So for Lent this year, I'm giving up alcohol, white sugar, and white flour...except on Sundays...which my dear orthodox friend thinks is cheating.  I told her and I'll tell you (in case you don't already know - I didn't, being newish to all things liturgical) that in the Catholic and Protestant traditions, there are actually 46 days of Lent - 40 days of fasting and six Sundays, which are feast days, because they represent Resurrection Day, so they are thought of as little Easters.  When I've fasted from things before (food or the internet usually), it's always been for a whole season, so that's made me either more timid in my fasting (i.e. giving up less hard things) or I've failed (tried to go gluten-free last Lent, lasted two weeks).  Getting the seventh day reprieve feels doable, and if it goes well, it may even extend past this season, becoming a way of life, because it's sustainable.

Besides the Sunday exemption, I am creating another modification - let me pause for a brief aside:  none of this is mentioned, let alone mandated in Scripture - it's all manmade tradition, so it should especially be bathed in grace, without any hint of legalism.  The point of following the church year and using these kinds of liturgies is to draw us closer to Jesus, to help us grow spiritually, and to be more like Him.  It's not about shoulds and oughts and rules and regulations - that was the old covenant...so it's kind of ironic what I'm going to say next...

In recent months, we've been studying the fourth commandment, to honor the sabbath and keep it holy. My husband and I have been reading books on the subject and trying to implement sabbath keeping.  We decided to begin our sabbath on Saturday nights and conclude them on Sunday nights.  There is an opening ceremony in which we light candles and say blessings over the bread and the fruit of the vine and the children and each other (our sabbath table is pictured above). So...if Sundays are the exemption days to our fasting, that would mean no challah (unless I make it whole grain) and no wine (unless it's grape juice), so my idea is that to make sabbath keeping and Lent work together, "Sunday" will actually be the duration of our sabbath, so Saturday night to Sunday night, meaning we can have wine, bread, sweets, etc. from Saturday dinner until Sunday dinner (not including it). 

In addition to the fasting and feasting of this Lenten season, I want to add something to this time, to make the fasting meaningful by replacing those comfort foods with soul food. And not just to feed myself, but others. The way I've always done that best is through writing.  I've been hoarding my insights in my private journal or squandering them through social media. As I am more intentional in spending time with God and consistently reading his word (I'm beginning the daily office of the lectionary in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer), I want to share what he gives me with you. I also want to post some of the things I've already written, both in recent times and from the past.  My plan is to post at least once per week - I'd say more but I don't want to set myself up for failure or feel pressured.  

I'm excited...and honestly, desperate....for the new thing(s) the Lord will do in the next six weeks. I'm not expecting any kind of emotional thrills - I just want to hear that still, small voice instead of all my noisy self-centered thoughts. My prayer is to earnestly seek to follow what Jesus said were the two greatest commands - to love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself, to live 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 because I believe and receive 1 John 4:7-19.  

I was tempted to title this "Surprised by Grace" but didn't want it be confused with the new book of the same title, (which I am curious to read). "Changing Churches" sounded too flat, but this is also the story of that.

We spent the past school year immersed in the Middle Ages and I didn't think history could get any better, but then we entered the Renaissance, which literally means "rebirth". It was spring (my favorite season) and we were on the verge of Pentecost, which marks the birth of the first church. Without my realizing it, in his infinite creativity, God was setting the stage for my own rebirth. Something had been growing inside me for a long time and it wasn't another baby. 

It was my conception (pun intended) of grace. I had experienced grace from a very young age, but my understanding of it was incomplete. God's grace had always been a form of protection against other people, but not from myself. It took becoming a wife and a mother for me to recognize how inherently selfish and need of grace I was, both to help me accept myself and to give it to others, especially those closest to me - my husband and children.

In the spring of 2009 I re-read Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel. I went through it with a group of women and it invoked a desire in me to grow in the knowledge of grace, so that I could more fully receive and impart it. I pulled every book off our shelves that had the word "grace" in the title. I started to read several of them and liked them, but like so many other ambitious reading projects, this one fell to the wayside. Still, I wanted to "get" grace and I sensed that my desire alone was a prayer that God was answering. He wanted me to get it also, even more than I did. Which is exactly how God's grace works.

And so this spring, as I witnessed rebirths in nature, history, and the church, I too, was born again...again. Like any birth, there was struggle, pain, and fear. But what had been growing inside me needed to come out.  I could no longer be part of a church which did not fully illuminate grace, and even muddied it with traces of legalism. Works and service were emphasized and explained more than the person of Jesus and intimacy with him.  Fear-based (albeit subtle) turn or burn) invitations to say the "magic prayer" (of salvation) and an authoritarian interpretation of Scripture that refused to consider any other theological position had turned Sunday mornings into cringe sessions for me. Not every week, but increasingly more often. I had long ago lost any desire to invite anyone there, but it had gotten to the point that I didn't want to be there either. Later, when I finally hashed it all out on paper (much more than I've included in this paragraph), the writing was on the wall.

