everyone and serving each person. Imagine how amazing our world would be if everyone saw God in everyone, and served them accordingly? That is the heart of the Sanskrit word “Namaste”. They had it figured out long before anybody else. God put a bit of light into each of us. We all have a little bit of God in us, and our goal is to recognize that and tap into it.

We can’t do that with the church structure the way it is. In fact, we can’t do that until we understand that “church” has nothing to do with a building or administration or ordained ministers. It means us, the believers. We are the Church. No stones required. Until we get that the Body isn’t a Building – we are still waiting for the end times. Jesus hasn’t come again until that time.

The Anti-Christmas guide – or, how I celebrate with as little stress as possible.

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Before I got married, I read a book called “The Anti-Bride Guide”. It told me all the rules I could break when planning my wedding. It let me know I didn’t have to put on a big show. It let me know I certainly didn’t have to spend the equivalent of a car loan for an event where the main part of it takes ten minutes. Why start off your married life in debt? I’ve never been one for spending a lot of money when there is nothing to show for it, so this seemed right up my alley.

The basic idea was to strip it all down to the essentials and add from there – if desired. What do you need to make you feel married? Do you need bridesmaids? Do you need a fancy hall? Do you need tulle, really?

So now that I’m reassessing Christmas, I’m doing the same. I’ve not found and “Anti-Christmas Guide” so I’m making my own. It is a work in progress.

What do I need to make it feel like Christmas? What distinguishes this time of year from all other times that are just as cold and dark?

The sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating part of getting married is that you have to figure out how you are going to celebrate the holidays. Even if you are both of the same religion, this can be tricky. I can only guess how complicated it is if you are of different traditions.

There are plenty of things that we have decided on, it turns out. Here are some.

Rankin-Bass Christmas videos. You know, those claymation videos from the 80s. Titles like “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” and “The Year Without a Santa Claus” are mandatory. I usually don’t like musicals, but I sing along to every song on these.

Stockings. I love Christmas stockings. I love stocking stuffers. Scott and I made our own stockings our first year together and we still use them. Why we made them of wide wale purple corduroy is beyond me, but we like them, and it was important to me that we made them ourselves. Remembering the stocking was one of my favorite parts of Christmas when I was growing up. It was like a second Christmas. We’d usually forget about them until an hour or so after all the presents were open. One of us would glance at the fireplace and see them and everything would stop. The stockings always had an orange in the toe. There wasn’t anything special about an orange – it just fit well in the toe.

Christmas presents have to be something you want- not something you need. Christmas is not a time to buy a new string trimmer.

We went without a tree for many years. I have come to realize I need something, just not a large something. We tried a rosemary bush for a while. I made little ornaments out of beads and earring hooks. It had the right shape and a good smell, but I am not very good at plant maintenance, so it died. We tried the next year with another one and had the same results. I felt that it was sad to kill a Christmas tree, even if it was just a rosemary bush, every year. It wasn’t its fault that I’m terrible at house plants. We went without a tree and I’ve found I need it. Scott constructed a small artificial one for me and it does us just fine. I have a candle that smells like a real tree, so that helps with the illusion.

I had some ornaments that meant a lot to me when I moved here. They were from my family and there were a lot of good memories attached to them. Some were handmade, some were antique. When I first came to Nashville I lived in an apartment and there was no room for a tree. I had some friends who let me store the ornaments at their house. They have since moved and lost the ornaments. I’m still very sad over this. I can buy new ornaments but I can’t replace those memories.

A nativity set. I had one that was hand carved out of olive wood from Jerusalem. Again, lost. Perhaps it was in with the ornaments. I found a new set at Goodwill made of pressed glass. It was cheap and it does the job.

I like to play the interactive nativity set game. My husband looks at me funny. The Magi move a little closer every day, and don’t get really near until Epiphany – twelve days after Christmas. I keep baby Jesus out of the scene until Christmas Day. It looks a little odd with Mary and Joseph staring down at nothing for a month.

Advent calendar. Scott comes from the Catholic tradition and I come from the Episcopal tradition. Advent calendars are part of both. I found one a few years back that is amazing. Brace yourself – Lego. Star Wars. Advent calendar. Too much awesome all together. It has a new minifigure to assemble every day for a month.

