Sunday Alone Again

Another Sunday has come and almost gone. The morning brought a light rain and I stayed in, allowing myself a break from my habit of dining early at The End of Time. It was quiet in my small apartment and I allowed myself the space to consider an aspect of my life that worries me: Here I am, Maxwell Hewes—writer, minor local celebrity, avowed thoughtful Christian. Yet, once again, I did not go to church.

This has been going on for some time now. I was once recognized as a committed, faithful church member. I found a place in my church where I was asked to do a little teaching and even played the guitar in the band that had come to displace the organ, piano, and choir of days now dusted away by all things contemporary. I logged time in these practices for several years.

My displacement came in uneven movements. First was my own theological meanderings, which gave suspicion to some that my role as adult teacher might be better suited to those trained in comfortable orthodoxy. Then there was the gentle nudge out of the musical arena so that younger people might have their time at center stage (we cringe at trusting sixteen year olds with automobiles; don’t we understand the dangers when they pick up musical instruments?). I do not begrudge the intrusions of the young. I was a young person once and I appreciate their emergence into the musical celebrations of worship. I was told that it was time to move into more “contemporary” expressions of music (isn’t anything you are doing right now, by definition, “contemporary”?).

None of these things, in and of themselves, would have displaced me from church. It’s just that, when my places of participation were extracted, I found myself left as a religious observer, sitting quietly among the gathered faithful to watch as others led the way. I began to see our Protestant communion—done off to the side of the action, set on a table for those who might voluntarily come and serve themselves—as the most potentially rich place of engagement, but even that was done individually and without looking anyone in the eye.

It might be that my past involvement has ruined me for spectatorship. I find sitting through the services that I once helped to weave now produce a distractedness that has come to make me feel isolated and disconnected.

I wonder about this as much as I worry. I am not alone in these services; there are plenty of other people around me. But my lack of participation is painful to me and I don’t know how to be simply present anymore.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I have this need to be noticed and at the center of what is happening. Then again, maybe I’ve tripped into the experience of church as high participation as opposed to this new life of benign appreciation. I think I’ve been ruined along the way.

But I’m not ruined for worship. I know that Catholic churches like the one where Father Gene is the priest require fairly high involvement by the people. They stand, kneel, read out loud, sign the cross, and take bread and wine together. They probably struggle with authentic engagement just as much as their Protestant cousins, but at least they’re in motion.

Perhaps some time I’ll slip into the mass with Father Gene. I think he’d make space for me. I’m probably not qualified to take the elements of communion with his parishioners, me not being Catholic, but I think I can walk up front with the rest of them to find a blessing.

In the meantime, I’ll stay at home for a few more Sabbath days and be quiet.