Sometimes the Impossible Takes A Little While

At our recent gathering of God on Tap we started out with telling stories of death and resurrection—moments of loss and heartache followed by healing and hope, being stuck in an earthquake sure you’re going to die and surviving, feeling distant from God and coming back again. They were funny, touching, and had many common themes.

Our conversation was especially enriched by someone who shared her two(!) near-death experiences. Because of those experiences she has gone from being an atheist to now worshipping at an Episcopal church and described the amazing love that she felt as she was dying and her encounters with God.

One of the common themes I noticed was how death (real or metaphorical) is often sudden but resurrection usually takes some time to see and experience—and it often comes through the help of others: family, friends, even strangers. And sometimes, like Jesus in the tomb three days, the movement from death to resurrection takes a little time, and usually longer than we would like. Almost universally, the experience gave people deeper gratitude for their lives, and a new perspective on what’s really important—and insight that those things are pretty simple.

I was reminded by a quote I recently shared in church:

“life is double-patterned…ordinary events unfold around us but that hidden among all the mundane props are signs of the eternal. …belief is the capacity to see not only life’s surfaces but also its holy depths, to be able to look at events unfolding around us but also look through them, above them, and beneath them to perceive what is truly happening.”

That’s the kind of thing we are trying to get at in these conversations: to look a little deeper at our lives, with help from the others gathered, to see signs of the eternal, the presence and movement of God in our lives.

At this and our previous gathering, the conversation wandered through and jumped between overlapping and interrelated themes of faith, Scripture, and God. I was struck again how when you touch on one part of faith it inevitably leads to something else. It’s the joy and the challenge of these conversations. I sometimes wonder: how do we get somewhere if we are going everywhere? But then: are we supposed to get somewhere, or is the process the end and not the means? I guess we’ll find out as we go.

Later on, we spent time talking, sometimes spiritedly, about whether we can be perfect or reach perfection. The consensus among the group was no, because we are aware of our failings, our inability to truly love unconditional, and the limits our our empathy. As Lutherans would say, we are sinners and saints at the same time. In turn, we said, God is perfect, perfectly loving, and perfectly empathetic.

We certainly covered a lot in a little over an hour. Thanks to everyone who came out and to Forest and Main for their hospitality! Our next conversation is Tuesday, April 30th at 7:30pm, upstairs at Forest and Main.