To visit family or not? These days, not. It is, as I like to say too much, and yet not enough, all at the same time.

There are reasons that police and nurses dislike working on Christmas. There are a lot of domestic disturbance calls those days. There is nothing about “peace on earth” that guarantees peace in your family. If you all can’t get along during regular days, then it might be best to stay home for the holidays. Domestic unhappiness and alcohol are a bad mix.

Sometimes we decorate the outside of the house. Sometimes not. We appreciate the bright lights this time of year and feel it is good to do our part. It isn’t much, but it is cheery.

Christmas cards. I like getting them, so I send them. We divide up the list, his and hers. Both of us write them up together. I always get Three Wise Men cards, and often some basic “happy holidays” ones for our non-religious friends. I’m considering sending cards to offices and restaurants we like to visit. It hasn’t happened yet. We’ll see.

We make cookies on Christmas eve. We leave the best ones out for Santa along with a glass of milk, along with a note. He always eats them. We even bought a special plate and cup for this. It has a penguin motif.

Midnight mass. Usually a good idea. This year, it probably won’t happen. I like the idea of staying up late to celebrate the first moments of Christmas Day. I love singing Silent Night in a darkened church, lit only by candles. But, it has been six months since our old church and I parted ways, and we haven’t been to a replacement yet.

Last but not least – I donate money to the first Salvation Army bell-ringer I see/hear.

So Christmas is what you make of it. It is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. I keep moving the pieces around to see what looks good. It certainly isn’t about buying lots of presents and dealing with stress. It has a lot to do with being willing to invite Jesus into every moment, and for that you don’t need a special time of the year at all.

Peacemaker and the Process.

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I said at one point about a year ago that my goal in life was to be a peacemaker. I’m not doing a very good job of it. Either I need to reapply myself to my goal, or I need to be honest with myself about what my goal really is.

When I said that was my goal I was in the deacon discernment program in the Episcopal Church. It was tedious. It was a lot longer and harder than I thought it would be. I thought that if a person said that they wanted to be helpful to people, they’d be given some training and some oversight and a task right away. Folks would get help in a helpful way, soon. Nope. Their plan was wait three years and think about it. Meanwhile, I’m stumbling along, clueless. Meanwhile, people are still coming to me with their problems and I still don’t really know what to do.

Part of the Process of discerning if you are called by God to be a deacon in that church, and it really is a Process with a capital P, is a series of assignments. You get an assignment once a month. You need a whole month to work on it. The last one that I was given before the Process was put on “pause” (read, thanks for playing, but you can stop now, you aren’t what we are looking for) was about my goals for life. It was to teach me that everything that I’ve already done in my life was training for what I’m going to do. I felt a bit cheated. If I already have all the training and experience, then what do I need this Process for? If I can figure out for myself what I’m being called to then why do I have to go to these meetings every month and bare my soul to these near strangers?

I’m a little bitter, still, about the whole experience. I try not to write about it much because it just opens fresh wounds that I’m trying to heal. But I’m learning that it is important to examine the source of pain in order to heal. This is a new part of my practice. I’m still learning how.

I said that I wanted to be a peacemaker. I said that I’d love to travel around the world and get people who have disagreed for years to actually listen to each other for a change and see things from each other’s perspectives. I thought that peace in the Middle East would be a big coup.

But then I thought I’d need to learn all those languages, because you always lose something in translation. And I thought that they certainly wouldn’t listen to a young American woman. That is three strikes right there.

Is that the yetzer hara speaking again? Is that the voice of the “evil inclination” that is trying to prevent me from doing what I’m called to do? Or is it the voice of reason that points out that is really not my calling?

Who am I kidding? Peacemaker?

I don’t even talk to my brother or my aunt. I don’t go to my previous church in part because of a huge falling out with the priest. And I’m spending Thanksgiving at home with just my husband because of a falling out with his family. My circles just keep getting smaller.

I don’t have a great track record with making peace.

My usual modus operandi is to avoid the problem. If you don’t talk about it, it will go away, right? Don’t talk about the elephant in the room. We herded elephants in my family home. Just thinking about that madness makes my stomach start to cramp up again. Who doesn’t want to avoid pain? Running away seems very healthy. Until it isn’t, and you realize that you’ve run away your whole life and there isn’t anywhere to run away to anymore.

