I am not responsible for the content of the above ads, which are often hilariously mis-matched.

www.flickr.com Isaac Photos

 

things done and left undone

I went to the children's service yesterday before my paper flower workshop (which went really well, btw - it's possible that I was a bit nervous; all of my dreams Saturday night involved gym class, which is never a good sign). I was especially struck by the confession; all of the children receive seashells to hold while they think about their mistakes and regrets for the past week, and then they put the shells into a bowl where they're washed clean while the priest pronounces the absolution. And everyone leaves ready to start over.

It's really that easy, isn't it? You know, I sit in the Rite II service every Sunday and say the words:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we
humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

and I believe that I Get It, and then something simple like the seashell ritual happens and I realize that a lot of those little kids holding shells probably have a better grip on grace than I do.

I'm grateful for the liturgical year; we've only been using the confession for a few weeks now, after retiring it during Easter season, and it feels fresh to me again. I know I sometimes zone out in church, letting my lips run over the familiar words without really grasping their meaning. Sometimes I find myself saying, "thanks be to GOD" with the wrong sort of inflection when a reading ends (nothing like a slow reader with a nice dry section of Numbers to make a person start looking for burned-out lightbulbs in the ceiling). I admit that sometimes, church just doesn't work for me in the moment.

I used to worry about this. I used to think that I had to be feeling Very Connected With God every minute of the service in order to be doing it right. Fortunately, that isn't the case. For one thing, there's a lot going on there, more than I can take in with my overly-buzzy, Sunday morning brain. So I've decided to be ok with just letting whatever connects, connect, and leaving the rest for the following weeks. Right now, the confession is resonating for me. Some weeks it's the creed that really gets to me, some weeks it's the first few sentences of the eucharistic prayer.

I try to pay attention to what cuts through my defenses, and also to what brings them out. The latter usually points to someplace where God and I aren't on the same page. Lately, I've been having an urge to flee right before the Peace. I'm just really prickly lately and don't want to connect with people any more than I have to, I guess. I'm in an awkward, gangly state at the moment, neither here nor there, and I'd be perfectly happy to just go and hide out until I'm molted or hatched or whatever the hell is happening to me is finished. So, every week is an exercise in being who I am, where I am and asking people to deal with me as-is. And they always do and I often get surprise hugs and feel a billion times better afterwards. So it's not like I even know what I need or want but I hang in there and it seems to happen anyway. God is crafty that way.
link | Comments []

[back to top]

current