My thoughts, over the past week, have been forming stars, and I think they are finally discernible as a constellation of sorts. That's my highfalutin way of saying I finally know what I want to say.
I've spent a lot of this year thinking, "Finally! People who think/feel/act like me!" By which I mean, I met people outside the Baptist bubble who think Catholics can teach us things about Jesus, and Communion is a lovely weekly reminder of our dependency upon God, and drinking isn't evil, and cussing has a purpose, and women are equal imagers of God. When I found these people, I formed my own bubble. A snobby and exclusive bubble, I might add.
It was all very confusing, because while I adore my family at Woodland, I started feeling like maybe I'd been brought up wrong, and I resented the faceless and nameless church for raising me conservative and bigoted. I think I was taking legitimate experiences at Woodland and heavily overlaying them with my own personality as well as the face of the Church presented by media. I needed someone to blame for who I was, and I took it out on people I love.
Then I went home to Peoria last weekend. And I mean, went home. Woodland, for all its ridiculousness, is my family. It was heartbreakingly wonderful to hug dozens of people, to continue conversations from six months ago, to know and be known. It was so good to hear the Truth amongst people who may not agree with me about everything, but who love me anyway. It was complete crap, leaving after two days. Watching Woodland gear up for summer, with VBS (which I hate, even, but I wanted to be a part) and mission trips and youth gatherings and Sunday School plans and summer Sundays, I ached inside for missing it.
When I got back to Dallas, I didn't know what to feel, which is why I haven't written about it yet. Because the fact remains that sure, I don't 100% with Woodland's party line. There are people in Dallas with whom I can sigh, "You think that? I do too! Can we be best friends??" I'm so grateful to have those people in my life, who make me feel less weird, who encourage me to pursue the ideas I'm passionate about and engage with culture. But I couldn't ignore this huge hole inside reminding me of my church family in Peoria.
In July, I'm going to take a class on Ecclesiology, the theological word for "study of the Church." In preparation, I've been reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He lectured pretty fiercely on the stupidity and sinfulness of "visionary" people who think they can "fix" the Church. Which, well, stung a little, because I can definitely remember a particular blog post I once wrote that was all about how Church would be if I were in charge. Bonhoeffer's point is that the Church is God's gift to us, with all its messiness and glory and frustrations. In fact, it's in the messiness and frustrations that we really shine.
That's what I realized. I'm copying a sentence I wrote earlier: "It was so good to hear the Truth amongst people who may not agree with me about everything, but who love me anyway." That's the Church. A bunch of people with a bunch of ideas, trying and failing to understand our great and mysterious God. Agreeing on every little detail is not what glorifies God--honestly, that might mean we are cult. It's in the disagreements, expressed in love, that Christians show the character of Jesus. The fact that I push people's buttons, but they still hug me and ask my opinions, well. That's what Woodland is. It's my church.
I guess the point of all this is, my feelings haven't changed. I still get frustrated with Woodland, and with Christianity as an institution. But my feelings about my feelings have changed. Those frustrations are something beautiful, I think, and I love being a part of a group of people who accept me despite my idiosyncrasies, and I love being friends with people even when I disagree with something they say.
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