Lent Day 24: Nights Out and Silly Joy

This weekend is ripe with friend connections. Last night I went out with work friends, the colleagues who make teaching bearable. I love my students, so having some colleagues who aren’t dicks is just a bonus.

Getting Ready to Go Out

We did a pre-St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl in good old Muncie, Indiana. We started at the ever trendy, hipster Savage’s Ale House, which is one of my favorite bars, because they have $1 PBRs, of which I had two. I also had the Epic Muncie Burger. Amazing.

$1 Pabst Blue Ribbon

Celebrating the Graduate

From Savage’s we headed to Doc’s Music Hall for all the mixed-drink drinkers. We sat outside at a really long table. There were a whole slew of us! Here’s where I mixed my metaphors and went from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Loretto, Kentucky and stopped south of the border for a few sips of my friend’s, the birthday girl, Muncie-rita, that’s served complete with an upside down bottle of Corona in it. All the traveling must be why I have such a headache this morning!

Maker's with a Splash of Coke

From Doc’s we dropped in next door at the Heorot. I kept on traveling: I had a Strongbow from Ireland and a New Albanian Porter from New Albany, Indiana.

Half-Lit Chandelier at Silo

Then we headed to the Silo (Maker’s and a Fat Tire (Fort Collins, Colorado)), and then to the very haunted Fickle Peach (Bell’s Porter from Kalamazoo, Michigan) where I spilled my beer so hard the marble bar broke the glass. No worries, a friend split her beer with me and then somehow I ended up with another Bell’s Porter. I also played pool for the first time in several years and didn’t do too shabbily, but I didn’t do really well either.

Bell's Porter, not the one I spilled

Outside the Peach: Are those orbs I see?

We ended the night back in Milwaukee with a Miller Lite at the Mark III Tap Room, “the longest gay bar in the world,” but by that time I didn’t trust myself to take my phone out of my pocket for fear that it would go the way of the beer at the Peach and shatter all over the dance floor.

My point in writing about this is that I am a serious person most of the time, but my goal this year was to get my joy back by doing those things I hadn’t been doing, which bring me joy. Surrounding myself with friends brings me joy. Drinking excellent beer and bourbon brings me joy. Walking around town and acting silly and dancing poorly all bring me joy: great joy and a great headache the next morning. I think Jesus wants us to experience joy (maybe not so much the headaches, though he did like his wine); in fact, I think we were designed to be filled with joy. Look at Adam and Eve, they were perfectly content before they ate that dastardly fruit. How could they not have been joyful living in the most perfect place ever? David was so joyful he danced with no clothes. John the Baptist was so joyful in utero that he “leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” Peter was so joyful he couldn’t resist calling Jesus out for who he is, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” In the end, we’ll all be so filled with joy, we won’t be able to stop singing.

I just want a little bit of that joy here on earth, and one way for me to experience it is by giving myself over to those silly sides of myself that don’t always show, but which always hide there, just beneath the surface aching to get out. And, yeah, in many ways, I am equating fleshly drunkenness with spiritual drunkenness. The spirit and the flesh, they feel really similar to me, which I suppose is because I don’t really buy that mind, spirit, body split nonsense, chalking it up as a patriarchal paradigm foisted upon us by the Enlightenment. So tonight I plan to do it all over again with different friends, in a different place, but with the same goal in mind: gathering the joy that’s swirling around out there waiting for us to take it!

Lent Day 17: Nearing the Death of Little Blue

Today on my way to Anderson to meet my brother, I noticed that the temperature gauge on my dashboard was way up at the red line above the H. This compounds the problem that Little Blue’s engine has had recently. When I idle at a stop light or sign, the engine revs and slows, revs and slows, and I worry that my little car may just decide to stop right then and there, leaving me stranded wherever I am. I’m not afraid to have my car die in the street and have to walk, but for some reason I have become afraid of the idea of being car-less.

I forget that having a car is a privilege for me, not a necessity. I live less than two miles from my place of employment, and there are three different bus routes that go within a quarter of a mile of my house. Not having a car is not a hardship for me, but over the past couple of years, I have become accustomed to being able to go on small trips at my own will. I know I will get used to having no car again, but I also just bought my super cool Indiana Youth Group license plate, so having my car break down is a little heartbreaking.

