It Could Become a Jesus Movement

(https://millennialpastor.net/2016/04/14/why-nothing-seems-to-get-people-back-to-church-the-issue-at-the-core-of-decline/)

Here (above) is an interesting blog post. I agree. Sometimes I feel as if I'm the only person left who does not go to church because "it feels like family" or that it is my "social outlet."

Don't get me wrong. I love the people of Holy Comforter. They are good, caring, close-knit, and wonderful to know. But I don't go to church to meet and greet. I go only to reconnect with the words of Jesus. I try to live by the words printed in red. I go to affirm that calling and that alone. Worship, if you love the word as I do. I go to worship.

This is why you often find me, hymns softly rushing over the patio, in what I like to call my secluded garden on a Sunday morning - or any other day I choose. There I can read, and ponder, and pray, and try to hear that voice of so long ago. "Put that down. Follow me."

Holy Eucharist, you argue? No. I don't attend especially for that rite. Jesus said it plainly. "When you are gathered in My name." In remembrance of Him. When I am gathered, with others, in His name.  Not necessary, alone on the patio. Not required.

She isn't faithful to her own church, you say? It's true I wander here and there. I chose Episcopalianism because of the famous "three-legged-stool" approach to dogma and because, deep in my heart, I have an affinity for the idea of a line of Bishops that travels directly back to the days of the early church (who's early history dismays and disappoints me, nevertheless).

My love of visiting other churches isn't in order to make new friends, or to find a new place where I might fit in better, or anything else you might be thinking. I've always been interested in church buildings, the feelings they evoke to the passerby, their histories, and the ways in which their congregations worship.

It lifts me up to think that every Sunday in different buildings with crosses, scattered across the world, prayers are being offered - in different words, in different ways, in different languages. And as the world turns, that they never stop all day.

God is busy listening/knowing on Sunday mornings.  He hears the voices in the cathedrals, the prayers of the people of the little white churches - the small voices coming from the secluded gardens, kitchen tables, everywhere.

Perhaps the dwindling population of churchgoers should go back to church, as I did last Sunday. Churches need money to operate. Churches need pledges. Churches have agendas, worthwhile missions, building funds, plans for expansion. Churches have obligations. They owe money. They need parishioners.

But perhaps, also, the church needs to rethink what exactly its role is. I don't believe that the commandment to "love your neighbor" is a call to love only your friends, in church, on Sunday and strangers through the missions of the organization. I believe we are meant to go out and live the missions to which we have personally been called. Or try.

I know what my mission is and I live it, as best I can, every day. It was God-given and is not connected to any church, pew, choir, or Bible study group. As they say, "It's between Jesus and me." Sometimes He smiles on my efforts. Sometimes, Jesus weeps.

During the days of the Jesus People (back then we called them Jesus Freaks) churches around the country were full of longhaired, gentle, kind, music-loving, God-fearing parishioners. That's what the presiding Bishop is talking about in many of his messages. We need to go backwards now. Live as Jesus lived. Simply, but with great passion for the work we've been commanded to go about doing. Whether or not the pews are ever again full on Sunday.

And so I invite you to read the post, at the beginning of my comments, as I've suggested. I have read a dozen different bloggers lately who are all saying the same thing. It could, indeed, become a Jesus movement.

Monday, Monday. Can't Trust That Day.

Monday, Monday and I cannot catch a break even when Tax Day is delayed. 

I'm always on the bitter edge. Not my fault, but I won't try to explain that to you. Boring. So this morning, I read the email from the CPA and got going.

I had already woken to a cat throwing up, so I applied my newly-learned carpet cleaning technique to said spots. (ice water, vinegar, rub it, blot it, baking powder, let dry, vacuum)

Meh. My scanner had decided not to work today. At all. Maybe ever again. Never mind the hundreds of "fun" genealogical documents and pictures I scan to email every day. Never mind that it was working fine yesterday.

So, I took a picture of said document signature and emailed that. I put the real signed document into an envelope and addressed it. I shoved my Treasury offerings into more envelopes and sealed them up for their long journey to NC. I reached for stamps.

