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Poem 4, antibody

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It isn’t alive, the old church.
Instead, silenced, and you are not happy.
We forget Samuel and the voice he heard.

Is church about green tea or coffee?
Or doughnuts, or potlucks?

Love your friends.
Love your enemies.

Because the way to heal them
is to get them drunk on love.

Just write, like your life depended on it.
Just speak, like nobody is listening.

Whoever fixed anything by complaining or judging?
Whoever repaired a house with a broken hammer?

We have buildings in our childhoods.
They are crumbling ruins.
We need reminders of the world, broken that it is.

We can’t escape from this world.
It is our calling.
We were made for this brokenness.
We were made for this joy.

You have to let a little bit of the brokenness, the disease of the world
get under your skin.
This is how the antibody works.

I think the way home is now.
It isn’t in the future.
Every moment is a choice
to be here, to be present
to the beauty and pain that is our world.

Every moment is a choice to love and serve God
with gladness, and singleness of heart,
rejoicing, even down to the grave.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Tradition will kill you.

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“We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.”

I find it interesting (and disturbing and sad) that the only person who has talked to me about staying in church has used this as an explanation.

We need to keep this going because it is tradition.

I remember seeing a psychological study about peoples’ reaction to smoke coming under the door. There is a subject in an office waiting room with other people, but the other people are part of the study. Smoke starts to come under the door. The subject sees it, but doesn’t alert others, and doesn’t leave. This happened time and time again. When asked later why they didn’t react to it, the answer was that they didn’t want to cause a fuss. So, for the sake of keeping the peace, everyone will die. They’d rather be quiet than get everybody moving towards safety.

If we are in a car that has gotten off the road and is headed towards a cliff, we need to jump out of the car.

If the church goes one way, and Jesus goes another, we know who we must follow.

I’m finding it amazing the number of people who are on the same page here. People are leaving church not because they haven’t heard the Gospel. It is because they have heard the Gospel. They have heard the message to love and serve, and they are seeing a huge disconnect. They are seeing hypocrisy. They are seeing that church is self-serving rather than self-less.

The tithe goes to keep up the building and pay the staff. It doesn’t go to feed the hungry or clothe the naked.

The ministers have all the power, and they don’t teach the members how to be ministers.

We need to all think for ourselves. We all need to read the Bible for ourselves. If what the church says does not line up with what God says, then we are obliged to try to reform the church. Or leave. To stay and pretend that everything is fine is to give support to something that we know is wrong.

Sometimes things start off ok, but then they get sidetracked. I read about a women’s prayer organization that is for Anglican women. The charter said that no money would be raised in the name of the organization. Yet, years later after it was founded, they take up dues. They collect money for various scholarships for their members. I’ve heard that there is no proper accounting for this money. So, the start was good, but it got off the track.

Plus, I’m against anything that doesn’t allow someone membership based on something they have no control over. Only women can join? What about men who want to pray? God calls everyone.

This is like saying only men can be priests. Yes, I have a problem with that too. But I also believe from my studies of the Gospels that every person is called by God to know and love and serve God. It isn’t for the few, the proud, the priests. It is a gift that is given freely to all by the Holy Spirit.

We pray for soldiers who are at war. Yet we are told to love our enemies, and “thou shalt not kill.” There is a huge conflict here. We are praying for the safety of people who are doing something that we know from the commandments we are not to do. This is crazy-making.

Sometimes something is so broken that it can’t be fixed from within and you have to start all over.

God is constantly talking to us. He never stopped. It behooves us to listen to God talking in all things. God didn’t stop talking when the Bible was written. You can find truth everywhere.

But don’t take my word for it. Read, pray, think on your own. Stretch your horizons and boundaries.

Don’t be afraid. Love. Perfect love casts out all fear, remember?

Church shouldn’t involve money, or a building. It isn’t a place. It is a gathering. Look up the meanings of “ekklesia” – the root word for church. It is pretty surprising.

