Parish Shopping, redux

As previously noted, I have been church shopping. An interesting adventure, that. I was tempted to blog about each of the parishes I visited, documenting what I saw, heard, felt as a visitor to each community. However, as I can be overly critical about matters liturgical (okay, fine. I can be overly critical about everything), I felt that could be interpreted as inappropriate and hurtful. (Of course, that would require having readers…)

I did blog about my experience at one parish, and while the first encounter certainly seemed grace-filled, I wasn’t sold. I did, indeed, return, and it was, again, a comfortable experience. Joyful, even. But I wasn’t sold. I had yet to walk into a parish and think, “Yes. This is it. This is where I feel most at home.”

And then a puzzling phenomena occurred. Articles and blog posts about church shopping started popping up like dandelions on an abandoned lot in May. It started with Busted Halo. Then, Amy Welborn posted not about parish shopping, but about her “Month of Sundays.” Even the National Catholic Reporter featured an article in the “Young Voices” column about “Finding home,” where the author details the challenges of finding a spiritual home and community.

Perhaps I’m placing too much emphasis on this phenomena. Maybe I’m too “mystical” about matters. But it seems to me that e-articles might be the new handwriting on the wall, and blog posts are replacing burning bushes. It is difficult to believe that God is NOT trying to get my attention when the very matters of my heart are suddenly the very subject of my reading routine. THREE posts show up, beginning on Thursday, with the last being posted on Sunday? It’s at least worth a second consideration. Superstitious or not, I pay attention to these things.

The gist of the articles/blog posts were to not get caught up in the small details, no parish is perfect, prioritize what qualities are being sought, etc. etc. etc. Nothing I didn’t know or hadn’t done.

So what am I looking for? I want to find the community where I best encounter Christ – where Eucharist is a verb; an animator of the Gospel message. I want a parish where people love Jesus, even when it’s hard and confusing and they don’t feel like their prayers being heard beyond the rafters. I want a community where people come as they are, bringing their messy lives and placing them on the altar as holy sacrifices in this beautiful chaos we call life, because that’s what they have to offer. I want a parish where people help others to pick up their lives again, and carry them back out into the world, mindful that we are all in this together.

I want a place where I can fall in love with God again and again. I want a community that will encourage me to continue to seek God’s grace in my day to day living, and to remind me that Christ is present, even in the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. Especially in the day-to-day business of living. I want a parish that will nourish my hungry soul, and help fill me to overflowing with love for God, for God’s work.

Beyond that, I want a place where I can use my gifts, and figure out the gifts that I don’t even know I have. I want to be involved. No, really. I do.

So does this place exist? I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet, if it does. Is it idealistic? Probably. I may not ever find this place. I hope to find some place close.

Amy Welborn’s closing thoughts, in many ways, summarized what I want. She writes, “I followed God around a small bit of his world, and he followed me. Never abandoned, never alone, able to pick out words of hope and truth no matter what the language, challenged to think bigger, to dig more deeply for others, joining in the sacrifice of praise, voiced in many languages, but really only one.”

I want to find the place where I am able to pick out the words of hope and truth, in a community of people who also are seeking hope and truth. I want to be challenged to think bigger, to dig deeper.

** So I've spent a week trying to "finish" this blog...and I can't find an end. I realized today that this is appropriate, because I haven't found what it is I seek. Stay tuned...

Parish Shopping

(New post, as promised. This, however, was not the topic I thought I would be blogging about, but it was what came together in a coherent fashion. I'm hoping to be better about posting on a regular basis, but we'll see. :))


I am parish shopping. Since moving, I’ve been attending Mass at the University on the weekends I’m home (which has been about… two.) I love Mass on campus, but realize I need to be a grown up Catholic and find a parish home. (Actually, it’s far more complicated than that, but that’s for another post.)This past Sunday, I took the opportunity to scope out a parish that I had heard was great. And I was taking Boyfriend with me.

