On Church (I)

Somewhere in Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich's investigative journalism volume about low-wage workers in America (sorry, I can't remember just where--and the book's in my office while I'm at home), Ehrenreich records an interview she carried out with a worker who lived the life she was putting on for a few months.  She reports that the woman's advice upon arriving in a new city was, "First, find a church."

By this time in the narrative, Ehrenreich has already clearly communicated her own agnostic atheism and her general disinterest in and even distaste for organized religion.  But she reports the woman's instruction and, vaguely, as I recall, affirms the wisdom in it for those living within such ecomonic vulnerability.

I admit that I have been largely privileged in many ways throughout my life, and though there has not often been plenty, there has always been enough.  And though I have not moved all that many times in my life (only six major city changes and only a handful of moves within cities), I contend that the rule holds true: first, find a church.

The vulnerability I have experienced in my moves has not been largely economic (though I have had a few gracious pastors delicately inquire into the economic status of a struggling graduate student--and one offer groceries).  But I could not have survived without church.

At various points in my life,

church has been the one place I could go apart from the office where people knew my name;

church has been beautiful in the midst of ugliness;

church has provided free entertainment--and free food;

church has brought me into conversation with unrelated people sixty years my elder and thirty years (now more!) my younger;

church has allowed me--a rank amateur--to make music;

church has counseled and prayed with me in making significant decisions;

church has witnessed my triumph and my loss;

church has bade me farewell;

church has stabilized my life with order and disrupted it with unexpected chaos;

church has made me feel at home when I am, in fact, very far away;

church has taught me humility by allowing me to enter others' stories; and

church has frustrated, angered, excited, saddened, and thrilled me by what it can accomplish--good and evil--in the lives of the people touched by it.

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I can count on one hand the number of Sunday services I've missed in the past--probably two--years.  We're the couple who showed up at Sunday services after our wedding on Saturday afternoon.  The pastor paused when he realized we were at the communion rail and told us the next day that only one other couple in his lengthy career had done such a thing--and they were in their sixties at the time.

I love church.  And while I realize that the church I love has also harmed many, many people in its abuses of power, past and present, I grieve not only for the wrong done but for the good lost.  For the loss of the gift I have received that weekly--even daily--brings me into a family I would not otherwise be part of.  That asks of me my time and willingly gives in return.  That draws me out of and restores to me my self.

First, find a church.