Meanwhile, with five kittens "helping" who might have "played" the stamps to the floor and under the desk, I find none. But no. Caroline Mathews is out of stamps. How the usually organized have fallen.

So off to Publix. I checked some things out while the store was quiet. I read some labels. I bought some twofers. Some peanut butter pretzels. And out the door! No. Back into the store! I had forgotten the stamps.

There is a mailbox in the Publix parking lot, but I don't trust it. Every piece of my mail (four in one month) that has been misplaced by the USPS I have first thrown into that box. I drove on by it and headed home. At the stoplight, I stamped my envelopes. I came into the neighborhood and where was the standing mailbox? Gone!

The place to which they moved the mailbox makes a good bit of sense. It's safer for traffic. It's quicker. It works for me. But it's in a new spot, so will the pickup actually take place? Today? On time for Tax Day?

Monday, Monday, can't trust that day...

Every other day, Every other day of the week is fine, yeah,

But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes

You can find me cryin' all the time. 

Happy Tax Day! 

P.S. I miss The Mamas and The Papas, don't you?

I Sing Because I'm Happy...I Know HE Watches Me

Today, a day of reconciliation with (and a stepping out of) the past and of coming back, once again, to my place on the pew. It neither looked nor sounded like a church in crisis and, in fact, may only be moving forward in a way that we don't understand. Step by step, Jesus leading the way.

"I sing because I'm happy." Surprised. Delighted. For, into the pew, there stepped Corey. And Billie. And Tom. And Jack. "Begin again. All of you. There is nothing in the past but the past."

And we prayed. And we sang. And we pushed the cobwebs out of our minds where they no longer belong.

The boys, who are now following the words with genuine reading skills, enjoyed their beloved after-service cookies and punch. Corey lit candles for his Dad and for (his mentor, father-figure, and friend) Bob, whom we lost this week. Billie received the Gift of Bread - that welcome that made me a lover of Holy Comforter on my first visit. I breathed and soaked up the goodness of the morning.

"I sing because I'm free." What was I thinking?  I confessed my pettiness then and there and left it smoldering in the pew. Later, I made conversation with people whom I had been avoiding (for small reasons) for some time. I put it all behind me, praying to be a way better person going forward. "For his eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me."

After the service, I continued to free myself from my inner dilemma. Why am I looking, searching for new volunteer opportunities and causes? "Can't you see?" I asked myself. "Your old cause IS your cause." That's when I walked up to the sign-up table in the Narthex and re-upped at the Food Pantry. "For I was hungry...."

My comeuppance came right then. It was heaven-sent and beautiful. I reached for a pen and began to write my name all over the Saturdays in May. But, when I looked down, I saw that I had written in red ink. "...and ye fed me." Yes. I smiled. My cause has not changed. Nor my calling: To try to live by the words written in the red ink.

On the other hand, inadvertently picking up the red inked pen seemed a warning - loud and clear. The red seemed to be visible all over the Narthex. It reflected in the glass. Like Hester Prynne, wearer of the (also red) A in the Scarlet Letter,  I had not known the weight until it was lifted. I laid my doubts down beside my consternation. Free at last.

For His Eye is on the Sparrow and I know He watches me. 

On Poetry as Sketch and Sketching as Poetry and Life as Something Altogether Different

I'm deeply into it now. I have the titles in my head for the remainder of the poetry chapbook (World's Colliding) and many of the sketches underway. I go down, down, down into the poetry. Then I come up and away with the sketching. The object of the poetry, of course, you understand. The chapbook title tells all. But the artwork?

It's not difficult to illustrate a booklet like this with pencil drawings. The hard part is to turn the intentionally simple pieces of art into a kind of poetry in their own right. And not in any form of sketch/verse that might gently coordinate with the words, but in such a way as to push, push, push against them until you can read the intention freestanding, without the poetry itself. The sketches must live to serve a separate and distinct purpose; yet, to remain, in themselves, those same worlds colliding.