On my way home from Anderson, I had to pull over at a gas station to let my car cool down before I could continue the trip home. I was sitting there feeling pretty sorry for myself about my car, when I decided to listen to my voice mails. A friend of mine had called to tell me that these reflections were meaningful for her this Lent, and I immediately began to think about how blessed I am, and about how for the first time in a while, I actually feel as if I am allowing God to use all of my gifts and talents. I am teaching English, which I love, and I am spending a considerable amount of time thinking about spirituality and theology, which fills me.

I live under no delusions, though. Just because my spiritual life has taken a drastic turn for the better within the past few weeks, I know that doesn’t mean that everything is coming up roses all the time. I know it doesn’t mean that every time I feel sad or doubtful, God will send an affirmation that I’m doing the right things. And, it doesn’t mean that everything will always work out the right way. But I know it does mean that I have a much better perspective about how to deal with adversity, or at least I am in a better head space. Being in this better place helps me have an assurance that God is with me.

I feel like Asaph in Psalm 73:

When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,

I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

This Psalm resonates with me in so many ways. I want to be continually in a place where I think the “earth has nothing I desire besides [God].” I want to be confident that “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” This sort of goes along with what I was saying yesterday, but it’s a bit different. This struggle of knowing I should desire God constantly is bound by my ability to do so, because I am human. I am bound by my body, by my place in culture, by the necessity to live in the world. My desire should be for the best for my neighbor and the best for my God. I mean, there’s a reason that Jesus said there are only really two commandments: “To love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” And, of course, these two commandments sum up my every struggle, everything I’ve ever written about here or anywhere else. How can we, bound by our earthly bodies, focus so heavily on entities outside of ourselves? To love God with our whole heart and to still have love left over for our neighbors as much as ourselves? Honestly, it wears me out. Sometimes it wears me out even to think about it, let alone do it. Peace.

*

This is how I woke up today with a cat in my face:

Spazabella: The Disgruntled Cat

After morning prayer, I went downstairs for breakfast:

Bacon, Eggs, Strawberries, and Rooibos Tea with Raw Honey

I spent the rest of the day with my super-amazing little brother:

At BD's Mongolian Grill

We went shopping at Old Navy (again with the unethical practices), and I bought some smaller-size clothes, down two sizes from the last time I bought clothes there. We also went to TJ Maxx and Whole Foods. I can’t help myself. I love Whole Foods.

Lent Day 16: Do the Best You Can Where You Are

We are all complicit in the world in which we live. Unless we live completely off the grid, self-sustaining, and 100% independent of anyone else, we are complicit in what US culture (or global culture for that matter) has become. Wealth is made on the backs of the poorest and neediest. We criticize even those who try to make a difference. Perhaps because they aren’t making a big enough difference in our opinions. Or maybe they aren’t making the right difference in the right way.

What I learned in a succession of strange and serendipitous interactions today is that we each have to do the best we can to live our lives in a way that we can live with the choices we make, in a way that we can live with ourselves, in a way that we can look at ourselves in the mirror and not feel ashamed.

For some people, that way of living may be completely and totally morally reprehensible to someone else. For example, my Starbucks habit may make Fair Trade only coffee drinkers cringe. Someone else’s insistence on wearing Nike (or insert other brand) tennis shoes may perk up my sensors for labor abuse. People may look at my Mac and curse my choices, and I may see their copy of The Purpose Driven Life and question were those profits are going. Each of us has a commodity-related Achilles heel. Each of us has a love (or necessity) that is bound up in immoral and unethical practices.

But, if each us will do his or her little part to make the world a more ethical place, instead of continually judging each other for what we’re not doing, then we will see much ethical and moral growth. With each person making small strides, together we’re making great strides, right? I realize this is a little more pie-in-the-sky hopeful and optimistic—and even quite a bit cheesier, possibly a bit preachier—than my usual posts, but we have to start somewhere. If we start somewhere, it’s better than simply sitting around finger pointing, right? Right?

Now I’m respectfully stepping off the soap box.

*

A good portion of the beauty of today (and every day) was in simplicity.

