Sunday Morning Stress and Grace
skipping church for Doctor Who and other anxious church hunting thoughts
I skipped church two weeks ago, and went to a meditation center instead.
I’ve been visiting churches this summer and fall, and it’s been stressful. Incense burns, baptized babies are raised, organs are plunked, eager tenor soloists are loosed, earnest and not-so-earnest sermons are preached with varying levels of enthusiasm. In every church I visit in this city, there are former seminary classmates and former therapists and former professors, sometimes as parishioners but usually as pastors or staff, so sitting quietly in a bit of privacy can feel impossible. Sitting quietly in a bit of privacy is hard anyway at any Southern church (so many questions! So many hugs!), but I’m getting better at arriving a bit late and sneaking out a bit early, and shaking my head (maybe a tad aggressively?) when little old ladies try to stick me with a name tag.
I know I can be relentlessly judgy when I visit churches. I know it, and don’t like it, and keep on being judgy. I try to remember that this current church is a holy experience for many people; that my judginess might hide a more tender emotion I’m not permitting myself to feel; to stay curious not just about the experience but also about my response to it, and what I could learn about myself from my response. I try to remember that it’s OK if this worshiping community isn’t for me, but I don’t have to be an asshole about it.
It’s hard not to be an asshole about it.
I don’t always know where Sunday morning holiness lives anymore, though. I don’t know if that’s because I’m still uncertain of my theology, and still wrestling towards new answers for old questions. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t put away as many evangelical expectations of “feeling things” in church as I thought. I don’t know if what feels “off” in so many ways, especially visiting more mainline churches, is a real intuition that I should listen to or just the natural clumsiness of learning new rhythms and practices. Is it really a lie that we can go to worship and come out refreshed, revived, more encouraged, more hopeful?
It feels like it shouldn’t be a lie!
One week, I was so discouraged that halfway through putting on real people church clothes, I quit, and put my hoodie back on and got cozy on the couch and watched some Christopher Eccleston Doctor Who and ate a rosemary bagel with my decaf French press coffee. Was it particularly holy? No, but it also wasn’t actively stressful.
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So a month ago, I went to a Buddhist meditation center on Sunday morning. I fell in love with meditation at my undergraduate Buddhist center fifteen years ago, but my home practice is clunky and comes and goes in fits and starts. I still wanted to go do something churchy, but didn’t want to wrestle with big questions.
I showed up to the intro to meditation! teaching at the Buddhist center in a tiny forest across from the L.A. Fitness and the Walmart. We shuffled off our shoes and followed the instructor through the maze of rooms and through an overgrown herb garden draped with prayer flags to a tiny back room that was just big enough for the six of us. The instructor was an older man. He teased that his wife tells him every week to go “win them for the Buddha!,” before anxiously clarifying that Buddhists do not evangelize, and whatever spiritual tradition we came from was OK, and there’s no expectation for anyone to be a particular spiritual tradition. He read a passage from a book on peaceful presence, and then we sat.
While we sat, he led us in guided meditation. He very gently told us it was OK to be here exactly as we were. He reminded us to stay in our bodies and be gentle with ourselves when it was hard or felt bad to be in them. He told us to know we are loved and accepted as we are, that everything that comes up in our hearts and through our minds is welcome.
He told us that we are not bad people trying to be good, but good people trying to come back to that goodness, our true self, that can be buried and covered and shoved to the side.
I sat cross-legged on my stiff little square cushion, and I cried and cried, big, heavy, waterfall tears, like I’d been waiting to hear someone say that over me for a long, long time.
Oh, so I can still “feel something” in a holy space.
Oh no this sure raises another big questions am I even CHRISTIAN any more oh NO am I a Buddhist now if I only feel things at Buddhist meditation????
Big questions just will not be still and quiet, even during meditation!
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Last week, I went back to the meditation center and joined the community Sunday morning sit. The center’s main meditation room is gorgeous, floor to ceiling windows in a big open room. Light filtered through the trees and made patterns on the wood floors. I did stay for the full hour and a half, but I was definitely not meditating. I just sat, fully distracted, for an hour and a half. I tried meditating on Scripture verses, single words, and finally the peaceful abiding practice we were all supposed to be doing — just sitting, letting thoughts go as they came. I was neither peaceful, nor did I abide.
