I’m interested in staying in this story about Eve and Mary and Jesus and Judas and the rest of them. I’m willing to wrestle and doubt and consider grace. I believe in this insane story about a Being that is bursting with love all there is to do is create and create and create and set it all loose and wild, and tell all that is loose and wild that we are here to create, too.
But I don’t want to go to church anymore.
What does it mean when you’re an elder and you don’t want to go to church anymore? Is this a confession? Do I need a spiritual director? I mean I would reach out, but that would mean another meeting, and I cannot with all the meetings. Does going to meetings equate a healthy spiritual life? What is a healthy spiritual life? I’m starting to wonder if my inability (or my unwillingness) to sit through a meeting is what is standing in the way of me and adulthood. Me and success. Me and belief. Me and everything I am supposed to be.
I’ve been in two meetings in my almost 47 years that were worthwhile. One happened when the principal of the school I was teaching in asked us teachers when our students would experience beauty in our classrooms. Done. That’s all that needed to be asked. Send us off to do the work of answering that question.
The other one happened in Detroit, and no kidding, we teachers did a sort of Lectio Divina on a paragraph from the book, House on Mango Street. What a piece of communion that moment was. Maybe the paragraph was seven sentences and we talked about our childhoods, our neighborhoods, our fears, what we hoped for – for ourselves and for our students.
That’s it. Those are the only meetings I ever want to go to – where we ask questions about experiencing beauty, and talk about stories.
Tonight, I stand in the kitchen and eat an ice-cream sandwich and listen to Harper tell me about swim practice, and after she’s finished and after I’ve licked my fingers and tossed the paper in the trash, I ask Corby if she wants to go for a walk.
It is still light out at 8:45 at night, and I say how about that for forming one’s faith? Here we are complaining about dark, murky Michigan, while the world gets brighter and brighter and isn’t there something about faith and doubt needing each other in this instance with the sun and the nightime? There has to be, right? Go for a walk outside, chase the sun and then stay there in the dark because you’ll never catch that light and anyway there’s lots to take note of in the dark.
Corby spots a couple at least a quarter of a mile away, but they are walking in our direction and for some reason she has stopped and will not budge. I know she will not move until they reach us, and so we wait.
The couple is delighted that Corby’s waited for them, but they have it all wrong. I know as soon as they get to a certain point, Corby will lunge and bark. I try to warn them, but they wave me away telling me how cute she is and also that “she’s waiting for us.”
She’s waiting for you, this is true, I think as I wrap her leash around my hand as many times as I can without lifting Corby off the ground.
When she barks, when she turns into some kind of vampire dog, I apologize, while the couple backs away, stunned.
“She’s actually really sweet,” I say over Corby’s barking and lunging. “Sometimes she just gets like this.” Corby leads me in this strange dance where she leaps and lunges simultaneously and I spin and pivot, hold on to her leash for dear life, and hope for the best.
“I’m really sorry,” I tell the couple, but they cannot hear me. Corby is still barking and they’re too far down the road; their shadows as tall as the trees, and slithering over the grass where Corby and I are standing.
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