A Twin-Yolked Egg and Yummy Bacon

Little Purple Spring Flowers Growing Up Among the Brown Leaves

A Bridge I Walk Past Every Day, But It Looked Especially Artistic Today

Cod Fish Stir Fry

A Man Fishing, But I Am Not Sure He Caught Anything

Kayaking the White River: Looking at the Ball Mansions

“All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”—Toni Morrison in Rita Dove’s Grace Notes

I, too, always feel as if I am trying to get back to where I was. In a way, we are all trying to get back to where we were.

Lent Day 14: Stained Glass Jesus

Come to me all who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

I went to my seminary, Anderson University School of Theology, for chapel today, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that one of my good friends, Pastor Joy May Sherman, was preaching (speaking, whatever). Her message was about denial and how we don’t understand denial in the same ways that Jesus meant denial. Essentially her message was about the fact that we consider giving something up for Lent an expression of denial, but that Jesus wants us to give ourselves up, constantly, all day every day.

Her words took me back to the time when I was in seminary and I fasted, eating and drinking only fruit juice and water for the whole six-ish weeks from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Those weeks were long and grueling, and I felt as if I had really practiced the discipline of denial. I had given up ________, but Jesus asks for us to give up ourselves, our own “selfish ambitions.” Do I do that? I try, but do I really want, as Joy put it in her sermon, a discipleship in which still allows me to hold on to my own goals? I am not sure. I think I try to put aside those things which are of myself, while focusing on God’s will for my life, while trying to take up the life God has for me, while attempting to carry my cross. But if I look deep inside myself, I think I still sling to a lot of things that are of my own ambitions and not necessarily of God. Something to work on, I guess. One more thing.

Me, Kimberly Majeski, Joy Sherman

I hadn’t anticipated all the feelings that being back in the seminary building, and more specifically the chapel, would bring out of me. I had forgotten how being with women who love God so deeply can feel. I was a bit nervous, I’ll confess, because I have been so vocal about my sexuality as of late. I thought I might go, see my friends, and it would be awkward. Usually, this is more my own paranoia than anything else. Nonetheless, I felt a great sense of relief and welcome when Kimberly and Joy embraced me as they had in those years past, when I was back there hiding (not so effectively) behind the vestments in the church closet.

I don’t know how I have functioned for the past few years, being so angry at God, being so angry for so many things. I won’t say that anything supernatural like a tsunami of love and grace splashed over me when I entered Miller Chapel, but a small sprinkling of where I was in my relationship with God when I was in seminary came back to me. I was, in those 60 minutes, so thankful for the healing that God provides. So thankful. I felt at peace.

Seminary was one of the happiest, but most complicated periods of my spiritual development. I was deeply in love with God. Deeply enamored with Jesus. And deeply guided by the Holy Spirit. I was deeply hidden in the closet, but I knew who I was in Christ. I could speak tangibly of my call. I was so caught up in all of the world of seminary, that I can’t remember much of the day to day experiences of those three years. I went to school and chapel (as we all did), and then I went to work at Pizza King. I was exhausted, but I was exhilarated. It was a beautiful three years.

On my way home, I listened to Jennifer Knapp, my go-to girl for moments when I have experienced God in a new or meaningful way. The first song that came on in the shuffle was “Refine Me.” Knapp writes: “I come into this place, burning to receive your peace. I come with my own chains for wars I fought for my own selfish gains. You’re my God and my father. I’ve accepted your son, but my soul feels so empty now. What have I become? Lord, come with your fire, burn my desires, refine me. Lord, my will has deceived me, please come and free me, refine me.” What a beautiful way to end a blessed day.

Jennifer Knapp in Lafayette Square, Indianapolis

Me With No Hair and a Tan Watching Jennifer Knapp

New ‘Do, Decent Breakfast, and Some Thoughts About Sexuality Which Really Have Nothing to Do With Lent

I want so badly to let my hair grow out, so I can give myself dreadlocks. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. When my hair reaches a certain length, I find myself just wanting to rip it out by the roots or to shave my head down soft like a baby’s bottom and slick, too. Today was the day when I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got out the clippers and gave myself a wide Mohawk with a DA in the back. It’s weird and different from my usual self-inflicted trim. Before I went crazy about my hair, I made myself a delicious Spring Break breakfast, which I intend to do every day before I go to school to work on grading.

