Part One: Common Stones
It’s hard to think that it’s been almost two years since I wanted to quit church, ours. I mean that particular building, that group, not the Body, never the Body.
A Sunday in late August, as the corn dried golden all around that country church, Beryl Martin, after playing the closing chords of the service the way only she can, hair coiffed and soft eyes searching, she found Mama in the foyer, back by the coat hangers and children darting between legs, and she asked after me. Asked how I was doing and all. Did Mama think Ann might be interested in helping with the women’s ministry?
“No, Beryl, I don’t think so.” Mama has a reputation for her nonsensical ways; gentle, warm, but forthright nonetheless. “She’s not good here. Not good at all.” I can hear Mama saying that, the way she’d punctuate “at all,” her voice deep and certain, her eyes peering knowingly over the rim of her glasses, headed tilted down.
It bothered me for days, when Mama told me of their exchange. Laying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, that line would lay out too, stretching long beside me, prodding me awake. “She’s not good here.”
And I’d say it again, what I’d been muttering all along, “But I am good. No, maybe not entirely with this particular church.” Satin night fell soft outside windows like a headboard over these pillows and I’d look up to Him who names those diamonds strewn across the Milky Way, “But I am good with You, God. Know I am good with You.”
I was.
But still this internal bleeding, anguishing slow drips of sadness that seemed to know no healing.
I was growing estranged from His Bride.
It hurt, my soul did, in this physical, fractured way, to have Mama say what I couldn’t say. That, true, I struggled to sit for a few hours with that particular group of people for whom the Carpenter had stretched out two palms and let hammer staple him to wood. That I shrunk from gathering formally with this group of folks who took His name as theirs. That I wanted to worship God elsewhere, even alone, but not in the midst of that assembly.
I mourned. But truth is I didn’t fit, couldn’t force myself into the shape of the place. I didn’t belong. I came to live on the fringe, a Body appendage exposed and cold. On the outside. This endlessly repeating experience of trudging through chilled blue moon nights looking for someone to open a door into warmth and a seat by the hearth. I think the loneliness though gnawed worse than the cold.
But, really, I wasn’t alone: many wander raw. The church as a whole is full of outsiders, dangling body parts who find themselves far from the heated heart of their spiritual home. So many numb-cold fingers of discouraged outsiders looking for doors, doors into places that read, understand, live Scripture as they understand it, to warm near sojourners who burn within as they do. The Christian landscape swarms with migrating outsiders seeking new church homes, new hearths to draw close to, places to feel embraced, full, wrapped warm.
We stayed. I got up every Sunday, dressed kids, gathered Bibles. We went. I read eyes of other outsiders, wounded ones who stayed committed through long years of cold. I read this line, underlined it, held it as a light through the wintry nights howling:
“God wants you to be in regular close fellowship with other believers so you can develop the skill of loving. Love cannot be learned in isolation. You have to be around people --- irritating, imperfect, frustrating people.” *
Maybe even wrong people. Not on the essentials, but perhaps not entirely right on doctrine as a whole. Could I love frustrating, arrogant, (possibly) wrong people? (And, anyways, haven’t I been all of that and more?) So we intentionally attended. Though worn out we reached out.
We (even us) learned grace.
But I never knew it like I did this past Sunday, standing there in the last row, holding a toddler, voice rising on hymn’s chorus. She’s standing too, singing there in front of me, holding a toddler of her own. A rowdy, bobbing toddler, playing this riotous game of peek-a-boo with 6-year-old sister who’s darting in and out behind Mama’s shoulder. A younger brother’s running back and forth across the chairs.
“Stop now,” she glares at oldest girl. Daughter giggles, pops around other shoulder. Toddler howls loudly, throws himself in her direction and another boisterous round begins. Singlehandedly, vainly, this Mama shoos away, shifts, shakes an angry finger and the kids play on.
I ache.
She’s bravely here alone, a single Mom trying to manage, no hand from a mate and father. He’s living with a highschool girl who swells with another of his children. It wasn’t that long ago this Mama too ran with that crowd, writing her own wild story.
