MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE CHURCH...

I had decided to leave the church where I've been a deacon, publisher, member, critic and thorn in the flesh, these last 20 years or so, as a way to give my wife some breathing room. Harder for me, actually, is the fact that my parents and grandparents were also members of the church in their day...

But now I trek across the river to the E-piscopal church and get a much-needed liturgy fix -- something I used to have to do mid-week in the Good Old Days. And there are things about this new church that fill and nourish me, and there are things that drive me crazy. So nothing has really changed... or rather, I haven't. But I am walking four and a half miles to get there and back, and that is good news.

This morning the readings were from John 6 with the attendant references to manna in Deuteronomy, and good advice for the Ephesians, but above all John's message about the bread of life.

I could live without meat if I had to, but not without the Gospel of John.

And then an unknown hymn that completely shook me down and left me weeping --- Suzanne Toolan's wonderful words, echoing every bit of John 6, and her music, with the soaring refrain:

And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up on the last day.

Ms. Toolan was born in 1927, so she was a mere 25 years old when I was born, and must be almost 80 now, if she is still alive. But what a gift! and what a gift to me! Because it is easy to forget that we will be raised up when the forces of despair are so strong, and the faces that should turn toward us in love are turned toward us in anger and revulsion that wishes to call itself sorrow and pain.

And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up,
and I will raise them up on the last day.

And for a brief moment, I knew that I was sure in the promise that I too would be lifted up, even if I had to wait until the "last day". And the blessed relief raised me up on this day, so far from the last, so clearly yet another in a long series of days that stretch out before me, paved with broken glass and glowing coals in endless alternation...

After church, I approached a Catholic friend of mine, a friend of my grandmother's, who had turned up there in a pew ahead of me, unexpectedly. Or unexpected by me, anyway. It turned out that S_____ had married the second time in that church, and now alternated between the church of her childhood and the church of her age. It turned out her son too is divorcing, and her emotions were so clear and strong that I stopped short of giving my reasons... time enough, time enough. But she described the process he was going through as being "bludgeoned", and I had to admit that as I was the one who finally determined to leave, it was probably me who was doing the bludgeoning.

But she still blessed me and asked me to hold on to the knowledge of my goodness.

That seems to have become a kind of refrain. And the refrain keeps returning, from the unlikeliest of voices: online, in church, at my favorite restaurant. I can't help but feel that the hand of God [or Flip's HP] is at work here, because the thought of my "goodness" is mighty hard to hold on to these days, with all my shortcomings so continuously laid out in front of me. But the refrain keeps returning, and it lifts me up, and it lifts me up, and it lifts me up, even without the descant above the congregation.

And that, for now, is enough.