Ruminating

I wonder if all of you blog readers out there have learned yet that when I am silent here for nearly a week, without being out of the country, that I am doing some pretty deep thinking? It's been an interesting week. I've struggled deeply with some things, learned some things about myself, been reminded of some things about others, hurt, cried, prayed, laughed, worked to avoid deep thought, and worked to think deeply. I've read, and avoided reading entirely. I've eaten alone and communally, in my home, and in public places. I've engaged avidly in conversation, and done my best to avoid human contact. I've lurked on other's blogs, and avoided the internet entirely. In short, it has been a somewhat polarized, and very, very human sort of week.

I think I'm learning that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm struggling with "church" again this week. I sat in the service last weekend, and was delighted to see the people who were there, to hear pieces of Sheri's journey from the last year, to talk to a variety of people. But as I sat and we worshipped, I couldn't help but look around and grieve a little. I thought about all of the faces that were missing. All of the people whose lives I've been privileged to be a part of over the last year, over the three years that I've been a part of my church community. There were a lot of faces missing, and it made me sad. I thought about all the friends for whom my church was the last stop on their way out of a more formal Christian community. The ones who left saying that they were looking for something else, but never found it. The ones who are still running, who want God, but maybe not all the trouble of finding Him. Who want to have relationship, but don't want it to hurt quite so much, to be quite so hard, who don't have the energy left to fight for those things anymore.

I thought about the ones who just couldn't fit. The ones who were too radical or too broken, and I grieved them too. Because what good is a church if it can't house a few radicals? And what use is a body that cannot surround and uphold those who are so desperately broken that they can't even pinpoint one need, that they can't even ask for help.

I thought a lot this week about a conversation I had on Monday night. I had asked a friend about a mutual friend, and gotten caught up on her life. She's "hitting AA hard." Wow. That's great. But then my friend went on to say that he really believed that that was where she needed to be right now, not in church, not in community with a body of people who have loved her and prayed for her and upheld her as she's struggled these last months. And you know what, I don't dispute the value of alcoholics anonymous in her life. I believe that it is keeping her sane, that it is helping her beat some of her demons. I just wish that she had found love and acceptance in a community of believers. I just wish that we had been able to make room for her wounds - to allow them to speak and to breath depth and knowledge into our community. To make us more compassionate, and give us the heart for the broken that we claim to have - that we claim to want.

And I'm tired. Because I've had odd nightmares again every night this week. Nothing solid that remains when I awake, just the sense of unease, the snippets of conversation. A feminine presence in my dreams, talking constantly and preventing rest.

I learned something about myself this week too. I love to wrestle and I hate to act. I see these things, I wonder these things about our community, and I have no idea how to act upon them. And to be brutally honest, the idea of taking action is one that terrifies me.

And yet, I can't keep going like this - this interminable inbetween. This deficit of action while my heart and mind refuse to be silenced. It's time to read and think, and write and speak, and pray and act. May God show me the way.