Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007.
Several years ago now, I met a former parishioner in the city where he and his family moved so that he could accept another job. We had gotten to know one another when we both worked in Christian education--he as the chair of the parish committee and I as the priest in charge. When we met again, he was the new president of an urban university and I had moved to Clarkesville. After we had filled each other in on our new lives, I asked him where he was going to church. With no hesitation, he said that he was not going anywhere. His life was full. His work was valuable. He spent his days with people of many faiths and no faith at all, who gave him ample opportunity to practice his own.
Still immersed in church life, I was skeptical. “Say more,” I said.
“After a lot of listening,” he said, “I think I finally heard the gospel. The good news of God in Christ is, ‘You have everything you need to be human.’ There is nothing outside of you that you still need--no approval from the authorities, no attendance at temple, no key truth hidden in the tenth chapter of some sacred book. In your life right now, God has given you everything that you need to be human.”
2 comments:
“You have everything you need to be human.” I think God is trying to tell me this all the time, but I am always thinking there is something else I need, some lesson I still need to learn. It’s time to stop waiting for that mysterious something to appear.
Loving God, please help me hear you calling me to be alive in this very moment.
Even after many years of not attending church, or "doing" church, I still wonder at such passages as Taylor's: You mean it's OK? that I'm OK in my relationship with Higher Power and not condemned for being unchurched?
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