Put aside the stained glass and Evensong, what I’ve been learning in Canterbury is much less pretty. And to me, a lot more real. 

This isn’t to bad-mouth sacred art- obviously, my entire website is sort of centered around intersections of spirituality and creativity. But it is to say that for me, being in a place that is so majestic with sounds that are so tuned can actually make my prayer life hard. 

I find myself sitting outside, watching squirrels play. I find myself using oil pastels, drawing in soft pinks and reds with gospel song lyrics in the background. I find myself lying on the floor of the old chapter house, half amused and half disgusted at the extravagance of the royal figures portrayed on the 50 foot sheet of stained glass.

Mostly, I find myself relying on my brothers and sisters. Hugs when we go for our prayer robes. Laughter as we dance to praise music. Smirks when the psalm today proved the existence of unicorns (look up Psalm 22: 21, KJV). Sweetly tuned but not too perfect harmonies as we settle into Taize chants together. Bantering over which cheese is better at lunch. Tears rolling down my cheeks as we read greeting cards to one another much too seriously. Tears again when our prayer together is just so open and raw. 

Amidst the stones and pillars, I realize that right now where I find Christ’s love most manifest in my life is the LOVE I share with other people. What I’m looking for here is grace: to be okay not genuflecting perfectly in the center of the cathedral, to allow God to love me even through a Eucharist I can’t participate in fully, to risk a descant that’s full of spirit but maybe a little badly harmonized at times. 

As a child, I always wanted to do a cartwheel in church. I never told anyone about this secret wish, but I also daydreamed of swinging from the ceiling and jumping down the aisles. I could be realistic and attribute these desires to immaturity, but another part of me wants to believe that they stem from an inclination to embodied praise. This year in God’s time is teaching me a lot about silence, but it’s also sure teaching me about my need for sound and motion as ways to feel the spirit move. 

“I made you as you are to glorify me,” I hear God speak during prayer yesterday. And here in Canterbury, part of my response to that is realizing that I can own a real integrity about how I truly worship and serve best. I can pretend as hard as I want that Thomas Tallis helps me praise God, but in truth right now I’m happier with Tamela Mann. I can justify staying with the Roman Catholic Church till I’m blue in the face, but it’s not what I feel like God is calling me to now, so, at least for this weekend, Lutheran here I come. These aren’t final decisions, but they are doors I feel God is opening for grace to come in right now. 

“Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.”

~1 Thessalonians 2:4   

Reading this over the past week, I realized that where I am right now in my faith life, the only rule I am going to worry about (besides the 10 commandments!) is the Rule of Life for my community. This is so I can stop worrying about pleasing mortals, and instead stop and listen to how God is testing and shaping my heart. For me, this is a level deep beyond “doing what looks right.” This is realizing that how I act will come from my heart, which is a part of me I can’t even control! Only God can shape my heart into the relationship I’m born for, and this life is my chance to live into that mystery without being deathly afraid of doing Christianity wrong in someone else’s eyes. 

If you’re still reading at this point, thanks for bearing with me, and I suppose you might not be too surprised as I share my current “creed” with you. Long story short, I ended up in a coffee shop this Sunday instead of church, mostly because I got lost. I think it was also because God wanted to meet me just for a very chill coffee in front of a big tree. I felt an urging to write what I actually believe- or want to believe- at this point in my faith life. 

I believe in God, Who creates, redeems and sustains the universe, including the world and all its people.

God is the Author of Life.

Despite the language and hierarchy of the Christian faith, God is not male. God knows all hearts, secrets, desires and struggles. 

In Christ Jesus, God is fully flesh, and fully embraces and understands all that it is to be human — loved, despised, forgotten, forsaken and raised up.

God is cosmic power and intimate love. God is earth-shattering justice and outpouring peace. 

And yet, whatever we think God is or is not, we’d better get used to being surprised. God is always more than we can know or imagine. 

Despite what we may feel or fear, I want to believe that God does love us and lead us into life.

And somehow, believing this, I can believe in miracles. I can believe that we can change in the core. I can believe the world can change. I can believe the gifts of the Spirit are here, whether we’re simply sitting together or shouting praise. I believe someone who’s hurt can be whole, someone who’s angry can forgive by first being forgiven, someone who’s stuck can be released.

I believe in Mystery that needn’t be solved and Love that needn’t be earned or justified. I believe it is beautiful to stop resisting and believe. 

Wow, you’re still reading?! I feel blessed. As you may be able to tell, I do make a potentially angry “God is not” statement here…maybe in time, I’ll be less vehement about the “God is not male,” but for me living into my embodied Christian experience, that has been a very important stepping stone on the journey. I still struggle with the terminology of “God the Father,” but I hope in time I can come to terms with this as a complement to other ways we talk about God. This would bleed into another long post about female ministry, but we’ll save that for later… Suffice it to say, that’s a calling I’m exploring. 

So as I sit in Canterbury Cathedral, I’m surrounded not just by visions of the communion of saints and not just by the resounding bass of the organ. I’m surrounded and filled entirely by God’s love, which seems to come to me most right now by Christ incarnate in those around me- the arms that embrace me during the peace, the hands I hold as we sing, the communal water bottle that I think is just such an ordinary and yet endearing sign of our trust. One of my recent prayers has been “Don’t hold back your Spirit, God,” and I feel God in turn urging me to accept that same challenge. Not to hold back the person God is forming me into, a woman who is deeply formed by but looks deeply different than her Catholic upbringing. 

All will be well.