Two New Resolutions

I've made a couple of resolutions today. One is I'm going to blog more (every day if possible). I mean it this time. It's always been really difficult for me to gather my thoughts and organize them in a coherent fashion. But I think that from now on it will be more important for me to get express my thoughts, for my mental and spiritual health.

Which brings me to the second resolution. I am a member of a Methodist Church. I believe this is where God wants me, so I must, with God's help, adapt myself both spiritually and emotionally to be a Methodist.

This is going to be very difficult for me. Not because of anything wrong Methodism. My church is by far the most loving and the most nurturing of any I have ever attended. The problem is me.

To make a long story a little shorter, I was raised a Catholic. I was taught to have an open, inquiring mind, which always put me a bit at odds with the more authoritarian aspects of the Church. As a young adult I was religiously conservative , politically moderate but somewhat liberal on social issues.

Then I married. I moved to a small town. Starting out, our life looked promising from a financial point of view. Then he became disabled. All my life I had cherished a number of comfortable middle-class ideas about how the poor brought it on themselves. How they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and be grateful for any help they could get. And, finally, so terrible to me now I can hardly write it, how poor women, and even couples, should give up for adoption any children they can't support for adoption. All of this vanished amidst the hell of being poor in Texas.

I've never been able to compartmentalize my religious views, to put them in their own little box away from my life experience. For me, my life and my spirituality are one. So as my political and social views became more liberal, so did my religious views. (I could go into more detail here, but I'll save it for later).

Upon moving to Texas, I started looking for a church. The search was long. We tried the Catholic Church, but the rigidity plus the inconsistencies and hypocrisies that annoyed me proved unbearable to my non-Catholic husband. I wanted a church that would have the things I loved about the Catholic Church, but that my family could love as well. We attended an Episcopal Church. It had nearly everything I loved about the Catholic Church, especially the weekly Eucharist, which I had missed intensely. But it was much more relaxed and democratic. I fell in love. But it was simply to far away for us to attend with any regularity. We couldn't afford the gas. The bottom line was I had to find a church in town.

In this town there numerous churches, but only one mainline Protestant church. That's the Methodist church. There's one Assembly of God. The rest are Southern Baptist, and many other churches that are even more conservative. Some much more so.

I attended a couple of Southern Baptist Churches. I'm too liberal now to fit in there, but I tried anyway. My daughter had problems with the competitive nature of AWANA, the Southern Baptist youth program.

Now we've joined the Methodist Church. My kids both love it. I miss the liturgy, the bells and smells, and, most of all, the Eucharist. We celebrate the Lord's Supper monthly, but it's not the same.

But there is much Historically the UMC has had a great emphasis on social action, less on doctrine. As I read it my heart cries, this is what a church should be. From what I see in the Bible, arguments about whether gays should be married or be ordained is not where God's heart is. His heart is in His poor. We should bring people to Christ not by hounding them into submission with threats of hellfire but by showing them His boundless love. This is how we are to win the world for Christ.

Unfortunately the UMC is largely lost its focus. There is a move underway to make Methodism more conservative. They want more literal, fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture. This worries me. I'm afraid they will turn the UMC into something like Southern Baptist Lite, only without preachers yelling their sermons.

I pray that the UMC will once again be the church that cares about all of God's people, struggling for justice and peace. The world needs this kind of Christian witness. I need it too. And I need to be part of it.

If you are inclined towards prayer please pray that God will help me follow His will in the church and life situation into which I find myself. And that I will be humble enough to listen. I thank you, Lord, for your wonderful care for me and for my family. Please keep up in Your Love and in Your Will. Amen.