As a young girl, growing up attending a Missionary Baptist church in a little working class neighborhood in Arkansas, I was familiar with the hell, fire and brimstone preaching that accompanied every Sunday morning service.
Truth to be told, I never got used to those fiery sermons.
At the age of accountability and beyond I sat in the pew, palms sweating, dread and worry churning in the pit of my stomach as I anticipated the last part of every sermon where the theory of damnation would be explained and my conviction of how it particularly pertained to me would begin. The proper response was to get convicted, walk down the aisle and profess your sins and the desire to have Jesus save you. Once I had walked down the aisle of that little church more times than I knew should be necessary, I accepted I was scared to death and had no idea how I could know for sure I was saved.
I tried a different strategy.
I dared not set foot in that church auditorium. I diligently and reverently and consistently trekked the several blocks, my brother in tow, to Sunday School, eschewing worship altogether, while Dad nursed a headache and Mother cooked Sunday dinner, returning home, glad that that I could set my obvious guilt aside for the next six days.
I never told my Dad about this. Probably didn’t need to knowing him and me and my freckled and frowning Sunday morning face, but it was about this time he began his own set of Sunday sermons, covering whatever topics he felt were needed or maybe hammered in, after lunch when the neighborhood was somnolent and quiet.
This was no conversation; they were lectures on the difference between men and women, humility and confidence, love and sex and faith and drinkin’ and the difference between believing there was a God, living like there was a God, and hope and living a disciplined and balanced life.
These lectures, my Dad’s sobriety by the Grace of God, his desire to show me his faith and doubts, these things slowly and unconventionally began to ease the dread of doubt lodged so squarely in my soul, replacing it with little seeds of understanding about the nature of God and my search for who God wanted to be in me.
My dad rarely went to church but in a peacable symmetry saw fit to go to that same little church, just a few blocks away, a few months before he would pass on home. I am not sure how much he listened to the fiery talk; I do know he prayed, balding head bowed and let something special wash over him as he made his own petitions, between him and his Father, past the point of wondering about the meaning of an altar call.
I have burned candles in places where believers hold to the vision of Jesus’ mother presence and I have argued theology with atheists and evolutionists. I have felt moved to tears by words from a preacher in a different land who asked God to bless the leaders of his country and mine and realized that the questions I asked and the fears and doubts are not my own, but can be found in people who dwell in the borders of my neighborhood or beyond my continent. I have walked through many doors and across thresholds where multitudes have sought answers in meditation and nature. I have traveled my own road, hilly and rocky, looking for God, finding him mostly.
This past Sunday I went to church, the first time since Hurricane Ike blew through town. I felt the need to go, that old fear in the gut when I was a teen, now replaced by a hunger, the hunger to be reminded that life makes sense. Because you see, something interesting happened to me along this road of half a century I have traveled; something happened to me when Jake died; I finally learned what it means to surrender to something bigger than me. I learned what salvation really is. I sat in the pew of that church and sang songs and thought about heaven and I took a moment to consider where I am. John, hair wet and eyes shining from baptizing, stands at my right. Josh, with eyes that mirror a wisdom that comes only from protecting and leading those under your charge in a land far away and home for a rest, stands at my left and with my head bowed, I thank God for this simple moment. I thank God for Jake in Heaven and I marvel a little bit, chuckling that Jake understood what worship, true worship was before I did. For that few moments, I don’t worry about anything, but that small precious moment of perfect peace, where love is sure and worship is about thanking the one who gave me the moment and I let something special wash over me as I make my own petitions between me and my Father, past the point of wondering at the meaning of an emotional walk down an aisle…
Bible verse for the day:
Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. With thankful hearts offer up your prayers and requests to God. Then, because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel.
Philippians 4:6-7
Quote for the day;
When you make peace with yourself, you make peace with the world. Maha Ghosananda
