New Bible Study

I have just joined the women's Bible study group at my church. I was told they are crazy. After one meeting, I can say in fact that they are. I am totally stoked to spend time with these very faithful, very funny women.

The only weird thing? We're doing a Beth Moore study. That's a little weird for this half-Catholic/half-Episcopalian. And they admit it's weird. But we're going to go into it with an open mind and see what happens.

These women aren't afraid to argue. I expect this should be a very interesting six weeks.

A year later

Yesterday our church had a combined service because of the parish picnic. What that meant for us is that when we drifted in a minute late, there were no seats anywhere in the main part of the church so we had to squeeze into a pew in the left transept.

This wasn't a great seat in terms of being able to see the service. Our view of the altar was pretty much completely blocked by the lectern. BUT at the time for Communion, I realized what a great seat it was. As people left the communion rail, they couldn't help but make eye contact with us as they walked by. And so many people smiled or gave a little wave or other greeting. It made me feel great. It has only been a year since we made this monumental decision to join our new church, and we feel loved and at home.

More important than just community, however, the best part was right before communion. My husband turned to me as the priest invited all to communion, and said, "I love that prayer. It makes me feel welcome. I never felt worthy in the Catholic Church." It was funny because those are the exact words that have meant more to me than almost any others. My husband isn't one to talk much about faith or church or religion, but he mentioned this thing that I love, too. Here is the invitation:

This is the table, not of the Church, but of God.
It is to be made ready for those who love God
and who want to love God more.

So, come, you who have much faith and you who have little,
you who have been here often and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because I invite you: it is God, and it is God’s will
that you who want God should meet God here.

I realize that that is a far cry from the Catholic Church teaching and I think it is not exactly orthodox Episcopalianism, either; but it is what I feel in my heart. I have always believed if Jesus were standing at the altar in human form instead of in the form of bread and wine, what priest would dare act as gatekeeper?

Have to post again!!

I just wrote that last post but am coming back to write another. I reread some of my old posts and realized that I liked writing this blog, so I'm going to recap some of the stuff that has happened in the last eight months.

1) In an earlier blog post, I prayed that God would help us find the right place for my daughter to go to school. I may not have said explicitly what I was praying for, but that's what it was. She has extreme special needs and we were not finding what we needed for her in any school or any hospital close to home. So she is now at a residential treatment center 11 hours away. It is as much as we could have hoped for. She is not healed but she is healing. Thanks, God.

2) I wrote a couple of posts about Christmas and New Years not being what I might have hoped for. As we approached Easter, I had great trepidation about what our new church would provide because I loved the Triduum services. I posted this in my other blog:

Yesterday was the third major holiday in a row where my family wasn't together. At Thanksgiving, one child had strep throat, so my husband stayed home with her while the rest of us went to my parents' house for dinner. At Christmas, one was in the hospital, two hours away. My parents saw her on Christmas Day and we saw her the day after. Yesterday, that one was in Massachusetts, eleven hours away, and none of saw her; plus her younger sister had strep (yes, again) and stayed home with my husband while the rest of us went to my parents' for Easter dinner.

As I sat down to read the paper, I have to admit to feeling more than a little sorry for myself and for my kids. When would a holiday be normal again?

Yes, I still believe in that idealization we call normal. Intellectually, I know that there is no such thing, that normal is just a code word for "impossible dream." But still, I like to believe that there are families out there who do not argue, who have enough money, who have no health issues, who get along swimmingly, and whose grandparents all die in their sleep at the age of 96. The kids get straight As, love going to church, and take their baths without argument every night. Their dogs never turd on the carpet and the cats expectorate their hairballs neatly on the tile floor, if not in the toilet.

And no one ever gets sick on the holidays, if they get sick at all. They are certainly not sick for holiday after holiday, year after year. Not in a normal family.

But I need to go back in time just a bit. About a year ago was the last time I attended a church of the denomination in which I was raised. It's a long story, too long for this blog entry, but in a nutshell, while I embraced and still embrace the majority of the doctrine of that tradition, and I respect its history, there were aspects of that church I could no longer live with. I have friends in my church who agree with me on all of those points and are able to live with them, something I had done for a long time. But over time, I grew to feel like a hypocrite. I needed to move on. I felt the Holy Spirit guiding me in a different direction, and I began to look for a church where I could grow spiritually without rejecting the call of my conscience. However, the tipping point was a series of broken promises by not one but a number of the church staff. During a time of great crisis for my family, they simply weren't there. I didn't know I needed them to be there until I thought they would be there and they weren't. So we moved on.

