We Had Church

This morning I came downstairs, walked into the kitchen and found the counters covered with empty

ice cream containers, empty popcorn bags, dirty dishes and crumb covered counters.  (I wasn't surprised except by the ice cream containers; it looked like that when I went to bed last night.  I had to run the dishwasher with the other dishes before these could be loaded.)  I made the coffee (first things first) and then began the process of cleaning up...

But I wasn't irritated; I wasn't angry; tears welled in my eyes but not tears of frustration or sadness but rather tears of gratitude and joy--sacred tears, holy tears.

I thought about the last afternoon and evening and said a silent prayer of thanks. All four of our children were home, our foreign exchange student was home, and the toddler was spending the night. It was good, and it was holy; it was church.

I thought about the morning and how I had shared tears with dear friends as we talked about hurts in our children; I thought about a lunch with women who give me courage and extend me grace; I thought about a difficult conference that proved to be better than I anticipated (perhaps a reason to maintain low expectations), and then I thought about the evening.

It was a "normal" evening. (What does that mean in the O'Doyle house anyway?) But it was so much more; as I washed the dishes it occurred to me, we had church.

We gathered; we came together with our individual days, our individual lives, our differences in age, our differences in culture, and we were one.  We came together as people at different places in our spiritual journeys and with some very different beliefs, and we were one.  We brought our hurts, our woundedness, our disappointments, our fears; our successes, our joys--we brought all of ourselves. And together we were one.  We loved one another simply and wholly--we laughed, we danced, we colored, we extended grace and mercy, inclusion and love, and we shared our stories and they became one.

Cultures coloring

We gathered around a table (okay not really--we held our plates as we gathered around the toddler) and it wasn't bread and wine but rather macaroni and cheese, popcorn, and Curious George fruit chews thrown in with a little milk, but it was good and it was holy, (even if it wasn't nutritious) and we were one.

I remembered the words Rachel Held Evans wrote in her new book Searching for Sunday, Loving, Leaving and Finding Church, "They remembered Jesus with food, stories, laughter, tears, debate, discussion and cleanup." (Clean-up--hmmm should we be doing that together?)  I learned from Barbara Brown Taylor (and I think RHE did too) that it was important to remember that Jesus told his disciples to "do this" not believe this, and that he gave them literal, concrete things to do in eating and being together.  I thought about how one of my children argues with me about infant baptism (he thinks I shouldn't have had him baptized--so that narrows your guessing as to which child) and that our exchange student isn't Christian but that we were together and it was chaotic and confusing, and it was good and holy,  and it was full of grace and of love, and it was church.

I wasn't there for the whole evening--I was gone talking to other women about what it means to be church--this morning, I realize, I had my answer.