Learning Through Community

I've been thinking lately about why I attend church. Not that I'm having second thoughts about being "regular in attendance." But it seems a truism that one finds primarily what one is looking for. Though it is possible to be surprised, or to discern additional benefits as time goes on and one matures.

When I originally rejoined the church, in the early 80s, I was seeking structure for my spirituality. I had spent the previous two years trying to create a synthesis of world religions (via Joseph Campbell, et al), Gnosticism, William Blake, and Leo Buscaglia. The result of this undirected search was extreme anxiety and something like a nervous breakdown.

An additional benefit I discerned within the first year after I returned was community. I am an introvert, and can be content (up to a point) sitting in my room alone with my thoughts. The downside to this comfort zone is loneliness. Attending church forced me to be with people, and allowed me the opportunity to form friendships. This is still true, and I have done social things outside of church with friends I have made there.

There are times when attending church seems like an opportunity to recharge one's spiritual battery. A notion I had for a time – which I suspect was not a unique notion – was that one went to church to "plug into God" so one could make it through the week in the working world.

Let's face it, we are darned lucky if the morals of our wage-earning life even come close to the morals espoused Sunday mornings. Capitalism, at best, is amoral. The current version of pseudo laissez-faire capitalism has a strong Darwinian impulse. Which may be translated as "it's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got to get mine before anyone else does." This is the exact opposite of the "love your neighbor" goal taught in most mainstream religions (most share some version of what we call the Golden Rule).

The latest benefit of involvement at church that I've become aware of is a combination of the social interaction I refer to above, and to this sense of recharging the battery. I use the term "involvement" advisedly, for I just began my second year on the Vestry (church board), serve on three committees, and have led discussions for several adult classes.

This level of involvement requires interaction with a wide variety of people and personalities. This variety is a microcosm of the types and conditions you will encounter the rest of the week. Thus, church is a protected environment in which one learns how to love and work with all sorts of folk.

Ideally, one applies the ideals one has heard on Sunday morning to one's behavior on church committees. Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, has suggested a paradigm for the monastery which seems to apply to the church board: one assumes that the other has my welfare in mind, just as I have their welfare in mind, just as we both have the greater good of our Christian community in mind.

As I say, this is an ideal. Being a human institution, the church is susceptible to conflicting egos, control needs, and other aspects of politics. It may be that the best one can hope for is that more good is accomplished than harm. This position may seem outrageously naïve, but it seems precisely the place Jesus would have us operate from.

I have two illustrations for this. The first is the situation with my co-worker, which I obliquely referred to in my Saturday morning post. For me, the resolution came when I ceased to take her tone of voice personally, and when I assumed we both had positive intentions.

The second is my work on the soon-to-be published book Ordinary Time, a collaborative project of the RevGalBlogPals web-ring. In a sense, the Rev Gal ring is as protected an environment as church is – the vast majority are not only Christians, but are ordained ministers in their denomination (I am of the handful who are not ordained). They call themselves an intentional on-line community, and appear to strive for that goal.

In working on this book, a collection of meditations for Ordinary Time (from June 1 through November 1), there was just as ripe an opportunity for conflicting goals and egos as on any church committee or in any business boardroom. And, because most discussions were conducted via e-mail, there was an even greater opportunity for cross-communication and hurt feelings.

There were at least a few opportunities for me to take offense. There was, in fact, cross-communication and duplication of effort. It would have been easy to rail against inefficiency, and poor planning, and people failing to fulfill their commitments (or forgetting what their self-defined commitments were). It might have been tempting to express all this in ill-considered e-mails.

Happily, neither of these things happened. Oh sure, I grumbled sotto voce now and again. But each time I did, I also reminded myself that all involved had a common goal – the best book possible. I think I was tempted to send an angry e-mail only once, and happily gave myself about half a day to consider prior to hitting the send button. I focused on our common goal, and the belief in our shared good intentions; the grumbling went away, and I was able to write an e-mail which maturely addressed the situation.

I give thanks for how my Christian life is shaping me, and how I am able to practice what I've learned in my daily life.