Like many of my peers, I struggle with organized religion aka church. What may be slightly odd is that I am married to a pastor. For 23 years of our marriage we have been a ‘ministry couple’.   The explanation for my disillusionment may be related to my experience with the view from the inside.  Although I know that there are lots of people who are disillusioned and they are not married to clergy.

I think I started out ripe for disillusionment. I got into this whole Christianity thing at a time when I was disenchanted with life to begin with. It was the perfect set up.  I was driven by a desire to find answers, black and white solutions and hope for a pretty messed up life.  I embraced, hmmm – maybe grasped is a better word – faith with desperation.  This was my ‘fix’.

What I discovered is that, to paraphrase Ghandi (with apologies) I had to be the fix I wanted to see.  Fix is a process and it takes a long time and just when you think you’ve got everything fixed, something else breaks.

Yesterday, I was at a church picnic.  I looked around at the group of people gathered together. The only possible explanation for such an eclectic gathering of people had to be that we were a church community.  Age, gender, health, wealth, emotional stability, marital status, sexuality, race, or intellect was irrelevant.  We were a group of people who had assembled, hoping it wouldn’t rain, cheering on a seminar student preaching his first sermon, sharing a meal together, playing a crazy game of four way tug of war, laughing together, praying together and having a great day.

It was one of those days when everything came together. It made community seem like a walk in the park.  We’re still broken for the most part but days like yesterday offset the disillusionment – at least for a while.