On Loving People

I've come across a few instances in my blogging life where people choose to go into the "witness relocation program", pack up their virtual online life, and start all over again somewhere else under an assumed identity. Either that, or just sort of vanish. Its not difficult to understand. Talk about a platform for worldwide misinterpretation and vulnerability- providing an oppurtunity for every tom, dick and harry to tell you what your problem is and why you should take it elsewhere.

But there's more than one parallel to "real life". Who doesn't hide behind something? Who isn't afraid on some level of people's judgements, hatred, misunderstanding?

Life as a human is chock full of relationships. And it doesn't take any amount of insight to know that loving people is a quagmire of complications, subject to perspective bound interpretations.

Which brings me to God, and love, and authenticity. The more you allow life to grow you, the more people you love. The more people you allow into your heart, the more your heart expands to allow for the numbers. The more people taking up your heart space, the more you realize how much pain, ugliness, disappointment, and sorrow there is in this life. The more you recognize its existance, the more you want to be useful in some capacity, to ease the pain, to be part of a solution, but ironically, you simultaneously realize that you can "help" no one, that you are utterly bound in your own selfishness and stunted desires and distracting mind games.

Which brings me back to God. And back to the question about how do we people want to live these lives we've been given? I've got to say, that for myself, despite the pain and sense of powerlessness, I wouldn't have it any other way- at least when I think of the richness brought about through human relationships. What wealth we share in terms of beauty in a whole bunch of broken people desiring to give one another a hand up and a shoulder to cry on, and some stuff to laugh about- Together. It provides a sense that God is very creative and makes all sorts of different people for all sorts of different reasons.

On Sunday at church, I listened to a fitting teaching about God and His sense of direction. How the Spirit of Jesus speaks in ways we can each hear. Through the boredom, the monotony, the looooooong stretches of life where no miracles or "breakthroughs" occur in your life. Where you are angry, disillusioned, mad at God, not sure any more why you are compelled to follow that "still, small voice" since it doesn't seem to be taking you into any euphoric mountaintop places or even into a place of endless patience with your spouse and children. But I got a picture of prayer moving things in the spiritual that goes beyond my sense of immediacy and my desired results. I saw a picture of us all being interlocked in varying and creative ways. That a loving heart- a heart that loves God, hurts when others hurt. Cries when others cry. Lends a hand.

How does this relate to the witness protection program? Here's how I see it. We ought not be too quick to judge others, or to offer them really valuable advice, unless it compells relentlessly from that place deep inside. People's pain won't disappear because of a seven point address on why they are hurting, what they did wrong to get hurt in the first place, and how to turn into a better person so that they don't keep getting hurt. I think our good intentions to make people feel better often drives them away. Sends them into hiding. Then we can pretend that they are not hurting anymore, because we don't have to listen to it any more. i think that a more accurate truth is that we are all mixed up all the time. We all struggle with something. We all stumble over some repetitive theme til we want to scream and run for the hills.

And we all have the capacity to listen. To tune into how to love one another. It's bound to be flawed. Its bound to be painful.

But would you really have it any other way?

Bringing Sexy Back

Down at the local junk shop yesterday I ran into a worldly friend who had been hoodwinked into buying tickets for the infamous Justin Timberlake concert. We giggled about being older than fourteen and trying to blend into the hysterical audience of perky young undie tossers. Then I inadvertently launched into a long spiel about my thirteen year old daughter downloading his music and how less-than-thrilled I was about the sexual pervasiveness in his tunes, and my horrer at the very idea of purchasing her a $111.00 ticket for the privelege of watching his hips gyrate. Our culture is so saturated with sexuality, I rambled on, and I want more than that for my daughters.