Two Soft-Fried Eggs, Bacon, Strawberries, and Chai Tea with Raw Honey

Hair From Two Ways

And a Cat Who Judges Me

Note: Now for a bit more of a serious subject. This is not complete, but is just a seed for a longer, more well-developed essay.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about spirituality and sexuality, as I usually do. These two areas are important to me and intrinsically part and parcel of one another for me. In my life, they cannot be separated, nor can the soul and the body. I’m not going to get all theoretical in this post, but I do want to mention a couple of things I’ve been thinking about. I’ve heard many GLBT folks say that they knew who they were from a very young, but they just couldn’t tell anyone, they didn’t have words for it, or they were shamed into not talking about it. I’m not sure I fall into any of these categories, at least not until much later in my adolescence.

I’m not saying I couldn’t tell something wasn’t the same in me as it was in everyone else. I knew that pretty much from the get-go. But then again, I didn’t know it, too. I knew how I felt, but I didn’t know it was gay. I knew who I loved, but I didn’t have a framework for recognizing same-sex desire then, I don’t think. Looking back, I can name it for what it is. I can see how much in love I was with some of my friends. I can name my fifth and sixth grade English teacher as one of my first teacher-crushes. (Since then I’ve fallen in and out of love with too many teachers/professors to think about! Ha!) I can call my love, my desire what it is. Now. Could I then? I don’t think so, but I could feel it.

My Brother and I Digging in the Front Yard of Our New House

When I was in grade school, I knew I loved some of my friends. I knew I loved them much more or much differently than they loved me. I would share my toys, and I am pretty selfish. I would color pictures for them. I would take cookies for lunch with the sole intention of sharing them. I got jealous when they would spend time with other friends. I was heartbroken when I wasn’t invited to their slumber parties. I was devastated when one particular friend got a boyfriend and stopped playing with me on recess. I was crushed when I got in trouble for kissing another friend in kindergarten Sunday School. (Of course, the very next year, I got in trouble for kissing a boy at school. Maybe my problem wasn’t lesbianism, it was showing the kissing kind of affection!) Every adult message was telling me that the way I felt about my girl friends was wrong. Did I understand then? No. I knew my parents encouraged me to choose my own clothes, toys, books, and activities when I was at home, and I didn’t quite understand why I had to wear dresses to school sometimes when I preferred my jeans and t-shirts and tromping around in the woods. I suppose it was to make me seem more normal in the grand scheme of things, but then what’s up with this school picture? I was a butch little kid.

Somewhere Around Third or Fourth Grade

By the time I got to middle school, I was determined to be “normal,” even though I had a crew cut and relied on my FARTS University t-shirt, which I wore under most everything, to get me through the days. I think maybe why I like teaching middle school so much is because I felt so lost through most of it. I had one particular friend who was, for all intents and purposes, my “girlfriend.” I loved her, and I would keep on loving her through high school when we both had boyfriends, even becoming quite jealous when she got married and moved halfway around the world.

I had to wear this shirt under my other shirts, because it was "inappropriate."

I “went with” one boy all through middle school and into my freshman year. He was incredibly abusive and manipulative, leaving huge physical and emotional scars on my body. But I stayed with him because I had the intrinsic desire to be like what I thought everyone else was like, to be like what I thought I should. Everyone else had opposite sex significant others. Everyone else was making out in their family friends’ basement. Right, right? Eventually, during one of these “let’s play hide-n-seek so we can go lock our naked selves in your basement bedroom and make out” make out session, he forced me into having sex with him when I was just 13-years old, and I became one of many girls he date raped, or just straight up raped. The killing part of this was that he was two-years younger than I was. So much for being normal.

Looking back, I know now that my classmates weren’t all dating people of the opposite sex. I know that many of them were doing the same thing I was, putting on airs to make it through Blackford County Schools. Many of them didn’t date at all! There wasn’t room for people like us in that place at that time, so we played the game. It wasn’t that there wasn’t language for who we are. There was: fags, faggots, sissies, butches, dykes, unnatural, sinners, queers, homos, queerbates, gaywads, ACDC, swing both ways, and all sorts of other language that served to normalize us. Apparently, The Crying Game and Boy George made no impact on the small minds of Blackford residents. It wasn’t that we couldn’t talk about it, but we certainly couldn’t fathom our sexualities as positive, healthy expressions of love. And, of course, why would anyone bring on that ridicule by naming who they are?

