Ms Do/Be

Ahhh, perhaps I just think too much. But when I consider rejoining Christian circles again, so many things come up on the inside, you know? They flare up and they scare me. I guess what it comes down to, the crux, is the do/be distinction. And I do want to be a good DoBee, buzz buzz. Just not all day long.

But it's the do/be distinction that scares me, and because of my own issews and past history and weird shyness/extroversion thang, and a desire to be pleasing to people and not piss them off, and how the past 10 years have panned out for me, I don't have a shiny spiritual CV to take in with me, held out before me like an offering. Can I join your gang, without a shiny spiritual CV? Actually, that wouldn't be the gang I would be joining anyway. I don't even want one of those sorts of CVs; I've at least worked that out.

I guess if there was any club CV I would want to possess, I imagine it would be the grungy emergent sort of CV. But - no. I don't belong there either. I don't like labels. I don't like to call myself an emergent, although perhaps this is the closest tribe that I could sidle up to. Apparently it is an emergent thing to not like labels. That therefore could be taken to mean that I'm emergent simply because I might sort of look like one and I discount the label, but that's something I could maybe dismantle quite easily just from the completion of a couple of first year philosophy 101 classes. And yet, I digress :)

So I don't have a grungy gritty spiritual CV, at least not one that is externally observable. I don't have anything. I don't have a "ministry" and I hate that word. I despise that whole boxing up of gifts that ebb and flow tidally into a commodity. All I do is I pray, I intercede; sometimes I let my heart go out to people who might need it for a hug. I want to 'be' more than I want to 'do' and I want to 'be with' more than I want to 'do to'. Of course, that feels like I am right in the centre of everything when I see that this is what drives me. And yet, so often fear rises up that I am wasting my life. And how often it rises up living in a culture that is all about 'doing' and externalities and shudderingly finds itself with contents who have no idea about how to 'be'.

And I guess this is what scares me. From living within that culture, I am desiring to enter back into a sub-culture which, last time I looked, was pretty much about 'do', as far as I could glean anyway with the super sensitive radar I got to hone as a kid. And though the desire is for me to do, and to do within a group of people who are also doing, the real scary question is, do I get to 'be' first?

I think I really don't believe that I will ever find anywhere spiritual that feels like home. This belief does not mean it's true, of course. It's just that, the tag 'Christians' carries so much baggage with it, and every little bit of shame that still resides in me (still, dammit, STILL!!!!) springs to attention like something on Viagra when I consider a return to a people who, when I am being really honest, I don't trust. Not even if they're not shiny.

And yet, maybe that's a good place to be, at least in the admission. After all, you can still be friends with someone you don't trust in certain areas. Maybe it's sort of along the same sort of line, the way Nate and Erin were surmising in the comments on her latest post, that you can love the church without liking the church. With boundaries, of course.

Aggggggh. A crack of thunder just sounded overhead while I tidied up the ends of this post. Brings me back to the centre again, to an untamed God who is rather ... well, big, I guess. Big enough to keep working this stuff out in me, I guess. Big enough, thank God, than my fluttering, worrying mind.