Wednesday, March 22, 2017

The Church is Not a Bus

The church is not a bus.

For a few years now I've sometimes wished I could have a framed, old-fashioned cross-stitch sampler of this little maxim to hang on my office or study wall.  Just to remind myself when I need to.

The realization came about three years ago in conversation with a therapist about my need to know, design and control the flow of everything around me, in order to feel I'm doing my job -- as a parent, as a partner, as a person, and as a minister (I was about to say "parson" to maintain the alliterative chain, but somehow it seemed a little much).

That way of being and working is what I saw and admired in my father -- that because of his grasp of the whole, and his ability to imagine, design and perfect the relationship of the particulars that would make the whole work, he was successful at building buses.  And trying to live up to his way of being successful and respected was driving me crazy, alienating others around me, and exhausting me spiritually, emotionally and morally.  

Because the church is not a bus.

My therapist laughed aloud as I blurted those surprising words.  And as I felt as much as heard them come out of my mouth, a lifelong cloud vanished from above my head.  I felt good.

The church is not a bus.  Which means I am not, and don't have to be foreman of research and development.  I don't have to know the factory and the process inside and out, from bottom to top.  I don't have to be able to tell everyone their part, and how to do it.  I don't have to know what and when the finished product will be, or even if it will be.  I have, and can have, and am expected to have a different way of working and being.

I know I've written about this already, from a different angle.

I will probably come back to it again, from yet some other starting point.

I will probably always curl back time and time again to engage this struggle just because it is so central and essential.  Like in a labyrinth, I am sure I will come back in some way again and again to gaze at this life-long place.

Such a slippery path to walk -- on one hand to admire, love and deeply honour one's father's way of being, doing and building what he built, and on the other to trust, affirm and consistently follow one's own markedly different way of building one's own life's work. 

And to know that it's good.