I don’t know what church should look like yet. I’m thinking I should send my tithe money to a charity, like the American Red Cross, or the Nashville Rescue Mission. My Sunday mornings are changing. There should be time to read the scriptures and time to pray and listen to God. I know there is a lot of healing to be found in a small circle of people who are willing to be open and honest with each other.

But I know I can’t be part of something I feel is wrong. And I know I’m not alone.

Let us pray together for the strength to return to the beginning. Let us examine everything in light of Jesus’ teaching to Love. What practice shows love? Do it.

Immoral? On the gay teacher who was fired from her Catholic school job.

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I recently read a story about a lady named Carla Hale who was fired from her job because she was in committed relationship with another woman.

She worked for 19 years at a Catholic high school in Ohio as a physical education teacher. When her Mom died, her partner was mentioned in the obituary. A parent at the school contacted the school saying she was “appalled” and Carla was then fired. The school has a policy about “immoral” behavior as a reason to get fired. Employees “can be terminated for immorality or serious unethical conduct” according to their contract. According to a GLAAD.org post “The school informed Carla that she was not fired because she was gay, but because her relationship was printed in the local paper. The obituary amounted to a “public statement” of her relationship.”

While Ohio is a state where it is legal to fire someone because they are gay, the community where the school is located makes it a crime for employers to discriminate based on sexuality. So there is a little murky legal ground here. It appears the school is using doublespeak. They aren’t firing her because she is gay, but because her being gay and in a relationship is public knowledge. And that, to them, is immoral.

Fortunately the students are protesting her firing to the local diocese, and the teacher is planning on fighting the termination. There are over 63,000 signatures in her favor on a Change.org petition. But this whole story shouldn’t have happened.

I would think firing someone right after her Mom died would be immoral. I would think that forcing people to hide their loving relationship, their adult, mutually reciprocated loving relationship, would be immoral.

I can understand the church having issue with people of any sexual orientation having sex outside the bonds of marriage. So why would it be a problem for two gay adults who want to spend their lives together? They aren’t being promiscuous.

I have two new friends who are a gay couple. They went to the trouble of getting married in a state that allows them to marry. Sadly, Tennessee is not that evolved. But I digress. The mother of one died after an illness, and there was a bit of a fracas over the fact that his spouse was listed in the obituary merely as a “friend.” This is a huge downgrade. This is an insult. It was deeply painful at a time of great emotional distress.

I wonder if the funeral home did this because they were afraid of an adverse reaction to the term “spouse” or even “partner.” The funeral home is in a small town. Members of the community may not have known her son was gay. Of course, it never does any good to make up stories about people and their motivations. But look how the obituary at the start of this post caused problems. Perhaps they thought they were being kind.

To be honest, the obituary didn’t cause a problem. Inanimate things don’t cause problems. People do, when they don’t think. The parent didn’t think when she decided that the teacher’s sexual orientation was a problem. Then she didn’t think when calling the school. Then the school administration didn’t think when firing the teacher, who had worked there with no problems for 19 years.

What is the problem with having a teacher who is homosexual around children? “Homosexual” does not equal “pedophile.”

But I’m trying to make sense out the policies of a church that has equated women getting ordained with the crime of pedophilia. I’m trying to make sense out of a church that attacks the very people who are doing the work Jesus told us to do. They censure nuns who won’t advocate against homosexuality and are for birth control, while serving the poor and the sick.

I’m trying to make sense out of a religion that has diluted the commandment to love and substituted “mind everybody else’s business.” I’m trying to make sense of how far we have gotten away from Jesus’ message. Some Christian denominations teach that the Jewish people are mislead because they don’t follow Jesus. Remember what Jesus said about the plank and the speck? Many Christians don’t follow Jesus either.

They follow the rules of the church rather than the rules of Jesus. They follow tradition, not scripture and reason. They follow the words of Paul, not Jesus. They actively discourage their parishioners thinking for themselves because it might lead to dissent.

