This was one of those weeks when everything went well for me personally, but news seeping into my bubble from the outside unsettled my confidence in Robert Browning’s declaration that “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world”... So this morning I went to church.  Going to Church on Sunday Morning is a habit... a lifetime habit that I’m not likely to break. It’s a habit that I’ve occasionally considered breaking because as I’ve grown older I’ve become less religious... not irreligious, but definitely less religious and more agnostic.  My habit, like some other addictions, makes little or no sense to some of my casual friends, or even to some of the people who love me.  I like being in the glorious cathedral space of First United Methodist Church, and I like just as much being in a humble small dimly-lighted chapel.  I like the way my own voice feels rising and joining with other voices even though I don’t believe some of what the Apostle’s Creed requires me to say that I believe... and to say anything in unison with all the other people in the glorious cathedral space feels good.  Like the good natured, cheerful drunk, I’m one of the happy ones addicted to church.  Some drunks are not so pleasant... a few even downright mean.  It’s true, too, of regular church goers. It’s not pleasant to be in the company of some of them, but they are not the reason I go.

I needed church today.  The tragedy at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, rattled me... touched me.  I didn’t expect an explanation in church.  I didn’t want to hear anybody suggest that evil in the world is part of “God’s Plan.”  I simply wanted to be surrounded by beautiful space and to wish I could share the experience of holy space with grieving parents of murdered children.  

At the beginning of the service children and young adolescents processed down the aisle of the sanctuary and turned, bright and beautiful, to face the congregation and their director.  They weren’t doing it because of what happened in Connecticut.  It was on the program already before that awful Friday morning.  They had practiced.  When they began to sing, I grabbed my camera and hurried to a place high up under the organ pipes at the back of the church.  I was alone up there and the camera’s viewfinder was blurred because I was crying.  It felt good to cry and to let the sound of those young voices singing as if they would live forever wash over me.  It wasn’t a blubbering, sobbing sort of crying... just the soft, comfortable slow running of tears.  I got the pictures and came down with hope that these children and others around the world might make earth a safer place. It's what I expect church to make me feel... Hope.