My Church, My Church...

It is hard to write these thoughts without them being taken wrong.

I don't know how to put them together so that they don't sound accusatory.  I'm not pointing a finger.  It isn't what I do.  I know what that feels like.  I know the shame of going in front of a judge and admitting that you hit the woman that you had sworn to love and honor for the rest of your life.  I know the shame of getting into the back of a police car while your children are watching.  I have coveted my neighbor's wife, I have taken the Lord's name in vain, I have pulled off One through Ten over and over and over again.  If not in deed, than in thought and in word.  All of which is condemned by The Great Forgiver.

So I don't point fingers anymore.

Because when I do.  I know I'm just pointing at myself.

I don't accuse anymore, because when the tally chart is thrown up on the wall.  Sin for sin.  I'm winning.  I'm not ahead by a nose, I'm ahead by a mile.

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She walked in my door and changed my life.

The way we start isn't always the way we should start.  And the way we love isn't always the way we should love.  The way we fell into each others arms.  It's on my tally sheet.  And the way I stole her from another man, also on the fucking tally sheet.

I'm not proud.

I'm not obligated to confess guilt to anyone.

It is a dichotomy. 

A friend called.  A true friend.  And he presented hard words to me.  Told me things that I know, and that I wrestle with.  And he did it out of love.  He told me he hated how it made him feel, and that he was disheartened and hurt, and sad.  And that he had gone to the other man to tell him, that from his perspective, what I did was wrong, and that he felt as though I had done a poor job of representing Christ and The Church.

I agree with him.

And I respect him for calling me, and for going out of his way to reach out to someone that despises and rejects faith in anything.  Because that is our job.  We step into this faith with the understanding that we are supposed to "go and make disciples of all nations."  It is on the back of the Billy Graham deceleration of faith hand out that I signed all through middle and high school.  Those words were crowded into my head every time I dedicated, re-dedicated, and re-re-dedicated myself to the Lord.  In every head bowed and eye shut room, so that no one would feel any pressure, yes Lord there is one, so that no one would feel any fear, yes Lord I see that hand, so that no one would be embarrassed, praise God there is another.  Because even while we are supposed to be shouting our joy from a mountaintop, we were ashamed.

The faith I was taught, was one of passivity.

One that had a lot more to do with taking the moral high ground in your mind, but still acting like an asshole to people. 

It was about going to church with your family, but pretending like you didn't.  You didn't want your friends to know that you were a Christian, you wanted to hide that light so far under every bush, barrel and blanket you could find, while attempting to not let Satan puff it out.  For two reasons.

First no one wanted to be on the same team as Tipper Gore and Bob Larson.  Standing in a bully pulpit telling the world that everything that is fun is evil.

Second it is so easy to justify the things you do, or don't do, if you can be ambiguous about your faith.  Oh I don't drink, I'm a Christian.  Oh its ok for us to fool around on the couch I don't really believe in that God stuff.  It was a switch that could be turned on and off.  You know the one that God is going to vomit from his mouth.  Mark that one up on my tally sheet too.

I spent a lot of years like that.  And when I decided that I was done with it.  I prayed one prayer.

"God if its your will take everything.  Because this isn't how it was supposed to be."

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He did.

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I tried to live wrong first.

This fucking thing is a chronicle to that.

I tried to live right.

Also a chronicle.

That is the point of this place.  Sure a lot of the time it is just some rambling and some mental exercising, but when it comes down to it.  This is where I put my thoughts.  My struggles.  And when I started it, I said that I would just say how I felt.  And I will. 

I went through a divorce, and struggled with money, and with work, and with drinking, and with the courts.  I still owe money all over the place, I spent three months incarcerated, I got hands up, and hand outs, and I got beat up by the world pretty bad.  And while I went through it there were very few people that were willing to stand next to me.  There were very few people that didn't make me feel shame just by the way that they looked at me.  There were very few people that treated me like I was worth more than shit on the heel of their shoes. 

There were friendships that disappeared.  There were ones that I questioned ever even existed.  I get that I committed sin.  And that sin deserves rebuking and correction, and some kind of guidance in the right direction.  And I got that, some.  And there was pain there, grief over a lost family, and over lost self-respect.  Self-loathing, and hatred for everything I had become, because what I wanted to be seemed to be falling apart.  I needed comfort.  And I got that, some.

But mostly I got stony silence.

Indifference.

I was told in catechism, Luther's small one.  That there are sins of commission, the shit you do, and omission, the things that you left undone.  I understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of that now.

I don't ever want to feel like that again.

I don't ever want anyone else to feel like I did that to them again.

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I don't accuse here, I just relate.

What is done is done.  The past is that.  It is something to learn from and move forward from.

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Maybe this lesson is never fully learned.

Or maybe it is just that I commit some of the big sins while the rest of the world is just cheating on their taxes and shit.  I don't know.  But I caused that pain to someone,  several someone's since I was made to feel that way.  But imperfect vessel that I am.  I try not to back down from what I feel is the only thing that sustains.  This faith in God.

No church looks at this bundle of damaged goods and says, "Dang mister, join up now."  But my God does.

And so does my congregation.  Those "And I got that, some's."  A Pastor, A Brother, A Woman, A Fellow Traveler, A Group of Children.  Titles, characters in this grand story, my life.  People that are my church.  People that may not love the decisions I make, but that love me.  My church.

A church made of other tattered, and ragged, weary and beaten humans.

People that make the same mistakes over and over, because the are human, and flawed, and live in an over privileged society, just like me.

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"You deserve better, You are a daughter of a King."

She was told about me.

I am a son of that same King.

Washed in that same blood, forgiven of those same sins, doomed to sin in those same ways.  Can you do better than the son of a King who accepts all as His own?  Can you do better than to find the love of that King in another's eyes and never look back?

I'm sorry if we didn't do it your way.  Truly.

But we did.  And now we chose to move forward.  To live, to love, to serve one another, and all that we can.  And it may look like "too soon" for some, I fear that we cannot wait.  We cannot afford to sit on our hands.  Because in spite of our sin, He still works in us.  In spite of our shame, He still calls our name.  He still whispers, "Feed them, clothe them, visit them, let them stay, I'm in the least, and I work through the least.  And trust me you are the least.  And I give you another commandment, love one another as I have loved you.  Because that is how they will know you are Mine, that you love one another."

He even washed Judas' feet.

File under Virtue I guess.