I feel like I was cheating a bit when I said that I wanted to be a peacemaker. It sounds good. It is close to what I want, what I feel called to. I don’t really want what I’m being called to – but then I want nothing else. The idea of not doing what I’ve been put on this Earth for makes me sad. Nothing is more tragic than seeing someone waste her life thinking she has another day, another month, another year to start living it. I don’t want to be that person.

But then I don’t have a word for what I’m called to. That was why I consented to be part of the Process. I figured it would separate the wheat from the chaff. I figured out it would separate the signal from the noise and let me know what I was hearing. I figured if several of us listened together we’d hear better.

Turns out instead of boiling off the stuff that I don’t need, like skimming off the scum from chicken soup that you are reducing to juicy goodness, it just boiled everything over and spilled it on the floor. I didn’t know I had so much in me. I didn’t know that I can’t be contained to one denomination’s rules and rubrics. I didn’t know that one expression of faith wasn’t going to be enough for me. I didn’t know that this process would widen things up instead of narrowing them down.

I know God works through everything. I know that everything I go through is from a loving God who wants the best and is working with and through me to bring forth what is best. I also know it doesn’t feel very fun while it is happening.

Perhaps peacemaker is part of it. Perhaps I need to know what peace isn’t in order to understand what peace is. Recovering addicts make really good counselors. They’ve been there. They know. Perhaps I’ll know what my calling is when I get there. Perhaps God is treating me like I’m a secret agent. Not even I know my mission because that is for the best that way. Perhaps I just need to live my way into it and take one moment at a time, with trust.

Confessor.

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People come to me. They come to me to confess. They come to me to admit a weakness. They come to me in their confusion and fear. They come to me, unbidden, but not unwelcome.

People tell me the most amazing and awful things. They tell me stories that are so honest and so sad they rip my heart in two. They are strangers. They are waitresses in a restaurant. They are patrons at the library. They are members of the Y. Wherever I am sitting or standing still in one place for longer than 30 minutes, they come.

It is a blessing. It is a calling.

I don’t have to fix anything, I’ve come to realize. I don’t have to make it right. I don’t have to have the perfect word to say. I just have to be there. I have to listen with my whole being. I empty myself out and try my best to let the connection with God be clear and true.

That is it. They aren’t there for me. They are there for God, but God hides in us. God hides in each of us, and when we share from our hearts to another person we are sharing with God.

This is what I went to the minister at my old church for, what, four years ago now? I went to learn how to do this well. I want to be gentle and kind and open with each person who comes to me. But I also don’t want to be stepped on. Empathic people are sometimes confused with doormats. I want to learn how to be an ear for God. Turns out she didn’t really know how to tell me how to do this. She (fortunately) sent me to a pastoral care class and I learned something of this, but they didn’t tell much of the “how to” or the “don’t do this”. It was kind of on-the-job-training.

The trick is just to do it. Just show up. Just be available. And know that I’m going to do it wrong but that is OK too. And when I feel that feeling in my gut that says it is time to back away because it is getting to be too much, listen to it. Don’t fix anything. Just listen. Let people vent. Let them work it out. Be a mirror, or a sounding board. Don’t be a teacher or a coach.

Just listening is healing. Just being there is healing.

There is no magic, no pill, no advice. There is a lot of patience and time and compassion and love. And that is enough.

“God breathed” – on Paul’s words versus Jesus’ words

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People have used Paul to justify Paul to me. Paul says that “all scripture is God-breathed”. (From Timothy 3:16-17) They use this as proof that whatever Paul says is from God.

The problem is that Paul wasn’t talking about his own words. Paul was writing letters to other people. His words weren’t considered Scripture at the time he wrote them. That was many years later.

Scripture is indeed God-breathed. It is inspired, in-spired. To “respire” is to breathe. We get the word Spirit from that root – spirit and breath are the same. It means the same thing. So the Holy Spirit is the breath of God.

It is what makes humans different. When God created Adam and Eve, God breathed into Adam to give him life. God didn’t do this for animals.

Some of what Paul says is helpful, but some of it is divisive. Some of his words go against the basic command of Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves. There is nothing uplifting or loving about telling women to shut up. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35) There is nothing loving about telling gay people (or anybody) that they are going to hell. (1 Timothy 9-10, among others)

Judging people isn’t our job. Our job is to look after ourselves. Paul says that we are to nicely tell off other people in order to correct them (1 Timothy 5:20, among others).