I've chosen a little leather book with a clasp, unlined, and a larger leather notebook with lines so softly printed that they would never interfere but only give the sketches a sense of forcefully dropping down on the page in spite of them. I'll probably end up with something in between. Poetry, handwritten. Illustrations in pencil, also.

I have this feeling that few, if anyone but me, will get it - the reasoning;  and because it's been heart-wrenching to write on this theme having faced the fact that my life has been entirely composed of those same worlds at odds with one another, there's another project going on over here to break the tension.

 I've been going through (finally) my photographs of Tallahassee churches. Now, that I can see to drive again (post-cataract) and colors are once more vibrant and true, I want to finish that lovely picture book along with dialog. Not the histories of the churches, per se, but the feelings the buildings actually impart. Just like the chapbook. Poetry handwritten on every page.

I've always had a struggle with writing. Not that it's difficult for me. It isn't. It's the most natural thing I do. Not that I don't think in haiku and waken on beautiful mornings with poetry falling out of my head. It's just that I hate to be tied to the computer (in the past, typewriter) wasting the joys of what I call "real life."

That dilemma has eased up in the last year or so while people I know (or know of, or love) in my age group are falling off the earth at lightning speed. Warp speed. And so, in the essence of time, I now compromise.

My interest in food preparation - shopping for and preparing;  that love of time spent in the secret garden with music pouring onto the patio: the curling up and enjoying a good book; many lovely, tiny naps that spit me back out into the world in time for wine and cheese on lingering Florida evenings; these remarkable kittens and their blood-pressure-lowering abilities;  and my delightful newly-merged modern family are first priority.

Poetry and photography and art are not (never have been) my only passions. At this time of my life, they have become what I do for a hobby. That decision is a replay of one that I made long ago. To live in the real world not the world of my mind. I would have missed so much living otherwise.

Gentleman Callers: Vintage WWII.

It's been a remarkable week for the Gentlemen Callers. Vintage WWII. Of course.

Sunday in the grocery store: Old gentleman peering into my grocery cart.

Looked like a war baby - about my age. Bald in khaki slacks and (you know I love this) topsiders. Much like the GC who was senile in Fresh Market a few years back. Remember him?

"Whoa, young lady. Wait up. Can't you see I've been following you?"

The "Where the hell do they keep the coconut milk?" question, was followed by my speedy comeback. "What are you going to do with coconut milk?"

Then, a brief synopsis of a dish often eaten as a child that his dad had brought the recipe back from the Pacific front. And that he has finally found said recipe among his late wife's things. "Been looking for it for three years."

The brief interchange and a few smiles led to a fountain Coke and a few Oreos (out of his cart) enjoyed in the little lunch area there at Publix Deli.

Monday at the plant store: Old gentleman peering into my cart full of roses.

Very trim, with a cane, plenty of grey hair, bermuda shorts and a gardening hat. Arms full of rose fertilizer. Sixty-ish. Maybe seventy. Very erect posture - could have been an Army brat during the '40's

"You like the knockout rose?' Before I could answer, "How big will those grow?" Pointing to the ones inside my buggy. My mouth opened to tell him,  but "...got a place alongside the garage that nothing will grow in. If you drive down North Ride and you see a garage with wilting roses, stop in. I'm headed home to fertilize 'em right now."  

Just now at Pet Smart: Old gentleman peering into my cart.

Older than me or the other two GC's. Probably fought in WWII or barely missed the cut. He's going into the store (jeans and a T-shirt) and I'm coming out (jeans and a T-shirt).

"Do you need any help, Missus?" Assessing the probable heaviness of my load. "How many of those cats do you have, anyway?" We speak of several things. Belle, the FabFive, his two terriers (black and tan), his beloved hound. The thunder rumbled, and the rain started to spit on us.

He gave me the most magnificent grin and said, "We are getting wet. Is this the place in the relationship that I write my telephone number on your hand?" He didn't. He wrote it on an old Home Depot receipt that he pulled out of his pocket. And so it goes.