Leaving Church: Guest Post by Danelle Landry Townsend

November 29, 2012 by 43 Comments

For six weeks, we’re exploring the question, “How do we walk out our faith in the midst of pain, suffering, disappointment, and loneliness,” with a book club discussion on Thursdays about Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor. Today we’re coming back after a week off from Thanksgiving, exploring Chapters 5-10 with Danelle Landry Townsend. I met Danelle early in my blogging journey and can’t help but love her big, generous heart for others and for Christ. I hope you’ll welcome her in the comments.

It is Sunday and I am the only one in my family without a temperature.

Without a cough.

Whatever sickness remains in my body can be contained by a red lozenge or a throat clearing at the first sign of an uncomfortable tickle.

My mother invites me to hear her sing in the choir and singing is her love language.

She cried on the phone when she found herself back in a choir robe after many lost years.

It was a homecoming.

So I come.

I find a seat beside a little girl wearing a dress stitched with a lace tutu around her waist.

Somehow her hair pulled tight in the ponytail stirs memories.

My heart nods inside, I clear my throat at the first disturbance inside all those inflamed chords.

I once was a dancer, a girl who practiced for recitals and the hair would be pulled back and the tutus would clinch around my waist.

And all of these thoughts and memories lead me back to a place that speaks sense and nonsense simultaneously.

Maybe I’ve always been confused?

The reasons, many, that my heart, my spirit, can find both the beautiful and the challenging within the church buildings I’ve sat in.

A kaleidoscope of denominations and traditions I have learned and yet none feel quite right, even though I see the brilliant colors in each.

I know practice and routine can create beauty.

I’ve taken the stage and know this from experience.

Yet years have shown that the honest beauty appears when heart is interlaced with mind in words, prayers, actions.

This combination true liturgy.

But today I feel that I’ve come to a recital.

A routine I’ve danced all through my childhood, the background music of a thousand sundays is handed to me on a laminated sheet.

I hold on with a hand both comforted and numbed.

I need the red throat lozenge.

I see newness here though, because I am looking for it, and I have to look to find.

I glance at the young girl beside me again.

She is bent, itching dry skin flaking around her heel.

She is straining to remove the dried and cracked as she bends in her beautiful tutu skirt.

And it makes it more difficult, the beautiful suddenly in the way of the need.

I want to kneel there and tell her I understand.

My thoughts perfectly interrupted by the priest:

“The church has a cosmic ability to change the world.”

I hang on to “cosmic”.

The truth of this vastness.

Beyond where my feet are planted in this church building.

I am a pilgrim not a resident.

Then from my morning reading I remember these words:

“. . God does not have a fixed plan that he must carry out; on the contrary, he has many different ways of finding man. . “-Magnificat, November 2012

Suddenly I see the trees holding up the roof around this sanctuary. Trees?

And they aren’t really, but God wants me to see. And I do.

His creation inside, holding up what man has created.

I’ve never noticed the four branches reaching high.

The little girl next to me reaches for my hand as we say the Our Father.

We lift our joined hands and repeat words from the earliest prayer I ever practiced.

“For the kingdom, the power and the glory is Yours, now and forever.”

I watch my mom slip down from the risers where she has been singing, she receives communion with her head bowed.

I choose to stay in my seat, communion happening in my prayers, in the lozenge that is thin and about to break on my tongue.

I remember Pastor Jay at our barn church asking us all to take a big piece of the communion bread.

How I walked up with tears in my eyes and tore the bigger piece and dipped it into the red juice.

How both the lozenge and the bread made my soul utter and feel connected.

And I am reading a book called LEAVING CHURCH.

I think of finding it.

Church, for me, has always been there in the trees. Especially the trees.

But yes, also in the recital, the singing, the communion table.

The chunk of bread torn or the wafer placed by the priest.

The fire on my back cold mornings and the conversations with friends.

I feel Him here. In this church. Now.

I dab my finger into the cup of holy water.

I take a picture of a four branched tree holding up a church building made of brick and human labor.

“Thin places,” I whisper this as I climb into my car.

And drive away.

To so many others.

*****

“I learned the proper name for those places on earth where the Presence is so strong that they serve as portals between this world and another. . . Thin Places, the Irish call them,”-Leaving Church, Chapter 7.

Have you ever encountered a thin place? How does the setting affect your worship?


