Back to Church

A cathedral I visited in Bavaria. 

 I started going to church again a few weeks ago.

It's a new-to-me denomination, United Methodist. The building is 200 years old, high-roofed and painted white inside and out. The huge windows let in the glow of sunshine and let me daydream as I watch the clouds roll by. Two tapestries, colored like stained-glass patterns, depict a symbol for the Trinity on one side of a pipe organ, and a crown on the other. The songs are all hymns, and the average age of the people at the early-morning service is about 105. The church is what I would've called heretical for most of my life: they allow women to be pastors, and they affirm LGBTQ+ people. I've joined the "young adult" Bible study. I am trying again.

I've never attended a church that wasn't weird. The weirdness is baked in, and it's not a bad thing, but it's still very much there. A lifetime of attending church as a fourth-generation Christian has not shaken from me the feeling of how very strange it is for people to gather in this way— and for a religion to collectively agree that this particular kind of meeting is the main way to test the genuineness of someone's faith.

I sight-sing the alto line from the worn navy-blue hymnal, and I think of all the churches I have visited in my life.

Old Orchard Presbyterian Church, my earliest church memories: high wooden ceilings, playing with flannel books in the pews, tapestries with nature scenes quilted on them, Pastor Ron closing his eyes while he sang hymns, playing with my three best friends in the church yard afterward, adults expecting me to know words like propitiation, Christmas parties and talent shows and the thousand small things that made me know that I belonged, truly belonged. The grief of leaving when we felt we should attend church closer to home.

The Christian-denomination church in my mom's hometown in Illinois: Sunday-school songs that Mom lectured us not to sing in our free time because of poor theology (The Devil is a sly old fox/If I could catch him I'd put him in a box…), the airy white sanctuary with puke-pink windows, the old hymns, the florescent-lit basement where we ate cake after we buried my grandmother.

The Catholic masses we attended when Dad was sick and Mom didn't want to drive out to Webster Groves: dipping my fingers in the basis of water to make the sign of the cross, feeling hushed and haunted by the darkness bathed in stained-glass light, learning the Stations of the Cross, reciting the Lord's Prayer, awkwardly passing on taking the Eucharist since we weren't Catholic, listening to the echoes.

The Southern Baptist Church that never felt like home: choir in navy-blue robes, chromatic modulation on every song, learning to clap along, watching the drummer's kids play video games in the pew in front of us, feeling moved by the altar call but not being brave enough to go forward. The place I was baptized, dunked in a white robe in the lukewarm water.

The nondenominational mega-church: bright lights, set design, auditorium balcony seating, building campaigns, conversations in the bright atrium with the smell of artisan coffee, carving out a small community anyway, feeling like I belonged to something important for a few months until Mom got sick and the family stopped going to church.

The Lutheran church one miles away from our house at the time, where my sister and I walked: learning to recite liturgy and sing recitative, declaring with the congregation over sleeping infants that yes, we desire to be baptized, isolation, the way people bobbed back and forth like dashboard toys while shuffling back into pews after communion, going to church because that's what you do and we had to figure out someway to keep faith alive while chronic illness was swallowing our family.

The Nazarene Church I called home for seven years: everyone saying hello with hugs, playing violin for the service, sobbing in the pews without shame, arguments about predestination at Bible study, lunches at McDonalds afterward, a safe space to land between every solo trip, the gray-carpet stage where I stood beneath a canopy of tule and vowed to love Zach till death do us part. The grief of leaving when we felt we should attend church closer to home.

The First Baptist church in Bellingham, Washington I attended three times: church ladies giving me hugs, the pastor speaking in a nervous, endearing way, a different genre of music every week, the cozy feeling that made me feel accepted and at home.

The Baptist church I almost attended in Sacramento: chickening out out when I walked close and saw a bunch of people in three-piece suits, pastel floor-length dresses, and fancy Sunday hats walking up to the door. 

The Pentecostal church in Florida City who made me stand up to introduce myself in front of the whole congregation and then didn't talk to me at all: crying in the pew, dancing with Jesus, not caring that no one else spoke to me because I was there with Jesus and I was in love.

Mars Hill, Part One, Seattle location: crying on a stranger's shoulder, eating soup with her afterward, unsure how I could go on.

The Eastern Orthodox service I attended in a tent at Cornerstone Music Festival: sitting in a folding chair in grubby sweaty clothes while a priest in a black robe swung a censer of fragrant incense and chanted the liturgy.

The Mennonite church in Minneapolis which hosted a Christian anarchist conference: sweating in the non-air-conditioned sanctuary, singing songs about dumpster-diving for Jesus, my friend Tyler washing my feet as I teared up, eating vegan soup in the basement, learning to open my mind.

Mars Hill, Part Two, Portland location: stained-glass windows and a screen where the sermon was projected, women who taught me about grace and forgiveness and strength, beer and Calvinism and patriarchy bundled up into a small group of beautiful people who made me feel that I belonged.

The beer festival/outdoor church service I attended in Bavaria: listening to the words in German, picking out the Our Father from the cadence of the phrases, eating a communion wafer because I was desperate from some connection to the Church Universal, being weirded out when the priest drank the whole glass of wine instead of distributing it, asking my host what the sermon was about and her saying, "Just some nonsense."

The cult-like but incredibly-friendly charismatic church in Central California who welcomed Zach and me fresh off the Pacific Crest Trail: ducking our heads while the pastor spoke in tongues over us, people dog-piling on the front stage to weep during worship, the pastor yelling, "HUH?!" instead of the usual "Amen?", a couple inviting us to do laundry at their house afterward.

The church Zach attended during our seven-month trip to Portland, when the first wave of Deconstruction was absolutely wrecking me: weekly communion, often served by a kid, the familiar words— This is the body of Christ, broken for you. This is the blood of Christ, shed for you— destroying me week after week, the hipster-bearded pastor anointing my forehead with frankincense oil, the potlucks in the church basement afterward, the way I leaned into my faith, willing it to not fracture, willing it to be whole. 

The small non-denominational church nearby: full of talented musicians who took turns playing every week, where I left crying every week because I couldn't bear evangelical theology anymore.

And then, for a few months, nothing.

Then here I am, in church again. It's my birthright, my heritage. I can't stay away from it, because it's familiar. Every church, no matter how weird, has always had the scent of reunion. It's a family, and what a messed-up family it is— but it's mine. No matter what, for better or for worse, it's still mine.

So I'm back in a pew, belting out the old hymns, watching others to figure out when to stand up and when to sit down, arguing theology in Bible study, trying to begin the awkward social dance of bringing myself into a community, trying to believe that I belong. It's what I do. It's what I've always done. 

I try again.

~~~