I’m not anti Jesus. And I don’t want to be anti church but the more stories I read like this, I realize I don’t have a choice. For me, in order to follow Jesus, I can’t follow the church as it is. A person can’t serve two masters.

We must not be unequally yoked. If you feel that Jesus is going one way and the church is going another, you are obliged to follow Jesus.

A change of perspective.

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A change of perspective will do you good. Try out different things. Eat at different restaurants. Sit in a different chair. Read a different kind of book.

It is important to have different perspectives. However you see reality isn’t THE reality. It is just your take on it. You will see things from the limitations of your sense organs. Your eyes are different from mine – you might see blues a little better. I might be shorter than you and catch a different angle. Together, if we explain how we see what we are looking at, we will both gain a better understanding of what we see.

Just because someone else sees something differently doesn’t mean that they are wrong and you are right. You are both right, for yourselves. You both have made your decision based on the information that you have. You can both make a more informed decision if you widen your information by sharing.

Don’t be like a small child. The terrible twos are partly called that because children will call out “NO” vehemently when told to do something. They are asserting their independence. They are saying that they are not puppets or pets. They can’t be told what to do. They have their own agendas, and they want to make sure that they are listened to. This is an important phase of growth, but it is important to grow out of too. Don’t say “no” to someone else’s take on something just because it isn’t the way you see it. They might have a piece of the puzzle you are missing.

We are all in this together. Life isn’t about being right and wrong. It is about sharing and listening to each other. It is about dialogue instead of debate. It is about love instead of judgment.

We are all flowers in a garden. Each of us is different on purpose. If we all were the same kind of flower the garden would be very boring. Variety is indeed the spice of life.

We are all instruments in an orchestra. If we were all the same instrument, the song would sound very dull. Be the piccolo or the trombone or the bassoon or the bass drum. Be who you were made to be, and be it to the best of your ability. And in the meantime, learn to appreciate the other instruments for their contribution to the song.

Being jealous of someone else’s success is a waste of your time. The fact that they are successful does not mean that you can’t be successful too. They are successful at being themselves. You are different. Be yourself. Being jealous of someone else is childlike. They haven’t taken away your toy.

I know people who are jealous of people for losing weight. The fact that another person has made the time to exercise and worked up the discipline to eat well does not take away from your ability to do the same. The more time you spend getting mad at another person’s success, the less time you are spending on creating your own. Perhaps you can learn something from the other person’s story that might encourage you. Perhaps you might learn a new way of thinking that will make it easier for you to get healthy.

This all applies to religion as well.

I saw a t-shirt at a New Age shop in Boone, NC with this quote. “There are many paths up the mountain, but at the top, the same bright moon.” I can’t remember the author, and my web search just results in “Asian saying”. I don’t think it matters who said it so much as that it was said. I know plenty of fundamental Christians will freak out over this saying, using the “Jesus is the way…” quote, but they forget that Jesus was all about love, and certainly not about telling everybody off. They also forget that the apostle Paul tells us that in Christ there is no East or West, or male or female or Jew or Gentile, and that Paul himself adapted to the language and customs of whoever he was with.

I like this quote because it seems so simple and so honest. Our goal is God. Keep moving upwards. The closer you get to the top, the more people you are going to see from different faith traditions because the mountain is getting smaller as it goes up. Why do you care how they got there? Are you jealous? Is it “your” God? Or are you concerned for them? Are you afraid that their way might get them lost? Are you so sure of your way? If your way leads you to judge them, then you have a pretty good clue that you are close to falling off the mountain.

There are no shortcuts to success or happiness or enlightenment. They all require an odd balance of hard work and of letting go. I wish you peace on your journey.

Predictive text poem 3

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I’ve been studying for the ability to get to God,
and I found bridges.
I was going on a roundtrip.

We need reminders of God that are not allowed.
We need to work with God, not only mentally,
but the stone green expanse of the way home is now two miles away.

