Sunday

Last Sunday L & I went to church. The only other time we've gone was with my family over Christmas when we visited "back east." He did not like it then and really did not like the going out of obligation part of it. The obligation part seems like such a small thing to me. It's manners; it keeps the peace; it keeps me a piece of the family.

When I posed the idea of going to St. M's a couple weeks ago I was really clear that I wanted to go & would welcome company but that I wasn't even asking for him to come with me. L looked kind of surprised and said, "I always thought that if we went anywhere it would be to St. M's. I want to go with you." What else resides in his thoughts that I have no inkling of? About this & anything else? But that particular Sunday it was almost too big of a deal. We both got kind of nervous and cranky and neither of us went.

Last week I said, "Hey, I'm going to give it another shot. I'm going to St. M's tomorrow." L said that he planned to stay home and work on the robots. Sunday morning I got up, showered and dressed, fussed around with directions to St. M's & what time is service & general feeling weird that I was going to be in church again. L said, "If there's still time, I want to go with you, I'll get ready really fast."

While he showered and shaved, I sewed a button on his last clean pair of shorts. Then out the door and down the hill. It was a cool-ish sunny summer morning with the promise of heat for the afternoon. We entered church a little late but not the latest to arrive. The doors were wide open and folks trickled in along the sides where empty seats were ready for them.

It felt good. It felt like this could be home. For me anyway. (I couldn't really read L during the service and that's not why I was there anyway.) It all fit together, the physical structure, the music, the simplicity of setting, the preaching that included space for, "Some of you here don't believe in God today." The liturgy that offers words and focus when my own fall mute or distracted, and still grants me the room to mean something else too or instead of or I-can't-say-that-today-thanks-for-saying-it-for-me.

We didn't hang around for coffee hour or to meet the rector. Once past the hedge and onto the sidewalk I tried to hold back but said anyway, "You hated it didn't you, but thanks for coming with me." But L told me that he didn't hate it. He liked the room. The organ and the choir. Their singing is like a chant. I was embarrassed that I'd put words in his mouth for my own defense. And so relieved that he didn't hate it. Because I loved it. It could be home.

Later in the week L told me a curious thing that I keep returning to in my mind. He said that he plays with everything - ideas, social stuff, data... and at St. M's things are serious. It's good to have a place where things are serious. For example, when you have kids, and they see all this playing with everything, but it's good for them to also see that some things, some places, are serious. We frequently talk in terms of "when we have kids," especially lately, and I like the window it offers into the things we hold most important, the lines we draw, the qualities we most want to share with someone new and precious, and so we see each other newly, the worlds we live in, newly too.

Dad always called our home a harbor. Where you come in from the tosses and storm of life in the world to the protection, comfort, and restoration of home. I haven't known that feeling or that place since he died. 13 years. Sometimes I know it in myself, or with L. I rest in it in moments here and there. The way L described St. M's as this serious place in the midst of all this messing with stuff issues an echo of Dad's description of the harbor. Does that home really exist somewhere? How does how I approach St. M's affect it's ability to be my harbor? Maybe if I approach it through the acute angle L is using, it can retain that special quality? So I'm especially grateful to have gone at all and to have gone with L and for the additional strength and insight of seeing the world newly with him.