And We'll All Go Together

Earlier this week, one of my posts from a year ago when I was looking for the right church turned up on my Facebook memories. I believe that was also the week I visited Echo Church for the third time and finally decided I was there to stay.

While my usual bike, Sharlie, has been to
Echo many times, last week was (IIRC)
Hugo's first time there. His mountain bike
tires are much more suited to the mud &
slush that were on Cincinnati streets
last weekend.

They're stuck with me now. They don't seem to mind, either because they're great actors or because I'm more fun to be around than I thought. I'm equally at peace either way. I wish I could say I learned something from the journey of visiting many places before I found my people, or that I now have the tools to find the right church in the future, should I ever be so mad as to change cities again. (This is city #5. While I have a short list of other places I'm willing to live, it gets shorter all the time and I'd rather not have to deploy it unless absolutely necessary.) (Unless there's a nonprofit in NYC that has a job to offer me right now and will pay me enough money that I can live a couple blocks from a subway line. I'd take that in a heartbeat.)

No, all I've learned is that God has many people in this city. And some of them are pretty great people who've opened their hearts and lives to what God wants to do through them. In our women's Bible study we've been reading through Mere Christianity, and this week got to some great things C.S. Lewis says about Christian community: "...united together in a body, loving one another, helping one another, showing Him to one another. For that is what God meant humanity to be like; like players in one band, or organs in one body." 

That reminded me of a bit in Screwtape Letters (which I haven't read in years, so this is entirely from a memory that is only marginally reliable), when Screwtape tells Wormwood that for his client to be attending the same parish church week after week, seeing the foibles of his fellow parishioners up close until they grate on his nerves, is an effective way of keeping the client in hell's clutches. From what I've heard, the client in question in Screwtape is Lewis himself, so to put those passages together makes me think that Lewis hung in there through the aggravation he may have felt at his fellow community members and their more trying traits, to come out the other side treasuring them deeply as fellow believers. 

I don't know if I've ever gone through that process as thoroughly as I could. Goodness knows I'm fairly easily irritated, and never more so than in this era of everyone proudly displaying their quirks, delightful or otherwise, all over social media in a display of I don't even know what. (Guilty!) But to embrace a community is to embrace the whole of it, even at times when I may be completely flabbergasted by the person standing in front of me. As a person whose whole life is a bit outside of the ordinary, it's not like I don't bring my own foibles to the equation.

So after a year in this community, I'm happy, and indeed delighted, to have found them. And I know I still have some growing to do. So here's hoping for many years of all growing together.

Post title is a nod to the song, "Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go," which I wasn't planning to do until I wrote that last sentence. And after that I naturally couldn't think of anything else.