The Art of the Moment

There’s a verse in Hebrews that talks about not forsaking the assembly of the faithful. My fragrance and chemical sensitivities are gradually eliminating my options concerning when it comes to assembling with anyone. The most recent activity I cut was the women’s Bible study circle at Olivet Lutheran Church that I started attending in 1989. Last spring the homes where the studies were held had too many toxic scents, and it’s just taking me too long to recover from exposures at this point.

I had to quit attending the Olivet services in 1996-1997, when my reaction to perfumes and molds got too bad. My husband and I were friends with the pastor at the Free Methodist Church in our neighborhood, and with his wife and children. I maintained their Web pages for them until they transferred to a church in Iowa. A small church, but too many chemicals for me to continue going there on a regular basis. During my college years, I spent a lot of my spare time at the Wesley House affiliated with the university a few blocks from the Lutheran college I graduated from.

My mother grew up in the Methodist church in Iowa. I don’t know if she ever actually joined the Lutheran church in all the time she and Dad have been married. At least one set of her grandparents were still Quakers, though, and she and her family lived with them on their farm for a while during her childhood. I think that it’s been my mother’s influence that brought me to both Methodist and Quaker worship. Added to which, the local Friends meeting was renting space, not having their own building, and put a priority on having a place where it would be safe for everyone to worship. Which is how I came to join the Red River Friends Meeting in 2001. Christian community is important to me.

These days most Friends in this area of the country seem to be connected somehow to academia. Which means that they move on, again, to other jobs in other parts of the country. Now, it’s just four or five of us, and three of those people are more attached to Buddhist meditation than to listening expectantly for God’s voice. The meeting is shrinking, not growing, and although it meets my worship needs more than on-line worship does, I need more. Not face-to-face—not at this point, but Christian dialogue, a communicating Christian community to interact with.

And that is why I am here, tonight, writing in a new blog about things that really matter to me, rather than just being social on LiveJournal or SFF Net. 

Just because a goal is difficult to reach, one doesn’t quit reaching.

Liz

2008-11-14, 20:24