I have been thinking about your message, about how you are spending the summer with people you adore and respect, and who clearly love you, yet they sometimes make you wonder if you believe in any proper churchy ideas. I have a sermon to write, and so I need to download a few thoughts and guesses for you so that I can focus and not get these two topics all mixed up. So I am going to make a few guesses and share a few points. After I share a little ditty about tension. Which has a few words that are not camp appropriate. It is actually a mashup of two songs, but I love this guy, so here it goes.
I don’t recall I ever told you about my olden days, you know the ones in the 80's. For all except the end of my high school experience, I didn’t believe I believed in God at all. The God thing didn't seem to be rational and I liked logical things. I would have told you that I paid as little attention as I could to church or Sunday school until I got out of going (and worked in the nursery) at age 12.
In the many years since I have discovered that I learned a whole lot more than I realized while I was ‘not paying attention’. My antagonistic agnosticism, remember that I lived in South Texas for the end of high school, began to slowly dissolve through experiences that I could name, even then, as Grace.
Still, when I was your age I would have told you I was Episcopalian, but I didn’t know enough about Jesus to tell you whether or not I believed that he was anything more than an ancient teacher. I would have unlikely to have checked a box that said 'Christian'. That young person still hangs around in my self-perception, when I wonder what the heck I am doing pastoring people in their faith. I admit that I still wonder regularly if I haven’t lost my mind, if I made up the holy moments I experienced, and I wonder if I trust in a fantasy novel. Yet I also know that such wondering keeps me searching (and healthy).
The most difficult tensions in religions are not between different ones, but within themselves. I don’t have any investment in Hindu theological debates, however I care a whole lot about Christians who claim that Jesus is in favor of oppression or sexism or hatred. You have stepped into this high tension place, not the oppression place but the tension of living together as 'one church'.
The Episcopal tradition you were raised in has some rather different assumptions, foundations, and understandings of the who what and why of Jesus than your hosts this summer. My guess is that you are encountering people who talk God, Jesus, Spirit in ways that are quite dissimilar from the way you might use such names. And I am confident that in a worship setting this distance wasn’t as evident. I have known plenty of folks who love our liturgy, but they don’t know they have any holy imperative to take responsibility for their neighbors (which we teach and preach consistently).
Maybe you will find something you have been missing with the new friends you are spending your summer with. Or maybe it is going to be like the hymn whose tune you love but whose words make you ill. There is a gracious space of holy self-giving in that choice. I already recommended the book 'Searching for Sunday', and I want to suggest that again, and add a book that DOES NOT have an audio version, yet is quite elegant to read and look at, 'Tokens of Trust'.
The Episcopal tradition you were raised in has some rather different assumptions, foundations, and understandings of the who what and why of Jesus than your hosts this summer. My guess is that you are encountering people who talk God, Jesus, Spirit in ways that are quite dissimilar from the way you might use such names. And I am confident that in a worship setting this distance wasn’t as evident. I have known plenty of folks who love our liturgy, but they don’t know they have any holy imperative to take responsibility for their neighbors (which we teach and preach consistently).
Maybe you will find something you have been missing with the new friends you are spending your summer with. Or maybe it is going to be like the hymn whose tune you love but whose words make you ill. There is a gracious space of holy self-giving in that choice. I already recommended the book 'Searching for Sunday', and I want to suggest that again, and add a book that DOES NOT have an audio version, yet is quite elegant to read and look at, 'Tokens of Trust'.
Keep wrestling and thinking and conversing, and singing. There is deep growth to be found in the act of performing the faith while asking big questions. I am proud that you can name that you are in a place of tension, and that you have asked for help rather than stewing in your discomfort. Rather like a more advanced yoga pose, you have to breathe into it, set your intention and listen. If you fall over, so be it. You can always get up again.
Peace and Camp Appropriate Hugs!
Jane
These two epistles are rooted in actual replies to an actual young friend who found herself far from her faith home. Names have been changed to honor the beloved and the situation has been cloaked for the same reason. Still, while making myself sometimes feel like Paul writing to a distressed congregation, maybe it will do you some good too.
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