They are hungry.

Love everything that you can.
Look for the ability to work.
Like the world and the resulting behavior of God.

Yet that too is church.
Yes, there was always a chance of me getting in the way.
You’ll find me unwinding to be able to fill their mouths.

How many times did I grow from being suppressed?
I want to have that kind of relationship with God.
His sacrifice of himself is real.

We need reminders but it is harder than I thought.

Hearing voices in the closet.

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If I have to be in the closet at church about the fact that God talks to me, then there is something profoundly wrong going on. Church should be the one place where you can safely and unselfconsciously talk about how God interacts with you. You walk on a thin edge if you talk about God at work or at the dentist office or at Wal-Mart, but church? You should be safe there. You shouldn’t be silenced there.

Yet that is exactly what has happened to me. Now, perhaps the priest was concerned because I’m bipolar. Perhaps she is afraid that I’m not in fact hearing from God. I understand this concern. I wrestled with it for years. For many years I doubted what I heard and knew. I doubted my experiences. I doubted God. And yet it was proven to me again and again that I wasn’t making this stuff up.

The Biblical test for prophets is to see if what they say God told them was going to happen actually happened. I passed that test. Repeatedly. God proved himself to me. God was far more patient with me than I ever would imagine.

It is very important to me to not lead people astray. The church has enough loonies. I didn’t need to add to their ranks. So I understand the priest’s fear. I had it too. And I worked through it. But she didn’t know the stories of when God talked to me and how He proved Himself. She hadn’t been there.

She told me that talking about God was “a conversation stopper” because “other people weren’t having that experience.” This should have been my cue to leave. This was in November, when she told me the deacon discernment process was put on hold for me. Hopefully you catch the irony here. If you are in the deacon discernment process, it is because you believe you are experiencing a call from God.

So it is OK to get a call from God. Just don’t answer, and certainly don’t tell anybody if you got a reply.

I waited, and watched to see how others in church communicate about their experiences with God. And I realized in the three years that I have been there, not a single person has talked about how God talks to them. Not a single person has mentioned that they even prayed to God.

Maybe they do talk to God in prayer, and in prayers of their own words rather than the pre-written prayers of the prayer book. Maybe they do hear from God, and in more than just the already recorded words in the Bible. But they sure don’t talk about it. Why not? Church should be a safe place to talk about such things. Church should be a place where we can have a conversation with God, not a monologue about God. And it should be a place where we can share our experiences with others.

Perhaps they forgot that the entire faith started with Abraham talking to God. Perhaps they forgot Samuel, David, Gideon, Elijah, Elisha, Isaac, Moses, Jacob, Solomon, Noah, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus all talked with God. If the entire religion is based on a person talking to God and so many following people doing the same, then why are we discouraged from being part of that?

God is real. God is constantly communicating with us. We just are too distracted to notice. We fill our heads with the noise of television and iPods and videogames. When God is somehow able to get a word in edgewise we ignore it as a trick of our minds or we think we are going crazy. Or worse, we are told to ignore it by the very people we should expect would be experts at knowing how to deal with it.

I’m not special. I’ve just learned how to cut out the noise. God wants you to hear from Him too. I’ll try to write further about how to hear from God. But I know that the first thing you must do is give God a space. Make some silent time. Be alone with God.

It is crazy to follow God. And it is beautiful and amazing. God knows so much more than I could ever know. My life has changed dramatically since I started trusting that voice. It is calmer. I trust that God is in control. I know that whatever happens is meant to happen.

But to not be able to talk about God in church, aside from what is scripted in the prayer book or in the Bible? Now, that really is crazy.

On blessing, and thankfulness.

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If you are Jewish you are obliged to say 100 blessings a day. One hundred times a day you are to find something to be thankful for. There are prayers for everything, and just looking over the prayers can remind you of how blessed you are in more ways than you ever realized.

