Sit-Stand-Kneel

I went to the Methodist Church today. The organ filled the Sanctuary with familiar and wonderful music. In the Methodist church music is of great importance and each song is sang as though it were a prayer with a resoundingly warm Amen at the end. My heart swelled with joy, my soul revelled in peace.

This feels a lot like "going home".

Growing up I went to the Methodist church. In my family religion is important (along with being well read, politically active and serving ones "community" ). Each person is responsible for actively forging their own testimony and in the process forming their own independent relationship with God. As a result we have Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Agnostics, Unitarians, and Jews in our numbers. That said, the Methodist church is a special place across the whole. (I'm not sure why because historically my family is Hard Core Baptists, with a great great grandfather who founded the first in Texas) The Methodist church is the place were we gather to mourn our loses and to bless, give thanks and welcome in new life.

This is a church were growing up you are taught the basics and once you have them down to ask questions, to really analyzes what you read and hear. This is a place of spiritual and intellectual growth and evolution where the world and scriptures are seen as having far more gray than black and white. Interpretation is up for grabs. This is a church where ministers only stay for 4 to 6 years allowing for congregations to hear mixed views and can arrive at independent conclusions. A place that was often challenged for spending less time on scriptures and more time on active Services. Of course it was also at this church were I realized that the position of Choir Director might be the best hiding place for the anti-Christ.

Perhaps some of you do not know, but when I was much younger this was also the church I wanted to dedicate my life. It was an announcement that hit much of my family twice as hard as "I want to be a History major" lol. My grandmother looked at me as though I had just asked for a sex change operation! Looking back on it I think it was bad timing in their eyes. I had just been accepted to CMU early, I was being offered scholarships at a number of schools, i'd just won the presidential award and it was the same year my bookcase oded on writing awards, crap that was the year I even won the stock exchange game lol. I think they thought the only limit to the sky were those of my own making and I was endanger of doing such. I think they thought the opportunities that were piling up on my lap were things few people ever saw and Seminary well anyone could go to seminary.

It would have been a different kind of happy life But you know I think there are lots of different Paths to happiness and life is all about finding and then traveling them. These are things with which I have not thought of in nearly a decade and yet as soon as I began, the emotions, connections, memories they were all right here. I think sometimes we feel as though there are clear places and paths that in parting we are somehow forbidden or unable to return. I think most often out of pain we attempt to abandon those things which are closest to our hearts, those things which have made us fundamentally who we are and the things which can never be made truly dormant within our souls. The trajectory of life, everyone, is never straight forward. Inevitably we will run into ourselves and what it means to be us along every path we take. I think what I have taken most from this crisis of faith is that when you struggle to stave off the few things that make up the fiber of your being well it begins to feel a lot like trying not to breath. You can't do it forever or at least I don't want to.

On a slightly side note, on my afternoon dog walks I've found quite an inspirational and relevant Baptist pastor on the radio, Alistair Begg - check him out Truth For Life: Listen Online. (It has nothing to do with the fact that he is Scottish lol though as he speaks I do picture him looking like Carson Beckette (Stargate Atlantis)... I was a captive audience...I swear it was totally unwilling! l)o