Inside Jokes

Sitting in church when everyone is praying, I do a really bad thing. I bow my head and do a fake close of the eyes. Then my eyelids spring open wide and I do a crowd intake. Sort of like a census - how many people are here, do I know them, and how my kids are behaving compared to theirs. I pray sometimes, but most of the time I save my prayers for when I am alone and can focus on them. I've never been able to pray in public - it doesn't feel right to me. The idea of it is cool, but the actual praying part is a bit daunting. What if someone here CAN hear my thoughts? No thanks, I'd rather take a pass and speak to the big man in private.

For the most part, I feel a kinship with the kids in the pews. Some do the fake bow down, too, but most are oblivious and go on lifting their skirt, mom pulling it down one-handed and head bent, skirt up, mom pulls it down over and over, while the little one picks her nose and silently tap dances. It happens every time and it's always a someone else's child. A few times I've started to laugh out loud and had to muffle it when a person looks up, kinda like Jesus and I are participating in the best inside joke. But, the kids and I, we have a hard time absorbing all this information thrown at us in one hour. We haven't been schooled enough to know what they are talking about, so we pick up the main points, sing really loud when it's a good song, and sometimes need to shake our legs and move when it gets a little stuffy in there.

This week Pastor Timm spoke at length about being luke warm - the people who went to church, were raised in church, and then turned their backs on it. The people who believe they are spiritual but do not believe they need to go to church. I felt like he was looking directly at me and wondering why I was sitting there pretending to pray, clapping with the music, and rubbing my daughter's back (after threatening her to "throw a rice crispie in church one more time".  I am who he was talking about - the luke warm. The non-believing believer. Although, I wasn't raised in church.

My dad grew up with two of the most devout Catholics you would ever meet. My MomMom once told me a story about being audited for six consecutive years because no one really donated, and claimed to donate, that much of their income to charity and church when they made so little income to start. But they did. They went to church faithfully and were the picture perfect members of the clergy - you could set your watch and calendars by their Lord's Prayers and service attendance. They lost a young son in the Vietnam war, although ironically, he died in Germany, and I know their faith was the only thing that kept them moving, while their three kids and plethora of grandkids eventually kept them living.

Nana and Papa were of different faiths - both Christian, but just different enough to make the nuns ill thinking the White kids were raised with two religions and not just Catholic. My mom remembers being slapped on the knuckles in parochial school for defending her dad to the nuns, as they promised he'd roast in hell. By the time she was in middle school she was skipping CCD to meet some friends at the ice cream shop with her donation money. She knew where she wasn't wanted and never got the warm hug and glow from the Lord. Not in that church.

Maybe it was losing his brother when his parents spent their life as servants to the one who could have granted their biggest prayer, or maybe it was knowing my mom wasn't comfortable in church, or maybe my dad really felt lukewarm, too, but they made a conscience decision not to take me to church, temple, or mosk. Sundays were days to spend together, do what we loved, and become closer as a family. Sundays were about having everyone to our house for a big dinner and a poker game or two after the dishes were done - from the kids to the grandparents, everyone had a spot around the table and a trick up their sleeve.  I look back on Sundays with the fondness and appreciation I look back to my first love or kiss. Sweet and perfect.

I went to a YMCA residence camp - Camp Kern - and fell in love with "church music". I'd go home after a week away singing all the songs I'd learned and slowly by fall would remember Princess Pat and Alice the Camel over any of the others, summer after summer. Finally, I found heaven. During the summer of 1999 I was a camp counselor - real deal, not junior counselor - at Camp Cheerio in Roaring Gap, North Carolina. I fell in L-O-V-E with residence camp, wilderness, and CHURCH MUSIC!

Every night at Vespers we'd gather around a gorgeous campfire deep in the Appalachians and sing beautiful music. During devotions we'd sing and all day we'd sing. Some silly, some slow, some fast, but all gorgeous. I heard almost every Mercy Me song for the first time at least a hundred times and loved Steven Curtis Chapman and all his lyrics. At nineteen, I learned I was a very very spiritual person.

I love church music. Contemporary church music. I don't love a lot of the "Good Christian People" I meet all the time who can sing every line of the songs. You know, the type of person who someone who regularly attends church and thinks highly of who they will be called a "good Christian person". What does that mean? It's somehow supposed to be the highest honor you can bestow upon someone, but I think the mere whisper of that is degrading to my Jewish cousins or Muslim neighbors. Instead of "they are a good person" it's "good CHRISTIAN person", so other religions cannot even compare to how good this person is in daily life.

I love the idea of using the Bible as a piece of literature to grow and love by - but all the hate that is spewed forth from Bible worshipers is sickening. I'm not even close to inferring all Bible worshipers are hateful - in fact, it seems to be a small percentage - but those people make the others look bad. The people I'm talking about spew forth about God loving everyone, God makes no mistakes, etc... but are the first people to hate on someone of a different race, sexual orientation, or creed.

I know so many people who 99.9% of other Christians would have no problem labeling "Good Christian People". However, these GCP are the ones who immediately turn up their noses when they learn someone's child "turned gay". Huh? Where is God's love? The GCP is sometimes the one who will raise your eyebrows as you talk by your mailbox with a nod to the new neighbors and say, eyebrows raised, "You know, they are from The South Side AND have a bi-racial grandchild!" expecting you to gasp, faint, and quiver on the front lawn. They are the same people who feel threatened in their marriage and the sanctity of their vows when another loving couple wants to make it official, too. Who happen to be of the same gender - how does that hurt your marriage? How does it make you more Godly to deny good people the rights you have as a heterosexual? What good will come of that?

As I sat there listening to Pastor Timm, who I adore, I must say, I realized I am lukewarm. Very lukewarm. I believe in 90% of what I'm told when I sit in his church. He's a very very kind man, wonderful role model for my children, and believes with a passion what he preaches. He speaks with so much energy and enthusiasm, and never puts himself on a higher level than who he preaches to - his kids sit in the second row, behaving, but also acting their age occasionally and his wife is pretty, nice, and sometimes wears jeans. They are great people.  I haven't read the Bible. I haven't done a Bible study, or small group, or really learned a lot more than what I've learned in a plethora of services over the years. I should, so I can make my own decisions and decide once and for all where I sit on this spectrum we call faith.

What I do know is that my mom made a comment to me one time that I was as good as a GCP can get. I asked her what she meant and she said that I will help anyone and everyone, give and never expect to get, and help charities and needy people without a blink of an eye. She said it's acceptance and a willingness to understand everyone, selflessness and an understanding of the world while feeling the spirit of God all around you, all the time, that makes you a GCP, not fervently attending Sunday mass and donating 10% of your income, that make you a GCP.

Perhaps. Thanks, Mom.

Or perhaps it is something greater, like the desire to be God's Child again, like Pastor Luke challenged us to want to become that makes us a GCP. You know, not to be a better version of yourself, but to become a child of God and new again. I just don't know.

I'd love to know Pastor Timm's thoughts, because after his service Sunday, it's all I can think about.