There are prayers to be said upon seeing an unusual person. Upon seeing a rainbow. Upon seeing someone beautiful. There are of course various prayers for food. My favorite are the bathroom prayers – where you give thanks that everything that should stay in, stays in, and everything that should get out, gets out. I would never have thought to have a prayer of thanksgiving for that, but it makes perfect sense. All of these prayers make you mindful of all the many ways you are blessed every day. They keep you aware and grateful.

I think this is an excellent practice. We humans often take our many blessings for granted. We forget to be thankful for electricity until it goes out due to a storm. We forget to be grateful for running water until we need a plumber. We constantly grumble about what we don’t have while forgetting to be thankful for what we do have. And often we forget that “bad” is often just our value judgment. Our need to label things “good” or “bad” causes us many problems.

Here’s a twist for you. Give a complement to a stranger. Do this often. Start small and work your way up to complementing 10 strangers a day. Find something about them to tell them how cool it is. Perhaps it is their hairstyle. Perhaps it is something they are wearing. Look them in the eye when you tell them what you have noticed that is cool. Be sincere. Notice how this changes them and you. You both feel better. Well, you might be a little freaked out at first because you are shy, but trust me, you’ll get over it. Happiness spreads. Be a blessing to someone else.

One of the lines I like to incorporate into our supper prayers includes “Dear God, thank you for all that we have, and all that we don’t have.” Sometimes not getting what you want is actually a blessing.

This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. This applies to every day. Even the rainy ones. Even the ones with a tornado warning. Be thankful for everything, at all times. It takes practice, but it is worth it.

Sheep.

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There is the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus as the shepherd goes after the one. Every one is important. This lesson is used to remind us of how much God loves us. He cares for us personally, intimately, wholeheartedly.

There is a concern I’m hearing about me leaving church. It is the concern that I am the lost sheep. The only problem with that is that I’m not a sheep. Or maybe I am – it depends on your definition of sheep.

Most people feel that sheep are very docile. They are seen as soft and sweet. In the cartoons they are depicted with big smiles. Sheep need a shepherd because they aren’t smart enough to get where they should be on their own.

In that sense, of course people should worry about me. In that sense, I’m a danger to myself if I wander. I could get lost. I could get hurt. I could fall into a ravine. Or worse, I could wander around aimlessly and never return.

This image of sheep is a false image. Have you ever gotten face to face with a sheep? They are not fluffy and sweet. They are fierce. They will face you down if you dare to get in their area. Sheep are not what you think. They are so much more.

When I went to Great Britain with my aunt we spent a lot of time in the country. We saw sheep from afar mostly, but one time I wanted to see a Roman ruin that was in the middle of a pasture. Those sheep were not happy with me being there. They faced me off. Sheep don’t smile. They glower. That was a terrifying experience. And an enlightening one. It let me know from personal experience that everything I’d been told about sheep wasn’t true, in the least.

Sheep need a shepherd? No. Sheep are able to get by just fine on their own, thank you very much. It is more honest to say that the shepherd needs the sheep. The sheep are his livelihood. He trains them to be dependent on him so that they don’t get ideas about wandering.

Jesus says that his sheep know his voice. They come to him when he calls. Have you ever thought that when a person leaves a church it is for that very reason? They don’t hear their master’s voice in that church. They leave because they want to follow Jesus, and they realize they aren’t hearing him while stuck inside a building, going through the same old rituals that have been performed for 2000 years.

I’m not saying that folks in my old church aren’t getting what they need there. I’m saying that I’m not. I’m saying that the closer I get to Jesus, the further I want to run from church. All church. The entire idea of church. But I don’t want church as it is. Church as it is feels dead. The Body is on life support. It isn’t alive.

I want community. I want sharing. I want natural growth and support. I want there to be no leader. I want everybody to participate. I want no money to be used for this. I want people to work hard on their faith and their life. I want people to listen to each other honestly and with caring. I want dialogue. I want people to feel free to share their different viewpoints.

