hope/fear

A message exchange regarding my Facebook status change to “Rachel is HOPE NOT FEAR HOPE NOT FEAR HOPE NOT FEAR.

J: “your status is the same as the phrase of my mantra over the last year or so….i really do have to repeat it to myself out loud sometimes. one time, in a particularly freaky freak-out, i wrote ‘unafraid’ on the inside of my wrist with a permanent marker…

everything ok?”

ME: “Yes, okay. We’re always broke, which wears on a person and keeps stalling us in weird and frustrating spots. It wears on us and I can’t help but feel like it’s a burden on our families and the people around us.

People, like people I love and am friends with, are doing things like calling a decent politician with a good hopeful message (who happens to be a believer) a terrorist in order to try to elect someone who is pro-life/is Republican/plays on their fears. That wears on me. Those are two things. Hope, not Fear, is sort of Obama-esque (Obamian?), I think, it’s part of the zeitgeist of the times, but I have to remind myself that nothing changes for us, that message is the message of Jesus really, and is why it resonates so much, I just have to keep going as if the road is going to be under my feet. So it goes.”

I have such high hopes

for this meeting we’re having tonight. I see it as a refuge for people who love Jesus, or are at least interested in Jesus, but hate going to church, or are afraid to, or just can’t seem to wake up on time. So far, most of us fit that bill.

I also see this as a place to invite people that is less intimidating and more friendly than church, somewhere they don’t have to think about what they’re going to wear. Or bite their tongues. (Consider that your invitation, friends. I promise you we won’t baptise you in the bathtub or assume anything.)

I mean, I go to church. I shuffle in the door every month or so, although I always intend to make it more often. I’ve been out of town on weekends a lot (here come the excuses) and it’s just so BIG and ORGANIZED. It’s a great place, though. I actually really love it. The man who’s likely to be the new pastor is brilliant, absolutely a gift. His teaching cuts right to my heart. But there’s all this other stuff involved.

The other day, there was a Congregational Meeting to start deciding on a PROCESS to decide who the new head pastor would be, because the old head pastor is stepping down. I was standing outside with a group of AWESOME girls from this church, who are all painters and, oddly enough, about exactly my age, all of them. I said, “Aren’t you all going to the meeting?” They said, “Oh, no, we’re not members.” I laughed and said, “Me, neither! But I thought for sure you all were.” There’s a process for that too.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing ridiculous. You either go to a couple classes, or you attend the church for a while, and when you feel like being a member, you meet with a pastor. There’s some stuff you agree to; I can’t remember what it is.

This is boring me already.

—

The other night, I apologized to ER for calling him out about waffling about going to church the next day. I was actually mad at BJ, and it kinda spilled on ER a bit, so I called to apologize. He said, no need. He said he looks for that in a friend; someone who’s willing to call him out when needed.

—

My mom told me breathlessly on the phone, “Oh, I wish I could just be a fly on the wall at that meeting!” She thinks my friends are really cool, and she knows my difficulties with this kind of thing.

I see this meeting as a lot of things, when in reality, it’s nothing yet. It’s just an appointment. I-am-trying-not-to-get-my-hopes-up. Because I tried to do this in San Diego and it flopped. Like a big dead smelly fish. We had one meeting that was magical, where we prayed together and it was like music, and it was like Romans 8:26 happening in front of us (here are two different translations):

“And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.”
-New Living translation

“…we do not know how to pray worthily as sons of God, but his Spirit within us is actually praying for us in those agonising longings which never find words. And God who knows the heart’s secrets understands, of course, the Spirit’s intention as he prays for those who love God.”
-JB Philips translation

But then it just fizzled. I don’t think that’s going to happen this time, I really don’t, based on the people involved, and the ways that I’ve grown since then, and the rightness of this moment.

I used to have a really traditional, transactional way of looking at reading the Bible with a group of people. I used to think that there had to be a teacher, a wise man, a scholar. And how could I ever be that? I couldn’t, but I tried, and so I reckon I undermined the group in some ways. Now, my profession is to get groups of difficult people to talk about what they’ve read and relate it to their lives, and to sidestep the traditional relationship between adult:group of teenagers. It applies. Surprise, surprise.