Little did I know how far and wide that Timberlake's influence had spread. Like a batch of newly hatched Manitoba mosquitoes launched out of a tepid July pond, that sexy thinking had saturated places previously unknown to the world and all its temptations. Little did I know that even our local haven- the mecca for clean hands missionary work, scrubber and seller of all things used and dated, was also a pawn in our culture of hedonism. Yes, buried under key chains advertising evangelism, hilcoa, fancy humble cars, and trendy funeral homes was a treasure unearthed by my precious, innocent, impressionable young daughter.

Run for the hills, cloister your handmaidens.

Our last remaining sanctuary of purity has been toppled.

The Niverville Mcc Store is bringing sexy back.

Hmmmm.....

Almost invariably you can find me moved (often to tears) by the singing/band playing when I go to church on Sunday mornings. Not because their performance exudes "excellence" (a new-ish church word meaning you practised a lot, talked on the phone about what colour schemes your clothing should match to, and secretly hoping that your team would get a call from a producing company because of your stellar sound...) but because the words and sounds and people around me somehow roll over and through and around me in a way that I can only describe as deeply spiritual. I hope again. I pray again. I feel tenacious about my desire to believe in a good God who loves me and mine.

But as much as I love it, I sometimes I wonder about the "Christian music scene". Occasionally I'll put on our local Christian music station while I'm working in the house so that the words will soak into me and the dirty couch and the wildebeast children. It never does a darn thing for the couch. But almost every time I feel vaguely disturbed about some aspects of what I'm listening to. I imagine the bands feeling as pressured as the "secular bands" to look and sound a particular way. I imagine them fussing with their hair, whitening their teeth, checking their rear view in the mirror and not wanting to come out looking frumpy or grumpy or chubby. Well, of course not. I'm not above that, and I'll bet my right thigh that you're not either. Then I imagine them checking their record sales, their placements on the popularity charts and glancing over their shoulders to see what gifted Christian singer is sneaking up behind them, about to steal their thunder, their sales, their moment in the sun.

I hear the Christian real estate salesperson advertise about how we should ask her to sell our houses because she believes in God. I hear about the conferences where we should all go and be together and rub shoulders after we buy our tickets through ticketmaster. I hear about the Christians who would like us to buy their cars, their lumber, let them landscape our yards or groom our dog.

And it just sits kind of funny with me.
Is it just me?

Church

Its with some fear and trepidation that I begin this post. Sybil is upstairs screaming that people may misunderstand my heart on this one, but its something that's been brewing in me for some years now. Soooooooo, here goes.

About six years ago, it became my steadfast prayer that God would lead me into the truth. Of all the prayers that have gone unanswered, this one could not be counted as one of them. It's not been answered simply, or without pain that I never heard anyone at a conference warn me about. Do I have a handle on truth now? Do I have my mantra and theological statement neatly printed, bound, and tucked under my arm for easy reference? This is the greatest mystery of all. As mentioned several trillion times before, the more I learn, the less I know for sure. And what I know for sure is that He is good, likely bigger than I'd imagined, and probably controversial. I know its not my place to decide if I'm right, or you're right, or if they're right. Even if I had the whole theology thing tidy, and I'd take out my pointer for you, it would be entirely a waste of time unless that pointer would be held in a trembling and sweaty hand, knowing that the words coming forth were done so simply because I'd offered myself up as an intrument.

One of the themes along the way these past years has been hearing of people's sense of disillusionment with the organized church. Too showy. Too churchy. Too fake. Too hypocritical. Too happy. Too morbid. Too boring. Too isolating. Too pushy.

Then there was the church's frightened comebacks: the floats in the Saturday morning parades filled with ridiculously happy people dancing to loud Christian music and waving plastic palm branches and placards about determinedly. "So, you think church is boring?" they screamed, hoping to convince the dirty commoners below that they did indeed know how to have a good time. One or two of them might have worn a "Coors Lite" t-shirt, just to prove how easy they were to relate to. I wanted to squirm and duck. I felt embarrassed that our insecurity was that obvious.