As a result of sleeping late, and then spending twenty minutes trying to figure out the Mass times for said parish, I found myself waiting in the gathering space for the entrance procession to… enter… before getting a quick splash of holy water from the baptismal font and slipping into the row of seats that is the second from the back. The phrase from last week’s Gospel that had been lingering with me all week echoed in my mind– “Do not be afraid; just have faith.”

The pastor dove right into the greeting and the opening prayer sequence, and, being fond of church architecture, I found myself checking the aesthetics rather than calling to mind my sins during the penitential rite. Confiteor? Lord Have Mercy? Have no idea. I was mesmerized by the crucifix. The brick. The high wooden, curving beams. The glints of color from the stained glass – no images, just colored shapes. Something about this place. It beckoned something deep inside me. It was familiar, but not quite comfortable…

It was during the Gospel that it hit me.
“He left that place and came to his hometown…”
Hometown?
Home?
Left.

“And they took offense at him.”
Offense.

“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown…”
Hometown?

“…and among their own kin…”
Kin?

“and in their own house.”
House.
House? Home. Then I realized --this parish looks remarkably like the church where I grew up. The brick. The high, wooden curving beams. The stained glass windows – no images, just colored shapes. I closed my eyes to fight back the startled tears that threatened to silently overflow down my cheeks, like the water in the baptismal font, just a few feet away.

With my eyes closed, I could see it all perfectly. Instead of a crucifix, there was plain wooden cross against the background of what I have come to call Virgin Mary blue. I remember thinking as a kid that it looked like the flannel board in my Sunday School class. The wooden ceiling flashed in my mind; I could see the place where the two knots in the wood looked like eyes, just over the grand piano – the same piano I played at my recital in fifth grade. Windmills. The song was called Windmills. The pulpit where I sang on Easter morning with Jayme and Nicole. The pews where we gathered, too many in one pew, for Danny’s funeral. The rail where I knelt at Altar Call, Yvonne on one side, Susie on the other. It all flashed by at a dizzyingly fast pace, bringing with it the barrage of hurt and loneliness, joy and awe that came from leaving that place.

“And he was amazed at their unbelief.”

I opened my eyes. The new, but oddly familiar place was filled with people. Children. Seniors. Teens. Adults. Young Adults.

As the pastor came forward for his homily, he paused and looked out over the people gathered. He said that it wasn’t part of his homily, but it had been weighing on him, so he needed to say it. He had heard people say that they didn’t like going to church. It was just a bunch of people there, because they had to be, going through the motions. But, he said. BUT. It was so cool to look out and see a young adult home from college, another just out of the hospital. A family, trying to deal with the challenges of the economy and busy schedules. It was so cool to look out and see everyone there, bringing their stories, gathered as a community of believers, trying to figure out a life in Christ. (Okay, so he didn’t say it exactly like that… but that’s the essence of it.) A community of believers.

I don’t really remember the homily (though I remember thinking it was good), and the only part of the Liturgy of the Eucharist I remember is when everyone stood up after the “Mystery of Faith,” apparently mistaking it for the Great Amen, and thinking the Our Father was next… and then slowly dropping hands with the people next to them as they realized everyone stood at the wrong time, while the pastor continued the Eucharistic Prayer.

And I remember the moment when the woman in front of me warned her daughter in the “Straighten-Up-Right-Now-Or-Else” strained whisper. “Grace.”

Grace? Grace.

As I was leaving, I stopped to shake the pastor’s hand. I knew who he was; I might have even seen him before, but I didn’t think he knew me. As I stretched out my hand, he gathered me in a hug, and said, “How are you? I’m so glad to see you.”

The next day, I reported my parish shopping trip to my co-workers. “Do you think you’ll go back?” one asked. In the same moment, I opened an e-mail message containing the Gospel for next week.

“He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave.’”

House.

Yes, I think I’ll go back.
Thanks, Grace.