vitalwholeness

My friend, June, just wrote about a new friend she met in church.

“A young woman came into our church yesterday. I greeted her and she said it was her first time here so I invited her to sit with me.I generally do that when women come in alone for their first time. It is a big church and can be kind of intimidating. Anyway, she sat near me for awhile and then rolled up her coat, lay down and went to sleep and slept through the service. Someone asked me if she was ok. And, she was. She just needed a quiet and safe space to rest. I don’t think it matters that she missed the readings or the sermon. I think it matters that she found a safe space and could rest. I told her that I hoped to see her next week and she smiled and said that she will be coming back.”

Who knows why she needed to have a nap there and then. Maybe she was exhausted after returning from the front lines of life. Was it, borrowing the words of Frederick Buechner, that she collapsed from the too-muchness or too-littleness of her existence? Was she in search of sanctuary, a quiet and safe space to rest, as my friend June put it? Was it a return to something vaguely familiar from childhood, something lost in the intervening years? Did it take her back to the innocence of childhood, sitting peacefully beside parents as carols drifted over her?

I remember hearing Anne Lamott tell about a time in her life when she was struggling, a single mom wrestling with her demons. A black church was nearby her apartment in the city, and she could hear the Gospel music wafting out onto the streets. She crept inside, arriving late, leaving early, sitting near the exits. She somehow stepped inside a holy zone, though she couldn’t really explain how it worked. The sisters welcomed her, took her in. It was only later, much later, that she put together what she had experienced with what was being talked about.

It’s not that theology is unimportant, because it’s not. It matters what kind of God or Jesus or way of life or church you’re describing. They’re not the same thing, these notions of God, and one version can attract and build up and another repel and tear down. But these theological principles are most likely not the first term. The first term may not be rational at all. The first term has something to do with the woman sleeping in that pew, how she found a resting place, surrounded by a community going through the ordinary paces of its tradition. That’s the seen part. The unseen part is everything that guided her feet to this place in the first place, the simple kindness that welcomed her, and what the spirit is up to way back behind the curtain.

Preachers have always been consoled by the idea that people actually learn in their sleep; meticulously worked out sermons are occasionally delivered among quiet snoring. But it’s not really about the learning, though learning is important. It is mostly about grace, belonging, and peace. Can I be at home here, take off my shoes like I would in the home of a friend, and trust that everything will be okay? If so, then I can roll up my coat as a pillow and ascend a ladder that reaches a place so far beyond what I compehend that I am filled with childlike wonder. And if that happens, well, it is a very good service indeed