I was always a Christmas and Easter churchgoer. You know the type: “I don’t need the church, I’m living out the faith on my own.” Or “Church is stuffy, filled with hypocrisy. It’s the same sermon for 20 years.” Or “All that liturgy and no substance, all the sit, stand, and kneeling is not for me.” And so it went with me for years until I found a church where the sermons were different. They were relevant to everyday life. The pastors would talk about a passage in the Bible and how it related to them that week and what it brought up in their conscious mind. (You know, like the billboards in Times Square with the sexy girls in thong underwear) and how that related to the people we are as these images take a subtle hold of our subconscious.
I started to go to the group outings so many of the singles went to after a sermon on a Sunday evening. Dinners with people in my age group seeking God, seeking friendship among those seeking. I can’t say I didn’t feel different than the others. There were so many people who had grown up in the church (and not in New York!) that were so utterly different than me that I often thought I was their project in how they were going to use the themes of the sermons on me to see if they could maintain grace and mercy even in the midst of me. I did form some genuine friendships, two women I am still friends with. It was hard going for me, though, and yet, I felt my best going to church each Sunday, learning so much I hadn’t known, uncovering the Word of God while shedding some of the traits in me I had come to accept as acceptable- as a New Yorker.
But having lived abroad and then in the south, I had witnessed how others in other cultures behaved and I wanted more of that. Those other traits had lingered in me, I had picked up some of them, and found that I liked myself more. I found that in the church I was able to cultivate myself more to be someone acceptable. And yet church also brought out the worst in me because it caused me to reflect on the not-so-pretty side of myself. It was easier to accept me without having to really look at me. And the Bible really made me do that.
I love that church has become more than just Christmas and Easter because while I can look back and see how I was just trying to take the beauty of those holidays from the church and leave it there, I wasn’t really taking enough. And the depth of what I have gotten since that first time I went to church is so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.
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