Churching

This past Sunday, Parisa reminded us that living Good News does not always equate to enjoying good times. Being in community is both wondrously fulfilling and deeply challenging. It asks us to step forward and lead, as well as to step back and follow; to privilege the common need over the personal want; to risk failure and be willing to grant forgiveness. Doing church is truly counter-cultural.


When announcing the offering, I hazarded: what would it mean to think of church as a verb, not a noun? Together we are churching. Church is not a place we go or an institution to which we contribute, separate from our own lives. Rather, church is an active movement towards the realm of God that beckons. It is indistinguishable from the coins we drop in a homeless person's hat, the prayer of gratitude we whisper before turning off the lights, the meal we cook for a fellow parishioner who recently gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. We church in our daily lives. Even though we may not all be gathered in a meetinghouse or committee meeting, we nevertheless carry the values and connections of our togetherness into the many spaces of our individual lives.


In a letter to Jane Tuckerman dated 1838, Margaret Fuller describes a powerful religious experience that transformed living into churching: “In the evening I went into the church-yard: the moon sailed above the rosy clouds. That crescent moon rose above the heavenward-pointing spire. At that hour a vision came upon my soul, whose final scene last month interpreted. The rosy clouds of illusion are all vanished, the moon has waxed to full. May my life be a church, full of devout thoughts, and solemn music.”


What does it mean to you to church?


Please: continue the conversation.