The Unchurched.

I'm skipping church this morning, and feeling somewhat bleh about that move. Bernerd talked about auto-pilot the other day, and my lack of will in the mornings to wake for something like church is disappointing. In a way, it's not that bad considering that I probably really needed the rest, but I know, I could sleep earlier on weeknights, etc etc etc.

But no, there are too many things in my life that are too important to me. And my church doesn't seem to happen on Sunday mornings as much as it happens over lunch on weekdays, in swimming pools and over ice cream on saturday nights. As I said before, I've always been mildly resentful toward God for depriving me of a 'normal' church situation, which I recognise entails making it for yourself.

But I'm not,
and I can't be,
and this isn't me.

It would do be a great disservice to everyone and anyone to lie and to live a lie, so I refuse to take the easy way out and assimilate myself. I don't think God has dragged me through shitty church circumstances for me to just abdicate on what I believe in and mindlessly dissolve. Here I am, I believe in something passionately, I am convicted of a truth revealed in my life (and I think that this is more then what I can say for most others).

So I'm with you, the dispossessed, the ones who are the troublers of israel, who stand and stare and give up on the compromise. Who want to seek the inward truth. And with those who sit alone on sunday mornings, kicking themselves for not fulfilling their churchly obligations, and who would punch themselves if they did.

Seriously, how can anyone blame them?

Humble as a mumble in the jungle
of shouts and screams
That's the way the cracker crumbles
So I guess I've gotta re-route my dreams
Y'all can't harm me, it's over

[Humble Mumble ~ Outkast]

[Edit: 1519 hrs]

Alright so i did eventually end up having church today.
It was over the internet, with Erwin and Curtis,

Dear God
We are your people and mostly we don't mind,
except that you do not fit any of our categories.
We keep pushing, and pulling, and twisting, and turning,
trying to make you fit the God we would rather have,
and every time we distort you that way we end up with an idol more congenial to us.
In our more honest moments of grief and pain we are very glad that you are who you are, and that you are toward us in all your freedom what you have been toward us.
So be your faithful self, and by your very engagement in the suffering of the world, transform the world even as you are being changed. We pray in the name of Jesus, who is the sign of your suffering love,
Amen.

And somehwere, a threefold Amen.

[Edit : 1756 hrs]

I can't stay pissy for the rest of my life. I've got to start somewhere.
But for now, thank God for grace.

I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes

If I was crying in the van with my friend
It was for freedom from myself and from the land.

Sufjan, you understand me.