As the news of our new community has spread among our colleagues, friends, and family it’s clear that while many of you are happy for us and excited about this ministry, you also think we are a bit crazy. You are right. Starting with not much; a house, a plan, and a little bit of money is terrifying, but really I wouldn’t want it any other way.
You see I love the church and I can’t even begin to count the number of amazing holy moments I’ve experienced during worship or in the life of the church. Yet some of the most transformative moments I know happen outside of the church. I’ve never found a good way to bring those two things together, so that’s part of what we’re trying to do in Sellwood.
For instance, just this last week I saw the scripture of the lost sheep happen at our local elementary school. One little guy was unaccounted for because he decided it would be more fun to hide in the girl’s bathroom than to go to reading group. He was located in under two minutes, but in those moments glimpsing the staff’s response and care for him was overwhelming. God’s love and the importance of a single lost sheep were on display on just a regular day at school. I wept in the parking lot after, for to be so close to God at work in the world is amazing. This may just confirm to you that I am crazy, the mundane of a child being naughty and the staff just doing their job causes me to make a grand jump to God. However, I think we walk through holy moments all the time, but we have trained ourselves not to see them. We write them off, water them down, and wonder why our lives are not spectacular. I want to be crazy enough to see God everywhere.
Later that same day Jeff and I gathered with a bunch of other parents, a gaggle of children, and four brave teachers on the back lawn of the school. We created paper mache earths, dipping strips of newspaper in vats of goo and wrapping them around balloons. And again God showed up. In the spring sunshine, in the goodness of adults helping kids, in the shrieks of shock at the messiness and feel of the goo, the beaming smiles as the children accomplished the task, in the moments of exploration and creation, God was there. Palpably so in fact. And it was awesome.
This is my best explanation of why we feel called to do this new start work. We long to connect the holiness of our daily life, of lost sheep and paper mache to the holiness of the church, of celebrating in worship and sharing in community. We long to name the miraculous we see in the mundane and to journey with a bunch of other people, seeking out living scripture, encountering God in the world, and pointing it out to one another as we go. I think this experiment that lies ahead of us will be just as messy as the paper mache, just as exciting, just as rewarding, just as beautiful, and just as holy.
If you read this blog you are part of this experiment. I hope you can learn to build better paper mache worlds from our attempts. Keep reading, keep praying, and keep celebrating the holy you find! Maybe it turns out that you are a little crazy too.
E
love the post! oh ya, and I'm certifiable 🙂
More than a little bit, Eilidh. 🙂 (Jeanne Markham)