[church visit] …He remembered me…

…Imagine this…

Imagine that you are in love… and you tell them so.

Imagine the place where you told them and they return your love. They propose and you start to live your lives together.

Imagine that their family would rather that you were not there and let you know that and after many years, you leave.

Then, after many more years you run into them and they invite you to where ever they are now. They want to start over. You are doubtful, but they are persistent, so you go and you are happy.

But you have your doubts. And you tell them so.

So one day they call you and say “Meet me 2 and a half hours from where you currently live at a place you were at only once before and that was because you were lost on the way to the RenFaire”

I said ok…

I listened to His call. And I ended up here:

The door to the Brenham Education Building

Where is here? I’ll get to that… but first a story. That’s on the next page…

The Dark Girl observes the Sunset Limited.

 

By the time I got home from Hill House at about 11pm, I was physically drained (due to fact that they served tiramisu and I just can’t resist- which does not mix with having celiac and pre-sugar) and emotionally drained (for reasons I will detail in a moment). Bill came in from teaching minutes later to find me looking blankly at a blank Word document, trying to record my feelings about the evening and coming up blank.

 

He greets me and gives me a peck on the head; gets a Mt Dew from the fridge and goes in the room to change. He comes back out, fired the PS3, loaded Skyrim and saw me still looking at the screen.

 

“How was the movie?”

 

“It was good. Just like the play… but you can’t go wrong with Tommy Lee Jones and Sam L. Jackson.”

 

“Then what’s wrong? Someone say something? Don’t get me wrong; you don’t look mad. I can’t tell what it is…”

 

“Bored. I’m bored – I was bored.”

 

“I’m glad I wasn’t there,” he ran back laughing so I couldn’t pop him. He dropped into the chair and started playing and I went back to my blank page.

 

About 10 minutes later, he turned to me as the Skyrim patch (finally!) was installing and found that there were no words on the page. He waved me over and met me on the couch. I even let him tug at my gauges.

 

“What happened?” (tug, tug)

 

“I was asked where you were again.” (tug, tug)

“Did you tell them I was working and not generally inclined to sit and talk a movie I don’t care about to people I don’t know?” (light elbow jab to the ribs)

“Yes… but that never keeps folks from asking. I just get sad looks. But you do have an invite if you wanna come.”

“That’s okay. So what’s wrong?”

 

I stopped there… mainly because I didn’t know. It wasn’t as if I was offended; I was treated with the height of hospitality. There was a bit of uneasiness, but few folks have a frame of reference for a returning, single-in-the-faith, black amazon that has a small voice, likes to debate, hates to talk and will clean your kitchen. These kinds of folks just come around that often.

 

The conversation was great before the movie. I was put on the spot for a brief moment only because I wasn’t quite listening, but that was a small thing. The food was great with all manner of things I wasn’t supposed to eat (which didn’t stop me.one.bit).

 

“…and after the movie?” Bill had started the game, put his best armor on the character, sent the character into a cave to fight 5 skeletons. The Skeletons whaled at the character with all of  their God, to no avail. 30 seconds later the Heavy Armor Level up bar flashed on the screen. Bill grinned at me. He was grinding. I rolled my eyes. He muted the game and turned to me.

 

“Well, he asked a question and there were crickets…” I laughed. “complete and total silence. I said a bit, but I didn’t say too, too much. Enough to be just a tiny bit provocative,”

 

“hoping someone would jump in?”

 

“yeah… but not so much. Everyone was just afraid to talk.”

 

“Because you were “The Only Adult Black Female in The Room?” he said the last part with air quotes.

 

“No…” my voice was a bit too defensive. He picked that up and smiled “not at first”

 

I should stop here and provide a bit of context. For the last 20 years of my life, I have found that for whatever reason, whatever I am doing, I am the only adult black female in said group. There may be another one there occasionally, but when it comes to the usual suspects, it breaks down like this:

 

Q: 20 white folks and one black female at a party, playing games and having a blast. What do you call the black female?

A: Chrishaun

 

Q: 7 folks in a room playing D&D, 6 white and one black female. What do you call the black female?

A: Chrishaun

 

Q: 30 white folks and one black female in a room. What do you call the black female?

A: Dr. Keller-Hanna

 

Q: 1 white guy, 2 mixed raced girls and one black female in a room, playing Rock Band. What do you call the black female?

A: The Drum Goddess (or mom…)

 

You get my point. But this is the live I created and chose. And I love my life- it is badass by many definitions, especially if you knew all that I went through to get here.

 

I think that more than anything else, they were willing to walk in the room see the movie, feel intellectually better about themselves for seeing it, but then pussy out on getting to the real meaning of what they had just seen.

 

“They didn’t want to discuss the deeper things… they just wanted to appear and to be seen as smart just for showing up. So instead of having to be put on the rails once again by Greg, I just washed dished”

 

“So you fight being seen as the help by being the help?” I threw the cat at him. He ducked.

 

“No… by being a servant to the saints”

 

“You going back?”