Hurray for sheep. They aren’t what you think they are. They are much more.

On Leaving Church

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I am on the threshold of leaving church. Not just my church, but church in general. I’m not finding what I need in it. I’m finding that it keeps people back. It doesn’t empower them. The entire structure of church as we know it these days does not teach people how to be ministers. It teaches them how to be sheep.

I don’t have butterflies in my stomach about this. They are larger than butterflies, and not as pretty. These are owls. They are large and mysterious, and they hit me when I’m alone. When I’m busy with other things they fly away. When I’m off the desk at work, or at night, they hit. They represent fear. Fear of not doing the right thing. Fear of not doing what is expected of me. Fear of straying from the path. Fear of getting lost, of getting hurt.

So – the best way to confront fear is to face it head on. Funny that it was part of the discernment process to be a deacon that taught me this. What I’ve learned from yoga and Buddhism has helped too. And there is a lot of nonviolent conflict resolution going on in this mix.

I’m standing on this cliff. I feel that everything in my life has led me to this place. I feel that the more I look at all I have learned, all the classes I’ve taken, all the books I’ve read in the past three years, have led me here and given me the strength.

What are my tools? The Diversity in Dialogue classes at the Scarritt-Bennett Center. Books such as “Codependent No More,” “Boundaries,” and “Difficult Conversations.” The homework from the deacon discernment process for the Episcopal Church. Journaling. Prayer. My entire life history – remembering the times I’ve walked out in faith away from something I knew to be wrong. I say I’m walking out in faith because I don’t know where I’m going, but I know it is time for a change.

I’m getting strength from a verse my spiritual director gave me. It is from Isaiah 30:21. It is “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”” I’m also getting strength from her teaching to “ask Jesus into it.” Any time I feel fear or angry or hurt or lost – ask Jesus into it. That way I’m not alone with my hard feelings. No priest has every taught me something so simple yet essential. I feel like they have consistently hidden something important from me.

It is time to look behind that curtain. I’m starting to see the entire structure of church as a magic trick. The magicians, the ministers, have all the tricks. They have all the power. They don’t want the punters to know how the trick works, so they can keep up the illusion that they are in charge. This is exactly like when Dorothy and her pals looked behind the curtain and saw the Wizard. He wasn’t big and powerful. He was tiny and weak. He used his machines to make him seem much bigger and louder.

What exactly am I afraid of? Being disconnected from God? God isn’t in a church. God isn’t in a building. God is in everything and in everyone. Time to dig deeper into this. What else is there?

I’m afraid of what happens if I’m not taking communion. But what is communion? A symbol. The wafer and the wine aren’t anything special. The priest doesn’t do anything except remind us that this is a reenactment of the Last Supper. The Catholics think that all other priests are doing it wrong anyway. They think only they have the ability to “confect” the elements. “Confect” is Catholic for “do magic” essentially. They think they are actually converting the wafer and the wine into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus. That is not only creepy, it is another sign of control. Come to us – we serve the only pure Jesus. Everybody else has the watered down Jesus. We have the full-strength version.

I think, maybe I just need to go to another church. Another Episcopal church, or try another Christian denomination. Or maybe even Unitarian or Baha’i. Or Buddhist.

I get more owls from thinking like that. Big flopping wings. But then I face them on – why does that frighten me to leave church? Do I think it means I’m leaving God? Am I afraid of going out on my own and getting lost?

It is like church has slapped training wheels on my bicycle. And they haven’t even begun to tell me how to ride without them. They are afraid of my independence. They are afraid that I’ll go rogue. Look out for all those lost sheep, Jesus says. Gotta go save every one.

But I’m tired of being a sheep. I don’t want to be a shepherd either. I don’t want anybody to follow me. I want them to be strong enough to hear God’s call on their own. I want them to be strong enough to find other lost people and empower them.