Danelle lives in Georgia with her husband and two sons. She loves finding God everywhere and clings to the truth that He sees each of us and seeks us from wherever we are with grace. She enjoys reading, writing, walking her two rescue dogs, drinking lots of coffee and tapping words at her blog, He sees me. 
 
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Celebrating With An Olympic Feast

August 9, 2012 by 15 Comments

It’s hour nineteen in the mini-van on the second day of vacation.  Our legs ache and we’re giddy, singing silly songs when we round the familiar corner in Eganville, Ontario, just thirty minutes away from our final destination, the family cottage.  A black sign on wheels at the edge of an empty lot congratulates Melissa Bishop, 2012 Olympic Runner, in white magnetic letters.

For a moment, the car breathes silent because this town is a blink on the road and we feel it. The way Melissa, she carries hope for all of them to London.

A few days later I take a morning walk on a road that looks like a miniature model of the Great Lakes after a rainstorm.  An unfamiliar turn to get a closer look at a seaplane parked on the lake leads to a rock of etched words that distract me.

This little strip of public beach at the end of the road where I stand is a park dedicated to Sheryl Boyle, 1996 Canoe Olympian from Renfrew, a community nearby. The rock declares it. I’ve been coming to the cottage since 1995 and never walked past that rock.

At 8:00 pm every evening on vacation, we stop whatever we’re doing to take our places around the television to witness the resurrection of hope, the surprise of redemption in the feats of athletes around the world. Olympians remind us that the unknowns of the world just like us make history.

It’s my birthday today and I’m celebrating over an Olympic feast at the Schell Café. Kristin Schell and I were introduced online by her mother, Vicki Kessler, a prayer warrior in my life. We’ll meet inRL for the first time next month.

I’m joining the conversation she started  around an international table, sharing about a special dinner in the home of my Rwandan friend. Grab a piece of cake and pull up a chair at the table. I’d love to celebrate with you.

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Of Fireflies and Smiling Glances

April 18, 2012 by 63 Comments

Light casts her ethereal glow shadows in early morning and I want to capture her like fireflies in jars. Put her on my windowsill to remember her hope when the clouds of mundane roll in and darkness hovers on the horizon.

Like the day Harrison and I sit bent over an IPod and phone passing time until his name calls for surgery. The appointment we didn’t plan for on his spring break.

I think about how this interruption will impact our day, how much time it will take away from other things, until the distraction of perspective walks through the door behind me. When two white collared EMT’s push a long gurney into the room holding a man lying flat on his back, cocooned in beige blanket.

His head wears snow halo on chocolate skin, breathing tube rests beneath his nose, and eyes fix target on the ceiling. I wonder why he is here alone in the office of a podiatrist.

My son keeps his eyes down on the game he holds in his hand. He’s about to have his toe cut on and just looking at this man, it makes him queasy.

A woman in a sheer red dress gets up, hobbles slow with cane across the room and stands over the frozen man. She leans in, right beside his face, and talks to him as if no one else exists in the room. His chestnut eyes, they roll to the side, meet hers and she teases him. “So you’re not going to talk to me today,” she laughs.

A burly man motions to her from where she was seated and pleads, “Grandma, come back and sit down.” She pretends she doesn’t hear him. Walks over to the row of chairs facing ours, sits down and smiles at me, waves her grandson over.

This kind of contented joy, it doesn’t usually present itself on the frame of worry.

We exchange smiling glances like a tennis match, so I ask her how long she and the man on the gurney have been married. The writer in me needs to know her story, how she can have this kind of peace when her husband lays there immobile. Before the calling of my son’s name echoes me back to reality.

“Fifty two years,” she says proud. Then she opens her jar of fireflies, and the gallery seated around the room hush in the glow of her story.

Esther tells me about her four kids, the one she lost to deep water in the inlet when she was seven. How she can’t go to the beach anymore because that day haunts her like living a bad dream awake.

She points to her grandson Steven, tells me she cared for him when he was two weeks old. And all the weeks following until he became an adult.

A few others know Esther as mother too. One with snowy white hair and another carrot topped. She says the family is still good to her but people raise their eyebrows when those kids introduce her as part of their family, now that they are grown up with children of their own who call her grandma.

And just when she starts to tell me about a time the family quietly accuses her of stealing a childs missing Easter dress, and I feel like Kathryn Stockett taking notes for The Help, the nurse stands with her clipboard in the open door and calls Harrison’s name.