I found the church I was looking for, right under my nose. It was a church within walking distance of my house, where many of my friends already attended. It's a church that maintains many of the traditions of my old denomination, but, from my perspective, allows its members more freedom of conscience, and embraces some of the changes I desperately needed in a church. We've been attending since July, and became members in December. I am not planning to take the final step, that of being received into the church. It feels unnecessary right now. And I don't know that I love the entire denomination. I know only that I love this parish. But we have a church home.

This week we celebrated the Triduum, the holiest time of the Christian year--Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter. As an adult, I have loved these services more than any other. At our old parish, the Holy Thursday Mass involved foot-washing. Now, not for our church was picking 12 representatives to have their feet washed, as is often done, anywhere near good enough. We were called to serve each other; thus, everybody washed feet, and everybody had their feet washed. There were foot-washing stations throughout the church and five hundred barefoot people took turns sitting in the chairs to have their feet washed and kneeling before them to wash the feet of others. I remember when an intellectually disabled, mute man gestured to our pastor that he wanted to wash the pastor's feet and our pastor sat in front of him. I've seen children wash their parents' feet, parents wash their children's. Old men washing their Alzheimer's-stricken wives feet. Lonely singles having their feet washed by an embracing community. Jesus called us to service and the foot-washing was a powerful metaphor for that call.

I have loved that service since we started at that church, about 10 years ago. Two memories stand out for me. My oldest daughter, the one who is now in Massachusetts, has Asperger’s Syndrome, with developmental delays. She could not tie her shoes for the longest time and it made me crazy having to kneel in front of her every morning to put her shoes on. She had sensory issues, making each morning an incredible struggle. The socks had to be right. The shoes had to be right. The laces had to be just so. I allotted a good five to ten minutes each morning to put her shoes on for her. But that first year at the Holy Thursday service, when I knelt before her to wash her feet, I washed away more than dirt. I washed away that belief that tying her shoes was some kind of burdensome ordeal. It became a gift to serve her, because she needed me. The other memory that stands out? When my husband was on peritoneal dialysis, he could not attend the evening service with us because he was hooked up to that life-saving machine. My oldest, the one whose feet I had washed, came home, got a pitcher and a bowl, and washed her daddy's feet.

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I approached the Triduum in our new church. I was convinced that the Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday, as the new church refers to it) could not be the same. But I also knew that if I could just get through it somehow without too much grief, I would be okay.

Thursday night, I went alone. There weren't as many people at church as there would have been at the old church, making me feel even more discombobulated than I already was. But we sang; there was candlelight; a friend showed up alone also and sat beside me; we listened to Scripture; we took Communion. I did miss the foot-washing. But somehow by the end of the service there was no more grief for my old church, for what I had dreaded to miss. In the end, I sat in the darkened church after almost everybody else had left, with tears streaming down my face. They weren't sad tears or happy tears--they were just flowing tears. Maybe it was relief. I don't know. I only know that I felt the presence of God within me in a way I have felt before, but not often enough. I hope Heaven is like that.

So back to Easter Sunday. We had gone to church Saturday evening to the Easter Vigil and were not planning to attend again as a family. I had thought I might go myself, but the 15 year old had been up sick in the night and was still sick. It just seemed cozier and simpler to stay home and read the paper.

Remember what I wrote way up there: As I sat down to read the paper, I have to admit to feeling more than a little sorry for myself and for my kids.

That is, until I turned to the obituary page and saw a picture of 16-year-old Rachel. Oh, Rachel.

About five years ago, my friend Kathy, and I signed up our two daughters, both of whom have Asperger's Syndrome, for a social skills workshop. One of the other girls in the group was Rachel, who had autism. Rachel had a mischievous smile and a curly mop of hair. She wasn't very verbal and much of her speech was echolalic, but she had a persevering spirit and she loved art. Kathy and I have occasionally remembered some of the funny moments from that class, with Rachel at the center. This week, she died of leukemia.

