Mrs Hardwick's Kitchen

(Patrick--look colors on an ipad!  No paper!)

This week I was in a wonderful, eye-opening Appreciative Inquiry workshop.  I'm looking forward to sitting down, organizing and processing all I learned--beware there may be more blogs--but there is one thing I don't need to process, I already know it in my heart and soul.

Yesterday morning we were talking about children and youth not regularly attending Christian formation.  We began to talk about judgment (because let's face it we were a bunch of clergy and lay leaders of the church in the room, and there was plenty of judgment if not being overtly said definitely under the surface); one person recognized we were judging and expressed we shouldn't be judgmental.  The question was presented, "Is judgment good or bad?"  It was decided that judgment is on its own neither good nor bad. In fact, to say that we don't ever judge is completely false.  What's "bad" is that which results from our judgment.  Judgment that leads to alienation instead of acceptance--that's wrong.  Acceptance is what one person expressed that she found as a child in the church and that's what she wanted for the youth of her congregation. The question was then asked, "Where was your best place of being accepted as a child?"  Immediately my pen wrote, "Mrs. Hardwick's kitchen."  I had a tinge of unease wondering if I had written the wrong answer--I am a priest in charge of Christian formation at a workshop given by the church, shouldn't my answer be more churchy? But right or wrong, I couldn't change my response--just thinking about Mrs. Hardwick's kitchen made my heart swell with warmth, body relax, and the feeling of total unconditional love and acceptance enveloped me.

Mrs. Hardwick is Katie's mother.  Katie was truly my best friend in junior high, and I am blessed we are still friends. For two years I virtually lived at the Hardwick's home.  After those two years I moved to Augusta, but I was always welcome to return, and I did--over and over.  My last time sitting in that kitchen was with my oldest two children and pregnant with my third.  It was still perfect. (And then they went and moved!)

I cannot remember what was on the walls; perhaps over the years that changed.  I do remember sitting on the bar stools at the kitchen counter, Mrs. Hardwick on the other side, and just talking.  I remember having her full attention, and I felt I could tell her anything.  I remember Katie and I experimenting with different pens (yes even back then I color coded everything and was always trying to find the perfect pen), and Mrs. Hardwick writing with us.  She didn't tell us it was silly or we were wasting time.  She engaged with us where we were (we even talked her into driving us to various stationary stores to find new pens).  Occasionally she would walk to the refrigerator and hand us spoonfuls of maple butter brought back from their summer home in upstate New York.  No comment about it being too sweet or making us fat--just a spoonful.  I think of those spoonfuls as spoonfuls of love.  I remember her fixing dinner without saying, "Y'all need to be doing something." She simply allowed us to be and she was with us--100% present.  In Mrs. Hardwick's kitchen I felt loved and accepted and feeling that love and acceptance made me want to be a better person.  I wanted to be a person Mrs. Hardwick could be proud of--I wanted to be the kind of person Mrs. Hardwick was (and is)--loving, accepting, kind and good.  Mrs. Hardwick's kitchen--for me that is the only answer I could give to the question, "Where was your best place of being accepted as a child?"

Yes I do want children and youth to be in church.  But I have to ask what is "church"?  Church is not a building; church is a community of faith--a loving accepting community of faith.  A community that allows us to be where we are and then takes us further.  A community that challenges us to be different, to be better.  Sometimes that community gathers in a building to worship, and I do think that is important, but sometimes that community permeates the world in which we live, and I believe that is essential.

Br. Curtis Almquist of the SSJE says this about sanctuary, "Sometimes we need to be enshrouded by light; sometimes we need to be enwombed by darkness.  A sanctuary--a place of safety and holiness--will have an intermingling of light and darkness, enough of both."

 That was Mrs. Hardwick's kitchen.