Blessing

what i am sometimes doing instead of going to church

Yesterday I went to church.

It's been a while.

I often need (want) to stay in bed on Sundays, drink coffee, think my thoughts. Quiet mornings are rare and beautiful, like diamonds, or true love.

Other times I'm traveling, especially this summer - to weddings or mountains or canyons and rivers. All days in the mountains are the Lord's Day. At least, that's my sense of it.

Yesterday I went to church.

St. Bede's Episcopal Church. A tiny home for a few members, a little group who's been doing the Sunday thing for enough years to get old together.

They know the prayers, and I do too - repetition is a friend to the spiritual - and that makes me feel like I belong even if it's one Sunday per month. That and my plastic name tag available at the front.

But my favorite parts of the service are always the blessings.

"May the blessing of the God of Abraham and Sarah,
and of Jesus Christ born of our sister Mary,
and of the Holy Spirit,
who broods over the world as a mother over her children,
be upon you and remain with you always.
Amen."


I need my church to bless me, you see.

To send me forth into the world in peace, to remember and reclaim the truth of God in this bleak world: The truth that God's still moving.

The truth that the Spirit's still brooding.

The truth that our seasons of waiting are never just waiting, but incubating.

The truth that we aren't victims but witnesses to a better Way coming.

"God's blessing be with you,
Christ's peace be with you,
the Spirit's outpouring be with you,
now and always. Amen."

And when I leave church an hour and a half later, I have not been radically transformed or miraculously healed of my many maladies, but I see a little clearer.

I see the barefoot man watching traffic from his porch.

The small dog with his head out the driver's side window.

The smell of clean laundry as I pass the lavanderia on Buford Highway.

"Live without fear: your Creator has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Go in peace to follow the good road, and may God’s blessing be with you always. Amen."

The cicadas singing their summer song. 

Atlanta and the world out there moving along, always changing yet somehow the same.

It is not hostile, there is no new enemy, and God is moving. Sometimes we may feel like all is lost, or we don't fit here, or we are wasting time. Or the world is against us, or we are ineffective and incapable of protecting that small seed of goodness in us, incubating a precious newness we want to believe in.

We are bearing the marks of change, witnessing the labor pains of a Spirit hovering.

Together the community of faith says, "keep up the good work, and heed the voice of God in you."

I can do that. I may not be able to bring about perfection or success by my standards, but I can do that. And notice the things I can see a little clearer.

That people are out there doing their best for the most part.

That life is too short to give up before you try.

That the sun makes the sky so beautiful, and thank God for music, and thanks also for wine.

"Live without fear: your Creator has made you holy."

Maybe that is just enough strength to continue on the road a little bit longer.