But I did sit!
My solo meditation practice has always been shaky. Sitting alone in my room has always been hard for me. Somehow, an hour and a half in community is easier than five minutes alone in my room. It’s a lot easier to do things when other people are carrying some weight of it.
I had a friend who used to say I’ll hope for you if you’ll hope for me. This feels like Ecclesiastes 4:11 — “if two lie down together, they can keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?” I can’t hoard my body heat enough to keep warm, but I can give you mine, and you can give me yours. I can’t hoard my hope, but I can hope for you, and you hope for me, and our hope will carry each other.
How can one stay holy alone? We can’t, because holiness is something we exchange, like body heat, like the roots of trees connected and communicating and nourishing each other.
This is probably an answer to “why are we even bothering going to church.”
This is just one answer, though. And this is not an answer to any of the other questions. It doesn’t erase all the big, overwhelming questions about church that being raised evangelical has left me with. It doesn’t make “church hunting” any easier. It doesn’t even really help me know what kind of church will feel like home, or if “belonging” is always going to feel differently than it did in evangelical land, back when our belonging felt complete because we had erased so much of ourselves to fit into it.
I guess even just one answer is still a gift, though. One answer is still something.
One answer is like finding a small breadcrumb, a hint of holiness, that we can follow one step at a time until we’re home.
When the lanky old Buddhist gently told us that there is nothing essentially broken or bad in us, my whole soul melted. All the restless, anxious spiritual angst that had been crusting over me cracked just a bit, just enough to let in Grace as small as a mustard seed.
For a minute, there was space to imagine that sin is just the on-top thing, not the deepest thing; that goodness is coming home to ourselves, not going away from ourselves.
For a minute, I could believe that despite their grip on our cultural and theological imaginations, maybe our brilliant and powerful and privileged Church Father dudes were wrong about original sin.
Maybe our Sister Julian of Norwich knew something more true, as she wrote tucked away quietly in her small corner of the earth: that at our core, under all the bad things we do, we all have a true will “that never consented to sin, and never will.” Maybe our “coming home” is coming back to that true will in ourselves.
This is just a grace breadcrumb. Breadcrumbs are more for guiding the way than for eating. If we faithfully notice the grace breadcrumbs in our angsty spiritual forest wandering, though, we can follow them, one at a time, until we come to a place where we can rest.
Compassion, Thich Nhat Hanh said, is like the North Star. You can’t reach it, but you can orient yourself towards it and walk, not because we expect to get to the North Star, but we “just want to go in that direction.”
I think maybe theological home is like that, too. Or church home. Maybe there’s no “home” waiting for us, but we can keep walking in the general direction these grace breadcrumbs lead us. We can trust that the God who places them on our path is always, ever, drawing us to Herself — taking us on the right road, “though we may know nothing of it” (Merton).
So I will walk in this direction, though I know nothing of where it’ll lead or what the end will look like. I’ll keep getting up and visiting churches most Sunday mornings, and instead of scolding my judgy lil’ self, I’ll be gentle with her. I’ll let the anxious thoughts come and go, and trust that I’ll recognize the next grace breadcrumb when it comes across my path. And some Sunday mornings I’ll go show up to meditation instead, and pretend to meditate, but really just be distracted for an hour — and I’ll be gentle with that too, because sometimes showing up is enough.
And some Sunday mornings I’ll eat rosemary bagels and watch Doctor Who, and I will be extra gentle with that Laura Jean, because sometimes cozy is enough, and safety is what our soul needs, and it is OK to follow the grace breadcrumbs in fits and starts. We don’t have to do it perfectly, because Grace is enough for every brave and anxious Sunday morning part of us.
Your thoughts will make my day an excellent day. I don't go to churches on Sundays. I'm touched by how you describe your travels to churches as a journey of grace, and that your journey is mindful and helpful. I'm glad that I subscribed to your newsletter. Have a great day!
Yes!