I won’t say that growing up was particularly difficult for me, like I am sure it was with many of my friends and like it is for many kids now. I felt a sense of security in myself and my identity as a jock, artist, and nerd. I just threw myself into one of my acceptable identities, and I always have been confident in who I am. Perhaps, too, some of the security I felt in playing a part in the “Blackford County Play” was because I couldn’t feel free to say who I was, and by not naming it, I could pretend that wasn’t who I was. Besides I had a really for real romantic relationship with a boy, a young man, a beautiful soul of a man. He was a really for real high school sweetheart, who is a subject for a way different essay than this one. So I had a thick, thick closet door to keep me safe. In the same way the closet door kept me safe, it also stifled me until I finally came out. Slowly. Inch by inch.

Softball. I played catcher, and if you don't laugh at that, it's because you don't get it.

And as I came out, I quickly learned that the most spiritual people in my life would have the strongest opinion about who I was becoming I was revealing to them. And, it even more quickly became evident that who I was revealing did not jive with who they thought I was, or should be. Never in my life have I had more Scripture thrust at me like a serrated and rusty knife than from the years of 21 to 23. I look back, and I think that Jesus must have been embarrassed. I know I was ashamed for the people who were beating me with a book I had previously loved, pouring so many teenaged years into studying it and getting to know my God. The God who had been my God through all of it and who still remains my first love.

Lent Day 12: A Long Drive

Today I had the good fortune of driving for about 5 hours by myself. And, yes, this is good fortune. I love a long, solitary drive. I can have silence to think about whatever I want. I can listen to music. I can sing (poorly) as loud as I want. I can take in the scenery. I can stop and get out and walk around if I want. And, I can listen to podcasts, which is exactly what I did today.

First, I listened to a couple of episodes of On Being with Krista Tippet. In one episode, she interviewed Rosanne Cash. I’ve never heard any music by Cash, nor did I know she was a writer and a physicist, but I was so impressed with her that I couldn’t stop listening as she described her process of making music as “catching songs,” a phrase I believe she credited to Tom Waits.

In the second episode, Tippett interviewed Tiya Miles who is a public historian, doing research about Cherokee slave holders and their African American slaves. Miles mentioned a line from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved in which the reader is asked to consider a story that should not be passed on. Of course, Miles used it to frame her discussion of whether or not slave holding by Native Americans was a story that shouldn’t be told (passed on) or one that can’t help but be told (passed on).

What I love about On Being is that Tippett somehow manages to get every guest to relate his or her career, vocation, passion to spirituality, and she does it without being heavy handed or forceful. The exploration of faith or spiritual matters as invited by Tippett seems like a natural progression of the conversation, like the guests’ beliefs are so intrinsic to who they are, they can’t help but shape and formulate the interaction between them and their livelihoods, and that, in turn, can’t help but spilling out into the airwaves of the show. Krista Tippett has my dream job.

The next podcast I listened to was the Jesus Radicals‘ Iconocast where they interviewed Shannon Kearns, the pastor of the House of Transfiguration in Minneapolis. Kearns spoke about flattening the hierarchy, queer theology, and the ways in which the gospel is simultaneously intellectual and emotional. He also fielded questions about God and gender and the ways in which his own transgendered body informs his understanding of theology, the church, and God. Perhaps most interesting to me was his discussion of wounds and the way they record, they are the proof of, transitions.

This Seems Like a Queered Crucifix to Me

This was one of the better interviews they’ve done, and I think I may just drop by this church in a couple of years when we move to Minneapolis. While I admit I am nowhere near where the Jesus Radicals are, I very much appreciate their ministry, and I respect their beliefs. I especially love it when they help give voice to people who are helping the Church move in ways that are more inclusive to those who have been disenfranchised by the wider Church family.

Finally, I listened to T.C. Boyle’s “Rapture of the Deep” on Selected Shorts. Jacques Cousteau’s temperamental French chef plans a mutiny because he is sick and tired of preparing and eating poisson, poisson, poisson. My favorite part is when the chef beings making bad American comfort food, like macaroni and cheese or tuna casserole. Hilarious.

Peace.