My brother knows. He’s happens to be standing beside Single Mama and children this Sunday. I look at them both, standing here, side-by-side. They both did the same parties, the same all-nighters. And, incomprehensibly (but isn’t that God’s modus operandi?), they both met the same Jesus. Instead of dragging through a Sunday morning hangover from a Saturday night binge, they are standing here in a little country church singing a two-hundred year old hymn of worship.
Little girl flashes again, toddler shrieks with delight, brother dashes. Single Mama frowns, hisses, sighs.
Then my brother leans over.
Leans over, whispers something, and she nods. He scoops up brother zipping by, wraps arm around peek-a-booing sister, and the chorus crescendos but I can’t sing for the mess of tears streaming down.
I’ve seen grace.
Raymond Petersen’s leading the congregational hymn, and Charlotte Hiemstra’s playing the piano, and widowed Gerald Hayden’s manning the sound system. Ann and Piet Van Den Boogard are on the far side with the ten kids, and bachelor Andrew Versteeg is holding out a hymnal for the seeing-impaired friend he faithfully brings. And through this spilling blur, I see.
I see Bert Struyk across the aisle. Bert shaved bald, that crescent scar arching across his head where they cut into his skull and sliced out that knot of cancer. Bert exposed. Like us in this moment.
I may wash up, dress in Sunday finery, prune and preen and turn out to church looking polished. And in hushed voices (and sometimes a tad too loud) I disparage other pilgrims, point out the hypocrites, the Pharisees, the power hungry, the doctrinally wayward. I, we, try to tear off the masks, deflate the puffed up, set things straight.
But in this moment, we are this, all of us, naked and seen.
We are all as messy as these rowdy kids and an exasperated Mama. We are all as bruised as an abandoned wife with her own sordid past. Without exception, we are all scarred, torn and scraped, battle weary. Me (chiefly). My brother. Gerald Hayden. Bert. The elders. The pastor. All ragamuffins in need of a little help. A lot of grace.
I wipe wet cheeks, try to focus on the next verse of words still swimming when I realize that us ruffians are all He has. The only ones He has to gather here, braid voices together, and worship Him. The only ones He has to lean over, offer a hand, and love each other. The only ones to be His Body here in this wrecked world. We’re it. For all our façades and our masks, we are just a bunch of broken, cracked, messy ones. We, His global church, His beloved Bride.
We'll never get it all right, be all right, create heaven on earth. Because, individually, we aren't. Though I wish, no church utopias on this side. Because each of us as body parts are a bit malformed. (I guess that is what heaven's for, the perfecting yet to come.) But we can be here, together, loving, a bruised bride wooing the Bridegroom with worship.
The hymn’s on the last verse, and the children are asked to file down to Sunday School. My brother helps rambunctious children make their way to the aisle. Relieved, Single Mama smiles up to my brother, nods gratefully, takes little hands, and leads dragging, dancing ones to the stairs. Bert Struyk’s smiling too, because he’s here. Not sick at home or in some hospital bed, but here in the gathering of the saints. Us sinners sanctified into saints… still stumbling, still scarred under it all, but saints nonetheless, headed in the right direction, Crossward.
And I am here too, across the aisle from Bert, standing behind my brother, scanning the rows, looking for Mama’s face, her crown of white. I want to find her, tell her about loving the messy ones, like a Carpenter I know does for me, about living in community with (irritating, frustrating, maybe even wrong) ragamuffins, some obvious, some not so obvious, tell her about this grace I’ve touched for the wounded and mended ones.
Tell her that I am here, that I am staying here, and I am good.
Lord, today how do you call me to warm chilled outsiders who are scarred deep--scars I too know and carry. How can I love messy ones like me... who may not even know they're messy? How can I love Your broken and limping Bride? Show me. She's all You have. And I am a body part, messy too, made for grace and called to love.
To read part one of these thoughts : Common Stones
* quoted from the Purpose Driven Life