We had been there six years, since we were practically newlyweds and new parents as well. Our previous church had folded and our young unstable family craved security...or at least I did. That church had been the right place for us during those early unsteady years. They had welcomed us and fed us the Word and given us opportunities to serve and be served. And yet as we got to know the church more, and to shape our identity as a family and individuals, I began to sense we were less and less compatible. I started to feel trapped in what felt like an unhealthy relationship. I had defended "us" for a long time, even against older, wiser people who loved me and saw what I wasn't willing to look at for fear of hurting my family. I thought that if only I was struggling, it wouldn't be fair to rip them from our church home, so for several years I was determined to make it work. 

The tension was growing inside me, right alongside the grace, and one of them had to go. It was a thistle threatening to strangle the rosebush about to be birthed. The labor of pulling weeds began with communicating with my husband. His resistance was admirable (loyalty, friendship, optimism) until it turned ugly on both our parts (shouting match), but God's grace got us through it and out the other side, though with loss and grief that was more profound for him than for me. 

It was in this morose and disillusioned state that we visited a new church - not just new to us but to the area - a church plant of five years (which I had researched online over the previous months), which just happened to have "grace" in its name. As it turned out, it wasn't in name only. Our entire family was captivated that first Sunday. It was like coming home to some place we had never been. It seemingly effortlessly harmonized these paradoxes: reverence and relevance, beauty and grit, tradition and variety, grace and truth (a number of Sundays later, that is still true - I'll share details of the service in another post).

We knew we had to end things the right way at our former church. We met with the pastors and both the angst and understanding of that conversation were confirmation that our time there was over - the associate pastor didn't say a word but he prayed a beautiful and grace-filled blessing for us that felt like God releasing us into a new season.

A few days later, we met with the pastor of the new church and spent a couple hours getting to know each other over Comforts chinese chicken salad, as well as learning all about the church. The phrase "gospel-centered" was a recurring theme, as well as grace, restoration of creation, humans as God's image bearers, C.S. Lewis, Tim Keller, and baseball (I'll save that evidence of God's sense of humor for another post). We talked theology and community and doing away with things like Christian vernacular and an "us vs. them" mentality when it comes to interacting with the culture. His heart was clearly for the people of Marin, and both of us having grown up here, that resonated with us. 

An unexpected bonus of this meeting was my husband dispensing with a pre-tribulation post-millenial (a.k.a. Left Behind) eschatology and adopting an amillennial view. Now that he isn't always waiting to cash in his rapture ticket, he can more fully be here, laying down his life to spread God's grace around (and that goes for me too). I'm sure he'll still like John MacArthur but lately he's been more interested in Francis Chan, and we both like that our new pastor calls himself a "winsome Calvinist."  Oh, and I apologize for the evangelical-speak - it won't happen again, or if it does, I'll be sure to define the terms, but I'm running out of room here.

And so as we read about the Reformation in our homeschool, entered the season of Pentecost, and watched the first roses bloom in our patio garden, each epiphany of winters past culminated into the spring of my enlightenment. The new things happening in my mind (studying history), my heart (learning grace), my body (experiencing the renewal of God's creation), and my spirit (meditating on seasons of the church year--in part thanks to the Mosaic Bible) all helped to make me grow and step out in faith. 

As I closed one door, and God opened another, I felt freedom and joy like never before, as though a weight had been lifted from me. Starting new has its own set of challenges and I'm not naive about that, nor overly idealistic, but I am hopeful, and already encouraged by the vision of our new church home, including what role my giftings can play in realizing it, in harmony with the other members of the church as well as the larger body of Christ (Jesus followers) in our area and beyond.

It's getting old, people. I'm tired of hearing everyone gripe about "organized religion." What's so wrong with organization? I mean would you like to go to a disorganized hospital (and a church is supposed to be a hospital for the soul, even though I agree that many are a far cry) or have a disorganized government (maybe we already do)? Do you see where I am going with this? Organized or messy, let's at least be consistent...or perhaps we could start by being clear and staying away from hackneyed cliches such as this one.

Structure doesn't have to be bad--after all, whether you believe in God or not, whoever made this universe did it in a very orderly fashion (thus the "laws of science"). Certainly God can't be contained in a building, but would he scoff simply because the ones he created gathered together under one roof to worship him corporately? That sounds about as likely as someone condemning a group of friends who threw a party their honor. (I'm not talking about every party, but simply the idea of the party, i.e. not every church honors God, but many do)

You know what I have a problem with?  Organized education.  Organized entertainment.  Organized media.  When people get organized, they become powerful influences on the culture.  Did you know that the very first media organization in the U.S. was the church?  Sunday mornings were the only times people gathered together in one place, so they got their weekly news from the pulpit.  Newspapers were started by religious people also.  I wrote a research paper on this for Christopher Hitchens' class during journalism grad school--interesting to see the press has moved so far from its original heritage.

Did I defeat my own argument?  No.  I just qualified it.  Organization in itself is not a bad thing.  It all depends on what or who is being organized.  Obviously organized crime is bad, but so is crime without rhyme or reason.  Random acts of kindess are good, but organizations which help the needy are more efficient.  Chaos and order each have their place, so let us not throw out the baby with the baptismal.