Liturgy and Preachers and Dreams…

…oh my! I have lots of weird dreams, and most of them don’t mean anything. But as I’ve been trying hard to process where I am in light of recent and current discussions at Dash’s and Dwight’s blogs, I don’t doubt that Tuesday night’s dream was my brain working overtime. I found myself in the Lutheran church where I was confirmed, with Dash and her mother (they’ve never been there), a collection of people I knew then, and the pastor who confirmed me. They were in the middle of a service, with a different pastor presiding. My old pastor was assisting, but when he saw me, he came right over and we had a great big hug. It was so good to see him! I realized that it was disruptive, but I hoped nobody would mind too much. I can’t remember too much of the service itself (how high, how low) but I do remember wondering if Dash would like it. I neither liked nor disliked the service itself—I realized I was focused most on the reunions with people I haven’t seen in more than 20 years. The biggest change in that church (besides having a new pastor) were a curious and creative (and impossible!) solution to sharing worship space. The church had been altered quite a bit, so that the rear of the nave was now a detachable chapel, which is where the service had been held. I think it was on a weekday, not the main Sunday a.m. service. Immediately following the service, preparations were made to detach the chapel and move it several miles away to attach it to a Catholic church. It appeared to be mounted on some sort of track, and we gathered in the chapel for the trip to its other “station.” Once we arrived at the Catholic church, the chapel locked into place (too many science fiction movies, I guess) with some sort of connecting wall to be opened into the church. Those on the other side had not only assembled already, but apparently hadn’t waited for preparations/reorganizing of the chapel’s “furniture,” and their Mass was in progress. So Dash and her mom opened a door in the wall to duck into the Mass, and I could see it was almost completely dark in there. They looked at me to wonder if I was coming as well, but I was rather undecided. Why? I thought. I’m familiar with all this. No reason I couldn’t. But I didn’t. Some of this seems quite obvious, and almost literal. The pieces that are specific to me, however, I find difficult to articulate. As I’m still on sabbatical from organized religion, I know I’m in the middle of some paradigm shift, and I don’t know yet where I’ll land. I know that the issues being aired: who joins with whom, how they join, how those decisions are made and by whom, are precisely why I’m outside the church (any church) right now. This is me, the Bag Lady, standing on the corner, the intersection of a number of viewpoints, watching and wondering, seemingly unable to find my voice to join the conversation. All viewpoints claim to hold to “The Truth,” which more or less preempts anybody outside that viewpoint. This is obviously a much bigger topic than 1) I can organize neatly and 2) would be of an appropriate length for the medium. So I will continue in a future post.