I’m on the hunt for a church community.
I can’t in good conscience identify church as a need anymore. Just shy of two years into this pandemic and I recognize that learning, worshiping, seeking justice, and building community with the same group of people, and then weathering disagreements with those people with grace isn’t something a whole lot of us can claim we have regular access to.
But a longing to seek?
A vision worth hoping for?
I miss church the way a fourth-grader misses Friday Pizza Night after her mom has gone on a health kick. “Remember when we used to get pepperoni pizza every week and then we would watch a movie together? REMEMBER!”
Some days, I wonder if rather than continuing to hunt for my elusive prey, it’s better to just embrace that I’m now religiously vegetarian.
Faith is a high-fiber experience of thoughtful books, intentional self-practice, angsty but honest conversation with fellow vegetarians, and straight-up Scripture when I can stomach it.
It’s not expressive and it’s not sumptuous. It’s sustaining.
I really could take or leave the church rhythms themselves, but the way that kind of shared experience could usher me into an awareness of God’s presence, that is what I miss most. I don’t feel close to the current of what God is about in the world. And I want to.
