Hopeful Gathering

It's been a busy month, with enough travel that I've gotten a bit disoriented about what happened when. But one of the things I've done in the last couple of weeks is attend a gathering of "young and emerging leaders" in my denomination. It was an odd and diverse little group. As we sat down around tables to hear our General Secretary explain why we were there and what we'd be doing - the details having been somewhat ambiguous before we arrived - I had my doubts. Some of the things going on in this denomination right now put me a bit on edge, and the way things have been transpiring lately, I expected tension at best.

But this was not a typical meeting. First of all, there was no printed agenda. Gasp! Second, after introductions and a brief discussion about denominational stuff, which I made more tension-laden than it needed to be by voicing some of my concerns, we started by sharing our faith stories. How did you get here ("here" being somewhat loosely defined)? What are you doing now? What has God been doing in your life and ministry? The tone of the gathering shifted. We were listening to each other. We were finding commonalities and appreciation rather than disagreements.

When we finally turned to discussion about our hopes for our future together, we knew that it really was our future together. We have some radically different backgrounds, ministry contexts, and opinions about current issues, but "the denomination," that entity that often elicits our suspicion and criticism, suddenly felt like us. Gracious honesty about our differences brought out a clarity about our common priorities and hopes.

In the spirit of that gracious honesty, I'll tell you that I was astounded.

Despite my efforts to be inclusive, I have a lot of "them" categories in my mind, and the ones that infuriate me most are the ones in my own denomination. I share vows with these people. We're family, by the covenant we make with one another. But I tend to think of them as the crazy cousins who I'd rather not invite to the reunion, because "they" were mean to my sister, or "they" are always starting in about some issue I don't want to deal with, or "they" always bring that awful casserole I don't like. Many of the people at this gathering represented "them." But that's what it means to be family, in the best sense; we all bring ourselves and what we have to the table, and sometimes it's great to share our lives, and sometimes it's painful, but we work it out, or we don't and we learn to live with it, because we know that we're only us when we're together.

None of us are trying to destroy the foundations of our denomination, or rip us apart, or hold each other back from doing ministry. We're just being us, and bringing ourselves and what we have to the table.

General Synod begins in just over a week. I have some trepidation about the whole thing. But I also have some hope for us, mostly because of this gathering. I have hope for me, that I might look across the table and see us instead of them.

Home is a Road

Perhaps it is because I've moved so many times that I associate home not with houses or towns, but rather with roads.

It took me twenty-eight years to experience a strong feeling of being home, of attachment to a particular place. That feeling is still rare, and it's also broad; I've become grounded not in this house or in the land of the camp where I first felt 'at home,' but in the wider region where I live. I'm rooted in the pathways I travel between all the places and people I love - if indeed one can be rooted in movement. And while the sense of being home is uncommon, I've felt many, many times the anticipation and peace of going home. For me, home has always been the journey, not the destination.

I wonder sometimes if I'm missing something, if I've somehow denied myself an integral connection to a plot of land or a stable community. When I am kinder and fairer to myself, I am content with being rooted in the connections of life. When I am kinder and fairer to myself, I am happy being at home on the road.

The circles in which I travel talk about Christian faith in terms like 'following Jesus,' and 'spiritual journey.' Jesus himself called people to follow him, and referred to himself as the Way. This is not a sit still sort of faith (although I concede that sitting still is a helpful, even necessary spiritual practice - at which I happen to be miserable). Perhaps it's just my own wandering disposition, but Christian faith has always felt to me more like going home than being home, more like a road than a house. Some day, probably on the other side of death, maybe home will become the destination. In the meantime, I'm still going home.

Public to Private and Back Again

My blog has been private for the last few months. Now it's not. I realized that when it was private, I simply never wrote anything. It seemed that the 30 people whose email addresses I had to invite them could just ask me what was going on, so why write? Not writing is not good for me. Also, people keep asking me where my blog has gone, and it makes me really sad every time I have to explain. So, I'm back. We'll see how it goes. I guess I'll try to be more cautious than is my nature, and I'll hope naively that people don't overreact to the things I write, because it's just not within me to be secretive. Anyway, that's all for now. Welcome back, if any of you who have been shut out for the past months return. Thanks for hanging in there.