Lent Day 11: A Lesson in Love and Humility

Without giving too many details, I will just say I have learned a lesson in humility and love this weekend at AWP. To make a long story short, my insomnia didn’t, in fact, go away. It only got slightly less ferocious, allowing me five hours of of sleep for one night instead of three. When I don’t sleep, I get mean, curt, short-tongued. I have been all of those things this week, which led to quite a large eruption of misunderstandings last night between a friend and myself. The quarrel led to me moving down to the lobby of the hotel for quite some time, so I could recompose myself and not put my fist through the mirror in our room. See I told you I have some anger management issues, and I felt as if I could beat my way with small, tight fists through the thickest, heaviest punching bag on the market. I didn’t.

Instead, for a change, I left the room to recompose myself elsewhere. By this morning, after a conversation with my beautiful and sensible wife, some coffee, a session on queer YA fiction, and some prayer, walking, and meditation, I was able to calmly and rationally initiate a discussion of the events of last night. And, of course, we came out on the other side with love and grace, because I am learning that’s how things work out when you practice humility and love.

Here is the photographic chronology of my day:

Walking North on Michigan Avenue

A Coffee Shop I've Always Wanted to Try and Finally Did

A Little Morning Reading and a Mexican Mocha

Buildings Dating from the Mid-1800s

Do You Need Some Art Supplies?

Capitalism Block on State Street

I decided to go to church tonight, but I wasn’t sure where to go, so I literally typed the address of the Palmer House in the first blank of the “Get Directions” feature in Google Maps, followed by the word Methodist in the second blank. I figured I couldn’t lose since I live four hours away, and I’d never see any of the people again. I mean, it’s always a crap shoot when you’re a lady-boy lesbian and looking for a church in a different city. Each time I risk rejection from the body to which I’ve belonged since the age of four when I “gave my life to Jesus,” a form of rejection that breaks my heart again and again.

I walked to Temple Church (a.k.a. First United Methodist of Chicago) with low expectations and hoping that I wasn’t dressed too shabbily. I can never accurately anticipate the dress code at a “First United Methodist,” because they are usually the big, old churches that are trying to stand guard and keep from dying out. But that guard-standing usually comes outfitted in whatever is the latest fashion.  I always assume that the dress code is on the upper end of the spectrum, not jeans and the sweater I was wearing. But, as I mentioned, I’d never see any of these people again, so I pressed on.

Temple Church's History in Stained Glass

Destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire

As I walked past the beautiful arts garden, pictured above, I looked to my right and got a glimpse of the Chicago Picasso. I could feel that this hour of my life was going to be an adventure. Electric Jesus was in the air. I strolled through the revolving door and up to the security guard. Yes, you read correctly, I walked confidently over to the security guard, and said, “Can you please tell me where the church service is meeting tonight?” She pointed me up the stairs and through some double doors.

I was a bit disoriented as I walked through the thick wooden doors, because I was released into a space that looked like a storage closet, only without anything in it, too big to be a closet, too small to be a respectable hallway. The space was a hallway nonetheless, and I began to search for what I was sure would be a large stone chapel or sanctuary. Instead I found the small, intimate chapel pictured here. In fact, I had to ask the lovely man in the picture if I was in the right place.

A Tiny Church Service in a Huge Church's Small Chapel

By the time the service started with a greeting and then a hymn that none of us really knew, I realized I was experiencing the Body of Christ in a very real way. The mix of people was diverse: various ethnicities, social classes, sexual orientations, gender identities, and abilities. There were people there with children of varying ages, and older people who were there alone. The bulletin specifically spelled out that we were all welcome.

The service followed the liturgy while still being personal: we confessed as a group and then offered silent meditations of our own. When it came time for the prayer requests, the congregants shared intimately and without reservation, and then we prayed for those concerns. We passed the peace! Finally, we collected tithes and offerings and shared the Eucharist together. We stood together around the communion table and celebrated the Great Thanksgiving as we looked each other in the eyes. I could feel the Holy Spirit hovering there in our midst, like the soft breeze that blows off Lake Michigan in the summertime, and as refreshing.

Jesus’ body was broken, His blood was shed, and we were redeemed yet again. A glorious miracle.

Several times the intimacy and the beauty of it all overwhelmed me to the point of tears. Here, four hours away, is the type of community I long for each Sunday. Here, in a church I assumed would be too uppity for my jeans and sweater, I met my Jesus in the realest way I have experienced in years. Here.

Today was a beautiful mess. Peace.