Jesus tells us otherwise. Jesus says that we should look out for the plank in our own eyes and not the speck in our neighbor’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5, among others). Jesus tells us that whatever we use to measure others will be used to measure ourselves (Matthew 7:2). Thus – don’t judge at all.

It is important to always compare the words of anyone who says they act on the behalf of God with the words of Jesus. If what they say isn’t showing love to God and to all of God’s children (everybody), then what they say isn’t in fact “God breathed.”

“But I’m not judgmental!”

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People will say “but I’m not judgmental!” in the same way they will say “I’m not racist!” and then tell a racist joke.

They say they aren’t judgmental after saying that they are against someone because they are gay. I know a lady who refuses to go to a certain denomination of church because it has an openly gay bishop. She doesn’t go to any church, and is living with the father of her child. They are not married. So “being gay” is worse in her mind than what she is doing.

I asked this lady “What does Jesus say about homosexuality?” She stammered “You tell me”, because she didn’t know. The answer – “Nothing”. Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, but He said a lot about not judging others.

He said “Judge not, lest ye be judged”.

He said to not point out the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but examine the plank in your own.

He said that whatever measure you use will be used against you.

The role of the Christian is to be like Jesus, and Jesus was about radical acceptance. Jesus took in all that came to him. We are to be examples of that love by how we live our lives. We are to be welcoming. We are to be servants.

We are not gatekeepers or guards. We don’t get to decide who is on or out. We don’t get to tell people off.

The funny part about being part of the Body of Christ is that we are members with prisoners and tax evaders and alcoholics and wife beaters and the average everyday jerk.

That is kind of hard to accept for some people. They think that being Christian is like being part of some elite social club, where only the cream of the crop get in.

Their logic goes something like this – “If Jesus lets “them” in, then that means we are just like them, and we don’t like the idea of being just like them, because they are sinners. We don’t want to be associated with them.”

Then the reality sets in.

Jesus came to heal the sick, not the well. We are all sinners. And we are all redeemed. There is room enough for us all. Once we become Christian, we don’t stop being us, with all our faults. We don’t start being perfect. We just start realizing that we are all loved the way we are because that is the way that God made us.

Jesus calls us when we are broken, not when we are perfect.

Jesus erases all lines of “them” and “us”. We are all one.

It is our job to make people want to come to this healing, this forgiveness, this acceptance. We are to welcome all in the name of Jesus. They won’t come if we are pointing fingers and calling down the wrath of heaven on them. Think back to what drew you to Jesus. I bet it wasn’t someone yelling at you that got you there.

This doesn’t mean that we need to water down the message of Jesus – not at all. This means that we are to live it.

On self-sufficiency and faith.

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When I was young my Mom taught me how to sew using the sewing machine. It was a finicky one and the bobbin kept messing up, or the feed dog would get jammed, or the thread would break. I would ask for help and my Mom would fix the problem. The bad part however is that she didn’t show me how to fix the problem myself.

Years later, after she had died, I wanted to sew something and I still didn’t know how to fix it when something didn’t work right. I fooled around with the machine but it wasn’t budging. I decided to buy a used machine that was simple to operate and had an instruction manual with pictures. I learned how to use it and wondered why my Mom never thought to teach me how to do this myself. It was really easy to do. By hiding it from me, she made it seem like it was something special that only she could do.

It seems to me that part of the job of being a parent is to teach their children to be self sufficient. If they still needing your help to fix things when they are adults then that is a bad reflection on the parent.

I’ve encountered the same attitude from church. I’m hopeful that all churches aren’t like this, in the same way that all parents aren’t like mine. But my experience over all of my life has been that in every church I’ve gone to, the minister has treated me as a passive observer in my faith life. They have acted as if the life of faith is something that happens to you, rather than something you do.

Then I started going to a spiritual director. She has been to seminary, but she isn’t ordained. She is like a personal trainer for the soul. If the journey of faith uses a car, not only is she teaching me to drive, she is teaching me how to find the tools and repair it myself. Meanwhile, all the ministers I’ve ever been lead by have treated me like I was a passenger. They didn’t teach me how to drive. They didn’t even let me know I could.