It would be trite to say that Rachel's death put my own morning into perspective. My own family's struggles with illness over the last three years taught me that lesson long ago--no matter how inutterably sad one's life may be, there is always going to be someone worse off. There's a perverse kind of comfort in that knowledge, as morbid as it sounds. As hard as it sounds. But knowing intellectually that children are dying every day is not the same as being confronted with the death of a child whom you know, and the point of collision between the abstraction of child death and its reality is an uncomfortably sad place to be. The neon colors of a dozen Easter eggs couldn’t quite lift me above the gray that my morning had become.

As I said earlier, I was feeling sorry for myself because here’s this part of me that wants my family to be capital-N Normal, the kind of Normal I described way up there, the kind of Normal that means no one is ever sick, physically or mentally, the kind of Normal that would prove that I really am June Cleaver. In spite of knowing fully and wholly and completely that the Normal I dream of is fully and wholly and completely impossible, I still cling to the notion that it exists and it’s achievable.

[Aside for maniacal and mocking laughter: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!]

But here’s the thing. My family is normal. One thing we all have in common with all the other normal families? Pain. Struggle. Hard times. It’s the family who doesn’t struggle who isn’t normal. Okay, maybe your husband didn’t have a kidney transplant, but maybe your mom had cancer. Maybe you don’t have a child who struggles mightily with Asperger’s Syndrome, but maybe your daughter was in an abusive relationship with a boyfriend. Maybe you didn’t lose your job, but your brother-in-law did, so your sister’s entire family moved into your basement for a year and a half.

If you’re still reading this, you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this. You’re thinking, “Okay, AM, I’ve invested 1800+ words’ worth of time with you. What’s your point? What’s the take-away? What do you want us to know?”

[Pause for more maniacal and mocking laughter: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!]

You think I have a take-away? You think I have wisdom to impart? If you need wisdom, I suggest you consult your Bible, your favorite poet or recall your dead great-grandmother’s favorite aphorisms. Heck, you can even google wisdom. You can subscribe to it and little nuggets will be delivered to your inbox every day. I have no wisdom, at least nothing ground-breaking, earth-shattering, or otherwise worth the now-1900+ words’ worth of time you’ve invested in my rambling.

Here’s what I have, as little as it may be. Be present for those who need you. All of us being Normal, all of us are suffering in some way. On days when you feel particularly strong, perk up your ears. Pay attention to the creaks and whispers that show you which of us need help at any given moment, for not all of us can suffer with groans and cries.

Wash each other’s feet.

3) The daughter in Massachusetts sometimes goes to church on her own. And when she was in the ER, the pastor of her Massachusetts parish went to visit her.

4) Our family, minus the oldest daughter, spent a renewing weekend on a church retreat. I have never done a family retreat before. It was a splendid amalgamation of faith activities and fun activities. I cannot wait to go year after year.

That's all. But I wanted these thoughts in this place.

Whoa.

My last post was January 1. Wow.

I'm not sure why that would be. I guess there were times when I might have thought of things to post and didn't have time, or I just didn't think about it.

I loved church today. We welcomed our new assistant rector, had the first day of Church School and youth group, and I signed up for Women's Bible Study. Unfortunately I will have to miss the first session. But I am signed up!

Our first year in this church was a time of resting. Sometimes I felt like I was just being lazy and not contributing my fair share, but our pastor invited us to come and rest and that is what I needed to do.

I am still not sure if I want to be Episcopalian, but I am sure I want to be part of this church.

Here's a joke from today's homily.

A Baptist, a Catholic and an Episcopalian all died and went to meet Jesus at the pearly gates. Jesus said to the Baptist, "It's not hard to get in. Just answer one question. Who do you say that I am?" The Baptist said, "The Bible says . . ." but Jesus interrupted him and said, "I know what the Bible says. What do you say?" And the Baptist started to stammer and a trap door opened and he fell through. So Jesus turned to the Catholic and asked the same question. "Who do you say that I am?" The Catholic said, "The Pope says . . ." and Jesus said, "I know what the Pope says. What do you say?" And just like the Baptist, the Catholic started to stammer and a trap door opened and he fell through. Then Jesus turned to the Episcopalian and asked, "Who do you say that I am?" And the Episcopalian said, "You are the Christ, the son of God, the savior of the world," and Jesus smiled and began to open the Pearly Gates. But then the Episcopalian said, "Of course, on the other hand . . ."

Bwahahaha. For the record, I don't know any Catholics who would say, "The Pope says . . ." They would all say, "The Church teaches . . ." :)