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Column Welcoming strangers to ready-made church
By JEANNETTE BATZ
There was a time when I loved my
church too well. Loved it as my sustenance and renewal, found spiritual
guidance among its like-minded members. Smiled fondly at the familiar faces as
they walked back from Communion. Slid into the pew each Sunday with a relieved,
contented sigh, feeling like a beloved daughter whod come home at last.
And resented, deep down, everyone who came only for special occasions, crowding
the pews at Christmas and Easter, showing up with fiancés or new babies
to wait a few decorous weeks before requesting the desired ritual.
They are taking advantage of our community, I thought. We have
built this family feeling over years of fellowship, endless committee meetings
and sausage suppers and Lenten pageants. Weve poured our money, our time,
our hearts into this sanctuary, baking casseroles we could have fed our own
families, doing yard work here while the weeds at home outgrew the daisies. Who
are they to waltz in and demand a church home ready-made?
I was all the angrier because belonging had been a private
struggle. If truth be told, I chafe at committees and casseroles, and my first
year in any formal group is usually a running internal argument about whether I
fit or not, whether my freedom is being unduly restricted, my self molded into
conformity with values I dont quite share. Then I grow up, and relax. I
admit I hate baking casseroles and beg for a different assignment. I grow
fondest of the parishioners I once found the most irritating. People nod and
smile and know my name, and time itself, sheer hours logged in that pew, gives
me that magical sense of belonging.
They wanted to belong instantly! Without paying any dues
whatsoever -- maybe a token fee to the celebrant of their sacrament, but
certainly no casseroles. And they seemed to feel right at home, kneeling and
standing and shaking hands all smiley, telling their stories to the greeters
who, deputized to hospitality, duly approached them after Mass. How dare they,
I thought, kneeling stiffly alongside the newcomers.
Then one day I wrote a little profile of one of the longtime
parishioners for the church newsletter. Mabel had been a member for 50 years,
and I sat scribbling her recollections, fascinated by the changes shed
seen.
As she talked, it became obvious: Those changes depressed her. Oh,
it had been reassuring to watch the ups and downs, the swells and droughts in
membership, and how the church always somehow found what it needed to continue.
But the liturgy had changed, the words of certain hymns had been sanitized (she
still knew the original versions by heart) and the people had changed.
Nobody knew each other so well these days, the old core group that used to
socialize together was half dead, there were all these newcomers
I realized she meant me. Id been there seven years, which to
me was a long, long time, but to her I was a newcomer, someone whod
showed up after all the real church-building was over. Wed never made
casseroles side by side.
That afternoon, my attitude made a convenient 180-degree turn.
Churches should welcome everyone, especially the newcomers, I thought, mentally
branding her nostalgia a little mean-spirited. Why should we be so rigid,
seeing strangers as interlopers, when the very definition of Christianity was
an open-doored community of believers? So what if somebody showed up just
because they were going through a rough time and needed a quick infusion of
support? Hasnt the secular world designed the support group
to have just that kind of accordion flexibility, welcoming anyone who needs the
help, and cheering them when they feel able to move on?
A social club is a danger to the spirit. I thought about those
dreadful sanctions convents used to place on particular friendships
-- maybe the goal wasnt to guard against homoeroticism after all; maybe
it was to prevent exclusion. But real friendship ought to open people to
others, and real community ought to make a group strong enough to welcome
anyone into its midst.
We cant all flit in and out of churches, though, I thought
worriedly. There would be no communities to flit in and out of, if nobody stuck
around to build them. Besides, there is a wonderful glow that comes when you
know the arc of another parishioners life. You celebrate the milestones
with her, abide in her joys and sorrows, pray for her and with her, learn the
feel of her bony shoulder blades each week at the kiss of peace, smile at the
high-C she invariably hits off key. Churches have lore and foibles and inside
jokes, and it feels good to know them, to feel yourself a part of the mesh this
group has woven.
But does it have to be so clubbish? Why did I need to raise my
guard against anyone else who wanted to make the same journey, or at least land
in our safety net for a while? Maybe exclusivity made all the effort feel
worthwhile. Maybe I was just smug, like that reading response that says,
Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, winking the
implication that Gods not talking to anybody else. Or maybe I was still
chafing, deep down, and wishing I had the same freedom to come and go at will.
It would be nice, to be able to enter someone elses community
whenever I felt like it, and count on a fresh and sincere welcome each time I
needed their blessing.
Yet when you stay, the blessings run deeper. The rush of
tenderness as you watch the familiar faces; the deep sense of comfort and
belonging; the chances for insight, because you know the personalities and the
histories; the countless points in your own memory that are touched and
reconnected by each new happening or exchange.
In a familiar church, I am brought to tears by the baptism of a
strangers infant, simply because I know this place and this rite and what
it means to all of us.
Why wouldnt I want to share that?
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer for The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis. Her e-mail address is
Jeannette.batz@rftstl.com
National Catholic Reporter, October 19,
2001
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