Confession

I have a confession: I skipped church last Sunday to go sailing with my brother. The whole time I was out on the lake, feeling the wind in my hair, I tried to think of what I would write about church for my weekly blog post (having not attended, you understand). Each time I began, “It’s ok to miss church Sunday mornings occasionally because…”

Of course I emailed Patricia Sunday night explaining my absence, but noted I would make it to our Monday night meeting of the stewardship committee. That would be a gathering of Bob, Priscilla, Colin, Patricia and myself. The idea of the meeting was to go through all the families and individuals in the parish, and talk about each one’s contributions (not financial), so that we can thank them for helping to make us the community we are.

We went through each person, recounting services, laughing, recalling funny stories. Parishioners who did things like try to help prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Or showed up on work days to clean the grounds. There were many people who showed up for Tuesday mornings, worked on the altar guild, as lectors, even baking the communion bread. Bridge club. Sunday School. Brought meals to people who were sick. Organized the Buckhead Christian Ministry food drive. Organized the Interfaith Hospitality Network.

When we got to the last third of the list, and Patricia had once again added with complete certainty and overt pleasure, “and also thank them for their faithfulness,” I suggested the list might go quicker if we only wrote notes to unfaithful parishioners. 

That last list was never made. But I was very much reminded tonight of how close our parish is and how much it matters the times that any of us are away. 

Still, the weather was beautiful on Sunday. And when I played hooky to sail with my brother, I learned about all kinds of poetic things like shrouds and tell tails and jibing and wenches.

By the time he dropped me off, we stood in front of the house saying good-bye after a long day, I realized I wanted to sail again. So I asked if he and his friends also sailed on Saturdays. (Of course, they do, sailing doesn’t only happen on Sunday mornings.)

“Good,” I said, “I’ll sail on Saturdays then. I can’t do Sundays anymore.” I miss church for enough natural causes (work travel and oversleeping), why add one that can so easily be avoided?

Need Spare Change

First, I live Intown and there’s a lot of traffic at my grocery store, getting in and out of the parking lot is often like parking at the stadium on a big game day. You do a lot of waiting. Every five minutes or so, someone cuts in line. There are lots of people on the street walking, using the sidewalks and standing at bus stops. Today, I saw a young kid, maybe in his early 20s, holding up a sign that said “need spare change.” He was tall, bone thin, hobo dirty from head to ragged toe.

I thought a moment—an obvious cause for such a descent for a human being would be drug or alcohol abuse. This kid is simply too young to be standing on a street corner, begging.

There was a ton of spare change in the bottom of my purse, but I didn’t pull over to fish it out. Instead, I pondered him a moment as I waited for the light to change, tried to picture him under different circumstances, on a college campus, healthy and happy (and clean), with lots of friends and every opportunity in the world laid out before him. There are kids his age who do—my 22-year-old son Wolfie, for one.

Instead, there was this very young man looking as if this might be his last act on earth, to hold up this handmade sign.

The things he really needed, of course, were obvious—a bath, medical care (physical and mental, drug maybe), not to mention months of hot meals and I wouldn’t doubt that some measure of human kindness and love wouldn’t improve anyone’s well-being.

I’m sorry I can’t end this post telling you I rescued this kid—I didn’t. But he did something for me, because that haunting despair stayed with me all afternoon and into the evening. I thought about the emotional and physical jolts I’ve had in my life, what choices led me to where I am today. But scanning over all of it, I don’t think I’ve ever reached such a state of complete desolation, never.

I was telling a fairly streetwise friend about the kid, the look on his face. “That could be Wolfie,” he told me, “easily.” He explained further, he’d seen this all too often: A 22-year-old gets kicked out of the house—jobs are very hard to come by, so before long the kid is on the street, gets introduced to crack. A week later, he’s holding up a sign by the grocery store, “need spare change.”

Maybe a more appropriate sign would have been “need spare hope.”

Say Hello to God for Me

“Say hello to God for me.” That was from a friend I was talking to on the phone on the way out the door to church.

“Oh, I certainly will,” I responded gravely. As if this particular friend could use my intervention with God, given I go to church and therefore must have a far superior connection.

It was much like the Apostle Paul who we began studying in Sunday school this morning, our first class of the year. Patricia mentioned a letter where he wrote boastfully of his own humility. We talked about Paul’s letters, the context of the times, the fact that the letters are incomplete (we have no record of the other side of the conversations), that they are older than the gospels, that at the time they were written there really was no such thing as Christianity. We talked about Paul’s support of slavery and the subjugation of women, and his disdain for what James said about, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (There were some good things, too, but I won’t recount them here.)

In short, it was a wonderful first Sunday school of the new year. Everyone was there, and even some new faces. I enjoyed it so much, in fact, that when I had asked my quota of questions and Patricia stopped noticing my hand go up in the back of the room, Billy raised his on my behalf. (I wanted to know if Paul didn’t know Jesus, where he got all of his material.)

The Parish Hall was filled with the sound of children, little girls still in their summer dresses (though there was the slightest first chill in the morning air) and little boys in Cub Scout uniforms. I saw pictures of Claudia’s first grandchild, Scarlett.

Now, I’ll stop a second to address my friend’s comment about God at church. Maybe it does help prepare you a little on your journey—to have a place where you can bounce ideas off of others and maybe even change ourselves or our little pieces of the world for the better.

My very favorite part of the service is the Eucharist (other than the sermon of course) and the line that often sticks with me most about what I’m trying to get in order about my life on Sunday mornings is this: “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” Oddly, it’s not a table at all—it’s just a community of faith.