speed dialing with no signal at all

.

i've been going to church lately, and to a wednesday night young peoples' talk/fellowship/coffee group associated with that church. i've done pretty good, actually, attending both more often than not.

i'm not really sure what made me give church another shot. i don't really think i drifted away because of some great sense of disillusionment, or really much beyond laziness and maybe a bit of indifference. i've always kind of figured that my faith is the basis for everything i do in my life, my convictions to social justice/development etc. it's a really convenient argument to make when you want the excuse to ignore your spiritual life.

being back at church, in worship and community among other christians, well, it hasn't been any kind of ecstatic experience. i've read and heard so many times about people coming back to religion and feeling some great weight lifted or being moved to tears etc. etc. etc. i haven't experienced that by any means. not by a long shot. i wouldn't say i feel myself being spiritually fed...

so why am i still going? i'm not sure i have a good answer to that. i guess if push comes to shove i'd say that if nothing else, it's teaching me discipline, faithfulness, and patience. jumping back into a church community i'm suddenly being called on to not only be civil to, but to spend a good deal of time talking to and forming a community with a number of people who don't think at all like me, and some of who just downright annoy me. it's hard. it's good. it makes me realize for all the love and goodness and compassion i like to think i have, that i can muster for my friends and those like-mindeds i surround myself with, i have far less than i want to admit. this is also good. at least knowing this is.

i think i came back to church because my life sucked. two months in my life still kind of sucks. but i will try to be faithful. God is faithful, even when we don't feel it. sooner or later something may click for me at St. Georges. it may not, but maybe something will click in me all the same.

and now, of course, i need to share something that has clicked for me lately... because this just simply wouldn't be my blog without my stealing the words of someone far more eloquent. i have been reading this poem every single morning for the past few weeks, and even though i think that mary oliver and i are at pretty different life stages, it is so beautiful, and has really caught something in me.

thirst - mary oliver

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.