 

“Yeah…especially if the desserts rock”

 

He gave me a disapproving look, took the game off mute and laughed.

 

“That’s not why you go”

 

I know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tra-di-tiiiiiiiiooooon, tra-DI-tion!!

For the past year, all of my church visits have been to either non-dom or emerging denominational churches, where the King is King and style is everywhere. Great sets,  good music by worships rockers with tats and gauges and drummers in plexi cages. Closed eyes and raised hands swaying to the music. Titantrons with flashy videos and (LOUD!!) MUSIC BLASTING… IT’S A GOOD THING THAT THEY OFFERED EARPLUGS AT THE DOOR ALONG THE BULLITIN!! (WAH?). I wanted experiences that were unlike anything that I was raised with or was used to. I wanted to new sexy churchy hotness; leave the liturgies and humming and kneeling and the robes for Grandmas and the Tea Party folks – I want my Pastor to have ripped jeans and one of those nudie Britney Spears headset mikes! (Amen and AAAAAmen!)

Really!! …and not really…

The services at the [cult]Church were simple and straightforward:

Step 1: Stand up and sing

Step 2: Prayer

Step 3: The first part of the service

Step 4: Stand up and sing second song

Step 5: The Second part of the service

Step 6: Stand up and sing final song (by this time I am ready to G-O jet)

Step 7: Closing Prayer

Step 8: Go to Hot Sauce Williams

 

Simple. Predictable. Boring.  And it happened twice a week every week for 18 years.  It was comforting in its mind-numbing routine-yness, a church normalcy that was the cure for ‘worldly’ behavior and temptations that one would find during the week. It was safe, it provided an identity, I always had the security of knowing what was coming and how it would make me feel which it did every single time.

We run to tradition when we don’t want to think about the technical (that is to say the how to and the what for) of worship.  There is no need to worry about being relevant to “seeker friendly” environment, the traditions have been in place for longer than our country has… we know what we are asking for  and what we’re gonna get when we walk in. And when we walk in we take our portion of Christian Blessing, take communion, say Amen and leave.

And there is beauty in that and it was something I missed. Say what you want about tradition, but that’s the very thing that tells us who we are and what Abba wants us to do. And frankly, I don’t know either of those things.

So I needed to find a denominational, traditional service with a liturgy and communion, if available.  

And it so happened that I knew exactly where to find one…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Storytelling, John the Beloved and Full Makeup…

coming through... the last thing you want to see before your morning tea...

Sunday the 7th of August had me going to Shoreline Church for a special theatrical performance by Jim Miles preforming John the Apostle. I am a HUGE fan of storytelling, especially when there’s full makeup and a Bible story, so I was absent from the Hill yet again. They don’t even bother staying up anymore. This saddens me a little.

Shoreline was the first megachurch I had heard of here in Austin, mainly because it was right around the corner from where I living when I first moved here and secondly because you couldn’t pass a car without one of their bumper stickers on it (which is only slightly better than the little white apples or My child is an Honor Student at [that school]).

Located North near the Howard Lane / Wells Branch area, Shoreline features a nursery, a school, a sanctuary that seats about a thousand easily, a coffee shop that feature Starbucks (the Green tea Chai was just the thing I wanted to see early Sunday morning), a book store with a full array of books, videos and CD’s from the pastoral and worship staff, and a children’s area with a ship coming out of the wall (which was the last thing I was prepared to see first thing Sunday morning before my tea)

This church is also different in that I wasn’t the only black person there… this was a multicultural church and it showed all through… from the blonde wearing the sari to the near gospel worship, to the female Hispanic Associate Pastor from the south campus who came for the service. Even for the size, the fact that I wasn’t ‘the only one’ gave me comfort. It was still huge, though.

Jim Miles, an actor and storyteller, then appeared on the stage as John the Beloved, sitting at his desk on the island Patmos, greeting the thousands to come to see him.

“You know you’re an old man when a thousand people can sneak up on you…” it was met with a laugh and then to the story of the Gospel from a good source…

“Because I was there”

And for a moment, just after the Justin Bieber joke (don’t ask), I believed him and he took me there with him, as good theater should.

It took me back to one of things I missed about the [cult]Church. Every year we would trek to the District Convention, where one looks mainly to find a mate, perhaps get baptized and/or listen to sermons for 8 hours a day for three days. The highlight, other than baptism on Sat morning(because you were something if you got baptized at the District Convention),  was the Drama on Sunday afternoon.

A full makeup production, it told a story of a Witness in a modern day dilemma that reflected a bible principle (‘good association’, ‘moral cleanliness’ and the like). Then the bass toned narrator would chime in and intro the Bible story that illustrated the point of how we as Witnesses should act. It was heavy handed, but it was designed to be that way and I enjoyed it because it was a story, like the Bible.

And as everyone knows, I am a sucker for a good story.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church Trekking

I have been visiting a lot of churches lately, so much so that folks I run into from the Hill tell me that they miss me when I‘m at HEB or Target  and The Youngest Daughter wonders if I will ever find a home church.

