Membership vows

I took membership vows yesterday. THAT ended up being interesting in itself. When I applied to be in the membership class, I hadn’t planned to join. So I wrote what I was thinking… not what might be read in front of hundreds of people. They took that, edited it some, and… read it in front of hundreds of people. Of course.

Now everyone knows I googled churches that accept doubters. Everyone knows that I pretty much stopped believing for several years. Everyone also knows I was Pentecostal for 19 years… which was actually as embarrassing as admitting to everyone that I’d stopped believing. But I survived, and my blood pressure didn’t go up. I’m excited for Wednesday night. I’m looking for a new keyboard; I never played well, but if I can play just for my own enjoyment again that will show just how much healing there has been of old wounds. Piano was a part of my private worship for years and being sat down from everything took that from me, clogged and dirtied it somehow. I want to play again. And I can sing again.

I know this won’t last, this near euphoria, this joy. Everything won’t be new and interesting forever. But I’m glad for this time and I know that this will be treasured and become a cornerstone in my life. Meanwhile I have life and a new set of books to read… which reminds me of why I started typing to begin with. Rob Bell, in Everything is Spiritual, talks at the end of the book about Creation:
“In that ancient Genesis poem, the one that begins the Bible, it all begins with chaos, formless void, and darkness hovering over the waters. In ancient Hebrew consciousness, water is the unknown. The depths. The abyss. And in the poem, Spirit is hovering over those waters… and then Spirit enters into those waters and out of them creates something new. Something vast and expansive and beautiful and free… the first Jesus followers used to explain this great mystery by telling the story of Jesus being executed on a cross. He doesn’t explain the suffering… he bears it. He takes it into the expanse of his being… Actively, willfully — like he’s tuned in to some great secret involving a wholeness… The story isn’t over, it’s just beginning. They kill him, but it isn’t the last word. It’s the first word of a new world. Violence doesn’t have the last word. Love does. The suffering doesn’t end the story, it unleashes a whole new story. No wonder people still wear crosses… This sign, this symbol speaks to that question we’ve all asked: Can something new be created out of even this?“

And for me, for all of us, the answer is yes.