This leaving is killing me, y’all. I’ve grown weary of the phrase “hot mess” but there is little other way to describe my reactions to almost everything that happens on Sunday mornings. There are certain parts of an Episcopal service that are obviously made for gut wrenching emotion. Singing, for instance, is a LeBrea Tar Pit of the feels, and singing the “Our Father” is especially so. One of the many things I have learned from Davis Teitelbaum is to sing that one good and loud. Contemplation only breed trouble there.
Now the offering should be safer ground. You might even use that time to reflect on the myriad of ways that the institutional church is wedded to the dominant culture. Nothing like some righteous indignation fueled by post-colonial guilt to keep from experiencing the moment as it happens. Good luck doing that when an extraordinarily poised 11 year old is doing the collecting. Don’t even try if that child is your own fairly introverted daughter. So of course I was all bumping into acolytes and losing count of the people in my area during the offertory this morning.
Because the thing is, I’m not sure she would do that somewhere else. I’m quite sure that, if she had not done it at All Souls first, she would be a lot farther away from participating in a liturgy in some other context. And I’m not mostly excited that it’s a religious setting in which she is taking a risk. That she is doing something outside of her comfort zone is a thrill to me, and the place she feels comfortable doing that is the church she has been a part of her whole life, where people have known her since she was first born.
I’m not saying that church has a lock on these things. There are other expressions of community where people make lifelong commitments to love and encourage children. There are other places that affirm adults who come together to attempt intimate relationships. There are other groups who will be with you through the wilderness of grief. But church in general, and All Souls in particular, has been that place for me for the last 15 years. I’m not sure I can say farewell anymore, so maybe I’ll just consider myself as having left already.
But I’m going to visit there next week in case you want to hear me preach.