I haven't been to church in, I think, over 2 months. The reasons are varied and have to do with things like transportation, homework, and a month-long illness, but whatever the excuse this record is strange for a child of JMS, a woman who was (is?) at the church building at least four out of the seven days a week can give us.
(Sometimes it's good a week cannot give us more. Sometimes we need to feel like we're beginning again, no matter how arbitrary our seven day time frame actually is.)
But today is Palm Sunday and a huge part of me wishes I wasn't trapped in this apartment with no car and no hope of making it to this morning's service. I've wrestled with the Church these past few years - ever since that awful thing happened and I left a group of people I loved. Ever since I learned to not trust church leadership. Ever since I began realizing that the hyper-authoritarianism in current church culture is really, really sick and terribly wrong.
Despite these wrestlings, today I want to go to church. Perhaps it's to commemorate a day that the Church the world over is celebrating. Today isn't just Sunday, it's Palm Sunday. Today we celebrate Jesus pre-crucifixion when, for several happy moments, people recognized His goodness. Something about my tired soul just wants the traditions, the celebration, the cheesy skit where members of the church lay palm branches in the aisles and wear robes and look ridiculous. Thus far 2013 has been hard, with unwanted suitors who couldn't understand "no" and family divisions and a terible flu and loss of transportation. It's been good hard, too, with school and my nonprofit and sharing sweet times with the same family members who like to divide. But I'm exhausted from its fullness. I just want something simple, familiar, like a Palm Sunday service.
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