I take Esther’s hand in mine and thank her. She tells me she wants my phone number and her grandson laughs. He’s heard this before. I tell him maybe I can take her out to lunch so I can hear more, because I’m sure she has enough stories to fill a book.

“You can take her to lunch, and she has hundreds of stories,” he smiles, “but she’ll come and pick you up.”

Today I captured the loving glow of wisdom and excavated joy let loose among the chairs of waiting.

We’re all fireflies with a story, waiting for the lid to be unscrewed in the ask, so our words can fly free and light up the room.

Also linking with Walk with Him Wednesdays, Imperfect Prose, Word Filled Wednesdays, Thought Provoking Thursdays.

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Just for Today: It’s Enough

February 15, 2012 by 37 Comments

Sometimes clarity comes during the last swirl of claret sediment and a casual conversation over a kitchen island, among the spoons stuck with beans from last night’s chili and squiggles of yellow cheese lying like jigsaw puzzle. Harnessing fragmented thoughts to create a window to the soul.

I admit the words out loud. Hear myself ask him, “Is this all there is?” Picking up after the people I love, deciding what to eat for dinner, swiping squiggles off counters, pen daily prose when the destination remains foggy. All this today, only to wake up and start over again?

Is this all there is?

“Yes, this is all there is,” he responds while carrying dirty dishes to the sink, “for today.”

“Do you think that when Sarah wiped the nose of Isaac, stood over dirty dishwater; do you think she wondered if this was all there is,” he asks.

I remember how Sarah laughs unbelieving when God tells her she will conceive a child in her old age (Genesis 21:6). It wasn’t how she envisioned it.

Yes Sarah, wipe the nose of Isaac today because he is the promise of blessing for generations. The number of people his life will impact: like the grains of sand that cover the shore. But for today, pick up his clothes off the floor, feed him a warm breakfast, send him to school, teach him how to pray.

I have an acute fixation called the need to figure things out, nail them down, and then hang them up like trophies. Know where all the drama leads, how what I do today effects the future, if I am doing enough in order to reach the place I am going. This place called Unknown.

And maybe a mid-life crisis is really just God setting an alarm, the pitch of which we can’t hear until we arrive in the middle. The middle of what we envision, blasted free to fulfill the future.  

Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why Did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, ‘Can an old woman like me have a baby?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? (Genesis 18:13)

What if, what you do today effects eternity, but it’s not how you envision it?

I lean into the island, over the smell of chopped onions, laugh ashamed. Remember Naaman. See myself in the shadow of his story. (II Kings 5)

How Naaman nearly missed the gift of healing from the snowy white horror on his skin because the advice given wasn’t what he envisioned. It seemed foolish and beneath him to walk in and out of river water seven times.

Sometimes life doesn’t look the way we envision it, but God unfolds the mystery of eternity by being faithful in the here and now.

Is this all there is?

No, not if we are willing to be bread and wine poured out for Him. Poured out over a kitchen island full of dirty dishes and menial conversation.

And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. I John 2:17

 

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Tell Your Story, It Just Might Change Someone

January 23, 2012 by 65 Comments

As a pastor’s wife, I often defer to my husband to be the one with the voice when it comes to spiritual matters. After all, he is the one with the seminary degree, knowledge of the scriptures, the one asked to speak behind pulpits, in front of small groups, address large crowds.

And when we joined the Anglican world twelve years ago, I decided that my voice would remain at a whisper due to the crowded rooms of intellectual veracity.  I assumed that the pursuits of those who spent years in institutions of learning far exceeded my abilities to impart anything substantial in the dialogue among learned leaders.

So, I tuned out. Until recently.

Because Jesus didn’t just preach in the book of Mark and teach in the book of Matthew, he also told stories, used informal conversations to disciple in the book of Luke. Jesus spoke in parables.

Did you know that the word parable means something thrown alongside? Something unspiritual to help us see truth spattered throughout the mundane of life.

Like the way a shoe thrown alongside the road makes me think about how it got there and why. How a smashed water bottle leads to thoughts of children walking alongside dusty roads in Rwanda, the discarded water bottle of a foreigner, a treasure in their hand.

Stories to help people think differently about life.

Jesus used yeast in bread dough as an analogy for the way the Kingdom of God permeates all of life (Luke 13:20), a narrow door to explain how entering heaven isn’t easy (Luke 13:23-30),  finding a lost coin to illustrate joy when one sinner repents (Luke 15:8-10).