“Are you ever going to settle down?”

“You sound like you’re middle aged and waiting for grandchildren before you die. You might consider getting a driver’s license before you worry about that.”

“Wait… before  your  grandchildren or your church, because I don’t want kids.”

“never mind…”

All the nagging aside, there are some  things that I want to make clear:

  • Yes, I am still going to church regularly…
  • Yes, I consider The Hill Community Church my home church
  • And yes, I have been very, very, unfaithful…

to the Hill I mean…

As you have seen from the blog, I paid a visit to Live Oak Presby, (The Church in the Movie Theater) and I mentioned that I have been to Austin Stone (The Church that Concrete Built). I even dropped in at Celebration NW (The Church Formally Known as Celebration Cedar Park), and I am going to Shoreline this Sunday at 9…

 

Why?

Because Shoreline is having a Storytelling who is going to go full makeup and do a John the Beloved thing, and I am a sucker for storytelling, John the Beloved and full makeup.

If you are asking me why I am visiting so many churches all of a sudden, the real answer is…

I want to see what is out there, especially before seminary.

I want to know what ‘church’ is and what is can be and what people are calling church nowadays.

I want to know that there is a place for a woman to use their gifts without being relegated to the Woman’s and Youth Ministry Ghetto, which I found is your only choice if  you are a PCA Presby or a follower of Mark “women are more gullible that men and as such shouldn’t be Pastors (Good Lord, I feel sorry of the gal gullible enough to marry him)” Discroll .

Seriously, that jackbag’s articles had me scared, and when I found out that his church Mars Hill kicks out folks that don’t agree with him and had the following to say about women in ministry, I was unwilling to join Austin Stone, which is sister church and a member of the same church plant group Acts 29 as Mars Hill. It took me back to my [Cult]Church days.

If you think I’m exaggerating, this comes from a from the Mars Hill Booklet “Church Leadership”:

 

Without blushing, Paul is simply stating that when it comes to leading in the church, women are unfit because they are more gullible and easier to deceive than men. While many irate women have disagreed with his assessment through the years, it does appear from this that such women who fail to trust his instruction and follow his teaching are much like their mother Eve and are well-intended but ill-informed.. Before you get all emotional like a woman in hearing this, please consider the content of the women’s magazines at your local grocery store that encourages liberated women in our day to watch porno with their boyfriends, master oral sex for men who have no intention of marrying them, pay for their own dates in the name of equality, spend an average of three-fourths of their childbearing years having sex but trying not to get pregnant, and abort 1/3 of all babies and ask yourself if it doesn’t look like the Serpent is still trolling the garden and that the daughters of Eve aren’t gullible in pronouncing progress, liberation, and equality (p. 43).

Wow… yeah… sorry about the tangent, but folks like that give me a reaction akin to poison ivy.

I want to know why there aren’t more house churches and why megachurches seem to give some pastors spiritual hard-ons I have heard more than one pastor, when told that I didn’t want to join a BIG church, get wide eyed and state “There’s nothing wrong with a BIG church” in a voice just slightly too loud to fit the circumstances.

Uh huh. Cover it with the hymnal and side step to the bathroom so you can finish off. We can wait.

I want church to be more like libraries or local bars, a place where people show up to find peace, instruction, a few answers and even some entertainment.

I want to see where I fit in that.

I want to see the lay of the land and where my path lies in it.

And I want to see a cat in full makeup doing his John the Beloved thing.

Live Oak

When I walked into the theater, It was like walking that surreal portion of my imagination, where churches were smack in the middle of where people were. Not secular, mind you…. Not the McWord of God where you can have it your way, but the Word and the Truth where it was accessible.

Like a movie theater.

Inside, there was everything you would imagine in a modern church. The screen was there waiting for worship to start, the instruments and mikes were there for worship, and worship music was the going through the speakers getting us ready for the service. People were milling around and more than one person introduced themselves.

The worship started and I started to sing ( I should stop here to remind you that even though this was in a movie theater, it was first and foremost a Presbyterian Church. This means that if they sing at all it is very, very quiet.) I got more than a few looks, the most embarrassing one from the gal who was actually singing. I don’t believe that she was mad that I was singing in as much as she was surprised that I was singing over a whisper.

With worship over, the tithe and offering was collected, lead by a female pastor, Chesney Szaniszlo. This is big for me for a reason that I will cover at another time.

Then there was the sermon. The pocket-sized pastor, Caz Minter (swear to you that I could have walked off with him in my purse, but I would’ve had to remove the Austin Stone folks from last week first) was engaging, humorous and drew you in. The sermon, part of a series on prayer, interactive and involved among other things, putting our desires and worries into a stone and casting it into water. It was pointed out later on that this was not a typical service. It figures I would show up on play date time.

After service, I assisted in tear down and the on to Rose’s Tortilla factory for fellowship.

I enjoyed it and would return. As the second denominational church I have attended during my search, it helped me reconsider what I am thinking about them (‘run away’) and that is a good sign.