It is a little overwhelming. I feel like I’m late to the party. I feel like I should have known this all along. This is part of the purpose of my blog – to let you know that you too have the right to drive this car of faith. I describe tools to you as I come across them.

Imagine how powerful the body of Christ will be when we all wake up to our true potential and realize we aren’t passive observers.

Exodus

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I’ve found that more people are leaving my old church. These are people who have gone there much longer than I have, and have worked in lay ministry much longer than I have. These are people who are essential to the running of the church. These are people who are also waking up to the fact that church should be more than margarita karaoke and a night out watching the local baseball team.

Those things are fun, sure. But they aren’t the purpose of a church. Church is meant to build up the Body of Christ. Together, we are stronger. Together, we can make the world a better place. Together, we can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick. Together we can do what Jesus did.

I haven’t told them to leave. They haven’t read my blog. They don’t know why I’ve left. But they too are leaving.

I’m not the first to leave. There were others before me. Others with children, who were dismayed by how the priest handled a change in how Communion was distributed to children. They were the first of the group of active members to leave. They were acolytes and chalice bearers and readers. The problem is, the membership wasn’t that big to start with, and of that number, there were even fewer who were willing and able to serve in liturgical roles. That is the thing with liturgical churches – you have to have worker bees. It can’t all be done by the queen.

It shouldn’t be done all by one person. That is the purpose of church. Church should be training ground for the rest of the week. In church we should learn about how to work together to build something amazing. In church we should learn about our own unique gifts and talents, and learn how to use them to serve God. We do it through the simple actions of preparing the worship space and time. We do it by polishing the silverware like we are preparing for a special guest (we are). We do it by assigning readers for that week’s lessons. We do it by practicing those readings, so that people can hear the Word of God clearly.

These are literal yet symbolic actions. They pale in comparison to what we are supposed to do outside of church, but they are still important. But when the people who do these things are leaving, it is a sign that something very deeply wrong is going on. It is a sign that needs aren’t being met.

I wrote the Bishop to let him know my concerns. I let him know about my concerns with that parish specifically, and of the Episcopal Church, and of Church in general. I wrote to tell him that I feel that we are doing it wrong, that Jesus didn’t mean for us to have church buildings and ordained ministers. Our tithe was meant to feed the hungry and clothe the naked – not pay for minister salaries and a mortgage. He told me thanks for writing, but he doesn’t see any problem. Of course he doesn’t. His job would disappear.

The more I read of what Jesus said, the more I see that His words don’t synch up with what we do. A person cannot serve two masters, after all. I can either serve Jesus, or I can serve the church, which often seems to be going in an entirely different direction.

I don’t want it to. I don’t want people to leave. I want this thing to work. I’m deeply concerned and sad about the state of things. I want church to be about healing and reconciliation and love. I don’t want it to be about chili cookoffs and ice cream socials. I don’t want it to become another social club.

Church isn’t the building, but we’ve spent so much money and time and energy on it that it has become the building. Church isn’t about ordained ministers either. Jesus told us not to have any. Yet we’ve given them money and time and energy too and we’ve gotten distracted. We’ve forgotten that WE are the Body of Christ. We’ve forgotten that WE are the ones who build up. We’ve forgotten that WE are the ministers, every one of us.

Some churches get it. Some churches understand the healing power of having many hands make light work in doing the work of Jesus. There is a lot of work to be done. There are a lot of people who need help. There are some churches that get that we can’t waste our time just hanging out together – we need to hang out while we are doing this work.

Meanwhile people are leaving. It is an Exodus, a leaving. They are escaping a bad situation, and looking for what they are being called to. They are leaving to try to find another place that gets it. They are frustrated. They haven’t left entirely. They are there half the time. The other half the time they are church shopping. They go to other area churches of the same denomination. They go in a group. Twice a month they are gone.

They haven’t come to the conclusion that I have. I don’t expect them to. My leaving was radical. While I’m sad that something that I’d come to see as the center of my life is gone, I’m also glad. I’m glad that the leaving wasn’t drawn out. It was a clean break. The words of the priest were so severe when she read my concerns about church that I had to leave. There is a bit of mourning, sure. I miss going to church. But what I really miss is that church never was what Jesus wanted it to be. I think I miss the never-was more.