TheBanyanTree: why I get turned off, and how I turn back on

[NancyIee at aol.com]

I, too,  believe church is wherever you want it to be. Mine is either in a 
formal  setting with others, or in my back pasture, where miniature horses 
run in the  morning fogs, or on a beach at sunset, when all is coral and  
golden.
I believe many of us have gone here or there to churches, tried varying  
"religions", and finding something there of value. Or not. I doubt very much  
that God wanted us to "label" our beliefs, or to join in tight "clubs" with  
rules and duties not really important in the scheme of things. 
 
I have visited places where music and lipstick were sins. I have prayed in  
churches with million-dollar domes and arches while the homeless slept in 
the  alleys behind. I have sang and danced in tents where people shouted and 
fell in  rapturous states, talked in tongues and found redemption. I have 
sat on a park  bench and saw children play, and mothers watched, and squirrels 
came to steal  bit of sandwiches. I have sat in my computer room and looked 
out at the baby  Cardinals flicking through the pines on a gold afternoon. 
And, found a bit of  God in each.
 
I now attend a church where everyone is accepted. Anyone is welcome at the  
Communion table, and bi-racial couples, the disable and disfigured, the 
gays,  the straights, the casual visitors, the seekers, those who have jobs, 
and those  who have nothing can join for an hour or so on a Sunday morning. I 
can wear  lipstick, I can sing, I can conform, or not, as I wish. I can be 
myself.
 
It's a small, plain place. The money they glean built a food bank building  
where people who have feed those who have not. They put on a funny play 
from  time to time.  They send goods to Haiti. They go to New Orleans and 
helped  those after Katrina.They speak Spanish for those who are not supposed to 
be here  at all They visit homes and hospitals and hospices to comfort those 
there. I  join in prayer for those who need it, because I, the skeptic, 
have seen too many  miracles to believe otherwise.  No fanfare, no newspaper 
articles. They do  it because they can.
 
I have been told by some that my attendance in such a church makes me a  
sinner, for it is known that "sinners" are among us there.  Well, sinner I  
am.  Church is not a building.  Church is not the congregation.
Church is not a preacher. Church is not the rules men set down to contain  
us.
 
Church is in me, and I take my church wherever I go, whether it is my own  
bit of land, the beach, the building where the choir sings and people pray . 
.or  . . merely in my own heart.

Most of  the time, I just go on my own way, puttering in my garden and 
thinking  about spiritual matters as I watch stuff grow.  Or hike in the 
woods  or look at the sky or watch a bird or commune with my sons until 
I'm  completely wonderstruck by it all.  I can appreciate a sense of  
community.  I can appreciate the power of a hundred souls all  
meditating on world peace in the same room.  But, bottom line, I can  do 
without all the other bullshit, because I realize I have most of the  
tools right here in my own heart to make some kind of path through this  
crazy world.




mom