If the peppy music didn't bring them in, how about small groups? This one made a bit of sense. People could meet, be relational, help meet one another's needs, bring others into community by living out the concept of loving your neighbor. I'd always wanted to have the nerve to use my former life as an eating disordered shattered person who learned how to put the pieces back together, so I optimistically packed up and headed out to Calgary for a huge "Small Group Conference". (Woo Hoo!!)

Once there, I waded through rooms and rooms full of literature that decoded every little thing God had ever said or even thought about saying or thinking. I ran into a woman I recognized from life-before-kids. She had hated me then, but now she was all grown up and leading small groups in her church with her husband. I signed up for some seminars. I'd come here for direction and chose my discussion groups accordingly. I had to run to the bathroom a great deal since I was pregnant with our third child. From within the stall, I overheard grown-up small-group leader tell her pretty friend something nasty about me. My first sigh of many.

We filed into the sanctuary to begin the day with worship and singing. I immediately recognized the leader as a man who had been busted for cheating on his wife, so he'd vacated town and church quickly and quietly, shaking our dust off his sandals as he went. I didn't remember any resolution to that minor lapse in morality, but it seemed that he'd found his way back to pointing us all to God. *sigh*

Off to my first seminar. An hour in, I wondered if I should go and recheck the label on the door. This was all about projections, visualizing, and then making things happen. We saw impressive mathematic formulas of how many times we'd have to do fund-raisers in order to build wings onto our church buildings. Growth, growth, growth, is what this thing was all about. And personal growth was not a prerequisate for this kind of gardening. It didn't sound as if we'd need a big, controversial God in any of this either. It was a lot tidier than that, all laid out in formulas on the whiteboard. I excused myself to go have a nap on the empty nursery floor. The smell of baby wipes and dirty carpet had a more honest scent about them.

I never was much of a small group leader.

The deeper I dig into this church post, fearing that I may begin to choke on my foot, fearing that I may be buried alive.... the more I recognize that unless you've come here to read a novel, there is no way that I can write this and call it a "post". We'll have to call it a mini-series. Maybe we could have a cell group about it or something.....

I actually LOVE church. For the first eighteen years of my life, I went to the dullest, most legalistic, drab, uninteresting church in the history of homo escapeons. And I loved it. I loved the familiar, the richness of tradition, roles, consistency. I loved the sincerity that I caught glimpses of there. I loved the swish of ladies in their girdles, squirming, sweating, staring at the wall clock and worrying about the chicken dinner over-cooking. I loved the tidy pews, the unused choir "loft", the tone whistle that the farsinger used to start us off on an endless hymn with no notes. The sermons were dreadful and dull, but I loved watching the man, farmer by week, preacher on Sunday morning. I enjoyed hearing his wife's loud snoring as well...

I went some years without really going to church that much at all. It was all so complicated. The preachers were having affairs, and lying about it; the people were all very pretty and talked about Jesus a lot but they were terribly hostile and intimidating. Then if you got involved at all, you became subject to long speeches about "commitment" and how to "just DO it" and developing "leadership skills". Sometimes you'd get sent home to change for coming to worship team practise wearing the wrong colours. Tiresome really.

That's all behind me now. Now I'm to the point where I also tire of hearing people fight about God's love. I just don't get it.

I go to church now, and I cry whenever possible. The cheaters and the fat people link arms with the pretty people and the faithful ones. We laugh and cry and eat together. Sometimes we'll bring a pizza to someone who looks hungry. Or maybe we'll throw some money into a dish to pay for a funeral. When we sing, I let my arms do what they want to. I sing with my whole body: the sound of the mysteries fills me up and overwhelms me. I wish this honesty for the cheating preacher, the horny music pastor, the self-righteous small group leader, the business men from the seminar.

I volunteer for nothing organized. I listen to that still small voice and shut my ears to propoganda of being so godly that more people will want to come into church and we could build a wing in red brick or something.

And my heart aches for all the misunderstood, broken, passed over whom the church has trampled over to reach those almighty projected numbers.