Sanctuary

  I turned 40 this year. This means it's been almost 10 years since I started this blog. It turns out, I  know both less, and more, than when I started. I expect that to be even more true 10 years hence.
I figure I've spent about 70,000 hours living inside my head and working out my musings. Sorting. Sifting.

The world seems less black and white, shiftier. Not in a bad way---an I can't trust anything way, but in a maybe I don't see and know as much as I thought way. I don't care about being right as much as I used to, but still enough to get in the way of good relations. Pretty much every day as it turns out, so let that color how you take the rest of this I guess. I'm working this out the best I can, and it's messy.

It's been said that in Medieval times, anyone on the run, in need, or in defeat, could take refuge in a church and be treated with care. They would be offered Sanctuary. I need that to be true. Desperately. Church as a refuge. A place to lay down and be at peace. To catch a breath. To be.

It feels like that got lost in translation somewhere. It could have been, but never was. It was, but now it's not. Except, every once in a while, I see glimpses that keep me in the game. Like finding afour leaf clover. My granny once found one; so did my daughter. Not me though. Yet I keep looking because I know it can happen.

I do see Holiness. I have seen love; safety, and resurrection. Not all the time, but enough to keep my going. Like skipping rocks. Or a song played just so.  I also see the bickering, the exclusion, the need to be gatekeeper, to define G-d for the one who said they were nameless and undefinable. Perhaps the local churches are hemorrhaging not because of watered down teaching, lax believers, or secret sin. What if one of the primary purposes of the church was to be Sanctuary? To provide grace in a graceless world. To BE Bread and Wine for the needy. What if, having no desire to live out the invitation to restore, we are instead picking one another off slowly? We are devouring one another in righteousness.

I don't know if we can't get there because we don't want it, or if we're scared we can't afford it. It's no secret the mainstream US churches are dying. I'm grieving, but not surprised. I'm too old to choose oppression and guilt. It seems the antithesis to the Gospel. Trust me, I keep trying though. It's hard to shake off the need to fix and convince. I need the church, the supposed Bride of Christ to be the sanctuary of the broken. I need it to link arms with me and say let's fill the house. I need it to help me be the man Jesus was. Sanctuary. Healer. Friend. Savior even. Because when you have nothing left, and there's only one way shining light, you follow that light. G-d help me.

Life can be brutal. Without extravagant grace, without refuge, the Church is just like every other striving place that pushes and pulls us into something and someone we were never meant to be. It's holding up a false idol. It's Big Church and a little sanctuary.  It's hard for me to believe that's rest David sung about. It's even harder to believe that's the Good News for which Jesus was willing to die. There's a whole world that wants to tell us how to be better. How to fit in. How to prove our worth. That's nothing new.

A G-d who doesn't say I'll love you better when, or if? A G-d who says, "Come in. You look like you've had enough. Like you could use a break. Or catch your breath. Or dance. Or be."
Now that seems like a message that could be enough to lead a body right to exile and punishment.
A Golgotha kind of place.

I used to think I wanted to be a preacher. It turns out I'm ok to be a door holder. Maybe a musical door holder. I'm not here to fight, prove or justify right now. I'm here to hold the door, and cry Sanctuary. For myself and all those who wander in.  Because, heaven help me, I have scars, and I need to catch a breath.