I remember a time in a club I was in where I was talking about teaching other people how to do something. I made glass beads and the other person made arrows. I was one of the few people in this part of the country who knew how to make glass beads by melting rods of glass onto a clay-coated mandrel. I was taught by a fourth-generation glassblower and lampworker. My friend was very good at making arrows, and had won awards for it. He was self taught. Our disagreement came when I said I taught my students everything I’d learned. I taught them all that my teacher had taught me, and everything I’d figured out on my own behind the torch, and everything I’d read in books. Meanwhile, he taught them the basics, but nothing extra. He admitted that he didn’t want his students excelling him. I strongly disagree with this way of thinking. I want my students to excel. I want them to surprise me. I want them to be able to teach me something.

I feel like the church is more like my friend than anybody wants to admit. Maybe I haven’t found the right church. Maybe that church doesn’t exist yet.

My Mom didn’t want to teach me to drive because she was afraid that I’d get lost. She knew that I was directionally impaired. She was afraid that I’d call her, wailing, lost, and because I didn’t know where I was, I’d not be able to tell her so she wouldn’t be able to rescue me. Perhaps there was kindness in her thoughts. Perhaps she really was concerned for me. Perhaps she wasn’t trying to control me. But she didn’t think of the solution. Teach me how to read a map. Give me a compass.

Every good teacher should teach their students how to be self sufficient. Students need to learn how to think, rather than what to think.

In church, I asked for training and oversight. I got put into positions of responsibility and when it was felt I’d overstepped, that position was taken away. This has happened multiple times. I’m starting to feel betrayed. When a person asks for training, it means they think they can’t do what they are called to do. To put them into a leadership position without training will only set them up for failure. To then take away that position when they cause concern does not teach them anything.

There are training programs that exist within the Episcopal church, but we don’t have them at my parish. They are EFM (Education for Ministry) and the Stephen Ministry. Both teach people how to be lay ministers.

I saw a picture of one of my favorite Christian authors (Sara Miles) distributing the ashes on Ash Wednesday, out on the streets in San Francisco. I was shocked. A lay person handling the ashes? And then I thought, why not? I went to a different church last Sunday and saw a deacon was distributing the wafers. I thought the same – that is never done. And then I thought, why not?

I got chastised by the priest for writing “My problem with church.” The conversation began with “So, did you mean to be the school shooter? Did you mean to plant the bomb on the racetrack?” This is not constructive criticism. This is very harsh. This does not open up a dialogue. I was told that I’d hurt a lot of people with what I’d written. I’m wondering why they didn’t contact me, as we are instructed to do by Jesus in Matthew 18:15-17. 15 “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Go, and point it out to them alone. Don’t tattle on them to the teacher. I told her to look at that post as well, because I thought she needed to know where my thought processes were going these days. So it isn’t like I was doing anything in secret. But to complain to the priest instead of the person you have issue with is immature.

I started to think about who are my friends in church. There aren’t many, because there aren’t that many people in church who are anywhere near my age level. But then I thought further. All the people I’ve befriended have either already left already or are in the process of leaving. Several of them I’ve talked into staying. I’ve talked three different people into staying, trying to smooth over a disagreement that they had with either the priest or with church in general.

I feel like the point of that post has been proven, along with the one called “On Ministers, and Spoon-fed Faith.” Instead of learning “humility” as I was told I needed to learn by the priest, I’m gathering up steam.

Reformation

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A reason for the protestant reformation is that people wanted to have a say in the church. They wanted to participate. The priests were doing all the stuff in the church. So now we are here today. How much of what we have now is lip service? How much can the people really do? How much are we taught, and how much are we kept at arm’s length?

I feel that today’s church does not empower. It does not teach us how to hear the voice of God. It does not teach us how to be awake or how to serve. It teaches us to be good docile sheep.