On his way to Jerusalem, between his ministry and the ultimate sacrifice he made for us, Jesus told those who never heard of him and those who didn’t  want to know him, about the Kingdom of God through informal conversations.

During the week, in between Sundays, whom are you telling about the Kingdom of God through the stories of your life?

Now, instead of tuning out, making assumptions about what I have to contribute, I engage in conversations with the Chanel girls behind the counter at Dillards, the cashier at Food Lion, a friend over a bowl of salad, the UPS driver who comes to my door more often than he probably should, the clerk at the bookstore who helps me find amazing books and the men and women who wear collars and clergy shirts.

And none of those conversation begin with Thus Saith the Lord.

Because through the sanctity in the language that is our story, we acknowledge the truth of His grace, His mercy, and His redemption. 

Inspiration for this post comes from a weekly bible study with beautiful women based on the book, Tell it Slant by Eugene Peterson.

Continuing the Joy Dare with Ann today to count thanks. If your joining this community to do the dare together, counting three a day to reach 1000 in 2012, leave your thanks in the comment box so we can celebrate thankfulness together; a unified smile across the miles.

  • For tears of grief over losing my precious dog, because they wash away pain, reveal perspective.
  • Nine years of joy with a faithful companion.
  • Cuddled up under covers with my precious daughter to watch Downton Abbey to stop the tears, give swollen eyes peace and laugh joy.
  • The hug of a friend who walks across the room when she sees me, knows my sorrow.
  • For text messages, Facebook comments, and words on this blog that bring comfort.
  • The revelation of storytelling as a call.
  • A husband who caresses my back all the way home from the vet’s office while he can barely see through the tears to drive.
  • For empathy, because it provides the basis for telling story and healing.

 Linking Tuesday with Shanda and Jen.

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Dinner Conversations and the Smell of Cold

November 10, 2011 by 15 Comments

“You can’t smell cold,” H says to the kids.  “Yes you can, you can smell it when it gets cold outside,” they rebuke.  And so the dinner conversation ensues.

I tell them how creative I think it is to say you can smell winter; the teenager insists we buy her the red Corvette that sits in a parking lot with the For Sale sign in the window.  This talk leads to H revealing a bit of dating history. How he dated a girl named Tammy who drives a Corvette and lives on top of a mountain with a view of Phoenix.

This hearing their Dad’s dating history evokes grins and giggles.

All the banter, in between scoops of pasta and salad, ends with a crescendo of H explaining how sometimes things happen in life that are out of our control and unjust.  “But nonetheless, God is in control,” he says with arms ejected over his head. 

Over warm bread slathered with butter, we talk about stuff.  The stuff of life that lies idle like pages on the heart waiting to be read aloud in a safe place.

And earlier on this day, when the sun still shines high overhead, I sit outside with a friend at a rod-iron umbrella table and talk about the stuff too. We hold chocolate mint lattes, breathe in the Fall air, look into the eyes and exchange listening and talking like a tennis match.

On most days, when the clock ticks noon, I cease striking the keys and staring at my computer screen to meet friends over coffee or lunch.  Some of these I meet for intentional coaching, others unintentional. 

No matter what the reason, I learn that despite age and circumstance of life, all women share these common struggles and longings of the heart:

  • Intermittent loneliness that feels overwhelming - despite being married with children or living alone.
  • The need for authentic community with peers.
  • The desire to have intimate friendships with women they can trust.
  • Lingering self-doubt in relationships (with God, spouse, children, friendships, etc.) and in making life choices for themselves and/or their children.
  • The uncertainty of life call and purpose.
  • And this lie:  Each woman thinks that she is the only one to experience these things, that everyone else has it all together.

I wonder if our thoughts about ourselves read like neon signs in Times Square stuck to the forehead for the world to see, would we be kinder, more understanding toward one another and less hard on ourselves? 

Because just knowing that someone struggles the same way we do makes life feel a little lighter.  Helps us breathe a little easier.

Maybe reading that list helps you breathe a bit easier today.

At the end of every conversation, whether looking in the eyes of my children or a friend, this summary:  We need a Savior because apart from Him, contentment and true happiness live far beyond our reach.

So tell me, what do you talk about over dinner at your house? Help us settle the debate and tell me, can you smell cold?

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