Postmortem 50

I am reflecting this morning on my exit from the Anglican Church, and really, all that makes me wonder, is that it has taken me so long to make such a critical decision for my life.  It was like clinging to a slowly disintegrating life raft, instead of learning to tread water unassisted.   Well, now I am swimming, going with the current, and, to cop a pun, it is going swimmingly. 

For people who are alone in life, without family, and of a certain age, the church can make you or it will break you.  Never both.   I was hoping that in the Anglican Church I could find a sense of ersatz family or at least a community of friends.  I was trying to find something that didn't exist.  And I also tried to create a reality that refused to take form or substance.  I could do nothing to control the process.  I was for the most part, surrounded by selfish individuals whose religion is little more than a soporific or a consecrated smokescreen for them to hide their true selves behind.    They were not interested in Christian discipleship, which is to say, they did not want to be set free from their smokescreen, nor from the lies and the sanctimonious platitudes that they often seem to mistake for real worship and adoration of the divine thus cheating themselves of the blessing of growing into the kind of relationship with God that would help them to truly grow and flourish.

For them, God was little more than an elderly family member in a nursing home, or at least that seems to be their attitude.  Simply attending services every Sunday, perhaps even twice a week, because that is where they find God, or perhaps an emotional equivalent of a spiritual encounter.  Then they could go home to their everyday lives, spending the remaining five or six days of the week without having their lives interfered with or complicated by the Jesus of the Gospels.   I never realized how toxic this could be.

I think that the Anglican Church did, for a while anyway, provide me with significant ballast and stability, since there is something solid about regular attendance, the Eucharist, the liturgy, the lexicons, as well as encountering the same friendly faces week after week.  But then I came to need something deeper, and real relationships with others who seemed on the same journey as me, and usually I have come out with nothing.   Very few seemed interested in friendship away from the context of the church building and services, and even fewer in developing a relationship with God not dependent upon attending church services.

All I know is there is no turning back.  The future remains unknown.  But I know that the same God that led me out of the Anglican Church, will go on leading, carrying and protecting me.  That is all I need to concern myself with right now.  That, and the business of the moment, and treating others with love , kindness and respect, because, Gentle Reader, no matter where we go, and often especially within the church, we are going to find ourselves surrounded by people with broken hearts just as our own hearts are also broken, and for this we must all resolve to be gentle and kind to one another.