I’m starting to have an empathy with Mary, with Peter, with Martin Luther, and with John Wesley. What was it like to be them? They all started something new, but they didn’t mean to. They had no template and no map. They all knew a change was needed, or was happening and were swept up in it. Some of them thought that they were part of the past, just bringing it up to fruition. They didn’t realize they were bringing change.

How come I am able to have conversations about God at the Y, but I can’t at church? These are deep conversations about how God has talked with us, right here, right now. I would mention something God had told me, and my conversation partner would then tell me something that God had told her. We would both be uplifted by sharing our experiences. We now seek each other out to have these conversations. There are three of us now who meet to exercise in the pool on Sunday afternoons and we have our own little version of church.

I told my priest from the very beginning of my re-joining church about my conversations with God, but when I started telling others at church about them I was chastised. I was told it was a conversation stopper. I was told that it made them uncomfortable. Of all the places in the world, it isn’t OK to talk in church about how God talks to you? I was told it made them uncomfortable because they weren’t having such experiences. Church would seem like the very place to find like-minded people. I would figure that would be a reason to go to church – because you want to share your experiences.

One reason to go to church is to share your faith. To share means to grow in it together. I like hearing about how other people hear from God. It strengthens my faith. It lets me know I’m not “hearing things.” All too often the stories from the Old Testament are just dry stories, dry as bones. They aren’t alive. When we awaken to God, when we listen to His call, we are connected. We become alive. Those stories serve as a template of sorts. They let us know we are on the right path. They let us know when it is God talking and when we are just stuck in our own heads.

Our God is not a God of the dead, but of the living. Our God is alive, and real, and loves us. Our God is constantly trying to reach out to us, to connect with us. All our lives is a returning to God. We are born into this world of division and noise, and all our souls seek unity and peace. We long for communion – for union with. To be one with.

If we go to electronics school, we expect to learn about electronics. We expect to learn about resistors and diodes and LEDs. If we go to craft school, we expect to learn how to make things. We expect to learn about pottery and glassblowing and embroidery. We expect in both instances to be given enough knowledge to be able to do it ourselves.

But church right now isn’t a school. It is a museum. The rituals have stayed the same for over 2000 years. We are told stories about past people who heard from God and acted upon His word, but we aren’t empowered to do this ourselves. We aren’t taught how to hear from God.

Is this because the ministers are afraid we’ll not need them anymore? Is this because the ministers themselves don’t hear from God? Or is there something else going on?

I’m just going to be brave here and say this. God talks to me. I have heard from God since I was 12. It isn’t all the time. I have wrestled with this reality for many years because I didn’t know if it was real or not, because I’m also bipolar. I don’t hide this. This isn’t a secret. I have twice checked myself into a hospital. Twice I have realized that something was wrong and I sought out help. I have had spiritual directors and counselors tell me that is very unusual. Most people who are way out there don’t know how close they are to the edge and they just fall off. I knew. I got help. But I’ve had way too many verifiable experiences to just think that this is all in my head.

But I’m terrified of misleading people. It is absolutely critical that I don’t lead people astray. There are way too many people who say they “hear from God” and it is obvious by their actions that the god they are talking to isn’t a very nice one, or isn’t a very healthy one. When I mention this to spiritual directors and counselors they say that my desire to not mislead people is a good sign. They say that it means that I’m on the right path. But it still concerns me, and I still hold back.

In church I asked my priest for training and for oversight. I want to know how to best help people, and I want to be watched. I don’t want to stray from the path and lead people astray. Instead of training and oversight, I got responsibility and micromanagement.

The church is like this. Say I want to go over there to help those people who are hurting. They are lost and broken and need help, but I don’t know what to do to help them. The church says that is great, so here’s a diagram to build a car to get to them. It took two years to get into the deacon discernment process. Meanwhile those people are still hurting and lost. Then once in the process, I’m asked about my spiritual history and my work history and my current financial status and there is a physical exam and a mental exam….and on and on and on. There is absolutely nothing about how to help people. It is all examining me and my motives.

Something feels very deeply wrong about all this.