I can feel the cracks in my energy
Around 2pm I fall off a cliff as if I were coming down with a virus. Aches, chills, fatigue. My body is done.
Next Tuesday is my infusion and I can tell my body needs it. But it won't make me better overnight. In fact, it may be worse for the first few weeks but slowly, slowly, I'll climb out of the haze and I'll have more energy. I'll breathe better.
It's a kind of invisible miracle that keeps me healthy. Keeps me able bodied. But it takes 6 months for a dose to wear off and I can start to think Im fine on my own. I don't really need it. There's a possibility that someday I could wean off it, but for now, I most definitely do.
Church is a similar kind of medicine.
Most weeks it feels routine. If anything, inconvenient and a little uncomfortable. Getting up, making time, wrestling kids to get ready, sing the songs, say the words, pray the prayers. There is meaning in it for sure. But if I'm honest, a hike would usually feel better.
But Church is a kind of medicine that builds up in your spiritual system. A few weeks break doesn't change much in my spiritual health, but months away and I'm sure I would start to feel the cracks in my soul.
I have many personal spiritual practices and I think they are a deep way to connect to God. My biggest insights usually come when I'm doing my Examen or reading scripture or writing this blog. But we were made to do faith together. We were made to practice our faith in our living, not just in our minds.
I had church today on Facebook.
A few days ago I posted a blog reflecting on sin and grace and being annoyed with myself. Friends asked vulnerable questions. Confession spoken out loud is sacred. Confession recieved in love and returned in grace is a gift.
Wrestling with each other about who God is, what is right and wrong, how should we live, who are we and what is the meaning of life is difficult. We only get one life to live so the answers to these questions and the implications of those answers matter a lot. So we come to church with all our human-ness -- curiosity, fear, joy, anger, stubbornness and openness and we put up with each other and we carve out a routine together that pushes us each, for a few minutes, to wrestle with these questions -- not just in the safety of our own mind -- but out loud where other people can hear us - can see us, accept or reject us. And where, we have to in some small ways put those ideas into action -- if we say we should be forgiving, but then hold grudges against people at church -- we have to live with a kind of discomfort that comes with an unresolved spirit. Eventually, God pushes us towards forgiveness -- usually.
Church isn't perfect but it is a kind of medicine for so many things that plague us today : loneliness, lack of purpose, anxiety, pride, selfishness, lack of patience, addiction, comparing our lives social media, feeling like we're not enough.
But it is a slow medicine. It doesn't work overnight or even in a few weeks. But it can help us grow strong, find God and meaning and heal from the maladies of modern life if we make space for the ancient medicine it offers.
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