I argued with myself for a little bit over whether or not this entry was appropriate for a travel blog, but ultimately I have decided that it is if only because this revelation came to me while living in this country, and was ultimately inspired by the church community that has embraced me during my stay here. I don't expect everyone to find this entry as interesting or as meaningful as it will be to a few of you, or as it is to me, and that's all right. Just know that what I'm writing about is very close to my heart, and treat it gently if you want to comment on it.
I won't spend a whole lot of time talking about why I decided to become Episcopal/Anglican/Anglo-Catholic rather than Protestant, because that probably deserves a completely different blog entry with lots of different points that I'm not sure I've got the ecclesiastical vocabulary to cover just yet. (Give me a few more chapters in Aquinas and I'll get back to you.) For now I think it's more than enough to say that of all Christian denominations out there right now, and there are plenty, this is the one that I felt most drawn to and comfortable in, even if according to my Uncle Trace this makes me "stuffy and old fashioned." But even if I feel comfortable within this denomination, within the predictable rituals and hymns and chants and sacrament of communion, it's still not always easy for me to be an educated 21st century woman and a Christian at the same time.
Church life and community has never been something that I've felt a part of in Huntsville, though I'd like to say this isn't for lack of trying. When I was younger I would sometimes go to church with my uncle or grandparents in Birmingham, and although I could tell that everyone around me felt moved and inspired by the minister's passion, no amount of contemporary Christian rock or enthusiastic shouting really made me feel connected to any divine presence, within me or without. I mostly just felt like I stood out by being too reserved and clearly uncomfortable. For a while I stopped bothering even going to church on Sundays, even after I was baptized and supposedly committed to a life that was considered appropriate in the eyes of some church community, somewhere, but I didn't really feel it. I suppose in a way anyone who claims that they do feel it completely is probably deluding themselves, because anyone who has faith of any kind in anything constantly struggles with issues of doubt and skepticism. We're analytical creatures with analytical minds, and sometimes reconciling what we see in front of us with what we feel surrounding and filling us can be a daunting struggle. I feel my emotions intensely; I love intensely, I believe intensely, and conversely, I doubt intensely as well. This is a struggle that I grapple with daily both in Huntsville and here in Oslo, and I don't suppose that faith will ever, or should ever, be something that comes easily to me.
At home in Alabama, a part of the United States that is supposedly very Christian-centric and friendly towards "believers" (I hate that term), it felt almost as difficult as pulling teeth to carve out a niche for myself in a Christian community. I felt a bit at war with myself, if I'm being totally honest. Around my educated university friends, I felt as though my faith was a curiosity, something harmless if a bit peculiar that didn't quite fit into the image of the researcher student I was trying to cultivate--and conversely, I always felt at odds with whatever church community I warmed up to, possibly because I couldn't quite feel the same blind faith as other parishioners, or because my faith seemed so different and somehow unusual compared to theirs. (Which was sort of arrogant thinking at the time, since I now believe that no two practitioners of any religion have identical beliefs about anything!) It was like walking the line between the secular and spiritual worlds, when never the twain should meet, which strikes me now as ultimately not at all what my life should feel like. I shouldn't feel the need to 'turn off' the spiritual part of my life whenever I delved into the secular, and vice versa, but before now I couldn't figure out a way to bring the two together in a harmonious fashion. A good deal of that confusion stemmed from my own fear of acceptance or rejection either from my friends or whatever church I was trying to hold onto. This fear kept me from fully exploring my own faith and skepticism, and also letting my friends see just how big a part of my life my spirituality really is. For that, I'm sorry both to my friends for keeping this from them, and to myself for bottling it up for so long.
Something about leaving Huntsville and all of the frightening expectations of church life and community there, and delving head first into my church community in Oslo has opened up my heart and my mind to a different kind of belief that isn't just cerebral, which I'd more or less damned myself to in Huntsville by hiding from the other parishioners and priests, and only getting involved in church life to the extent that I attended mass occasionally on Wednesdays as well as Sundays. The Church of the Nativity Episcopal in Huntsville felt like a place that I visited with affection, but inevitably left me uncomfortable and even wracked with guilt if I should happen to accidentally track mud inside the chapel on Wednesday or Sunday mornings. At St. Edmund's my faith feels like a tangible thing I work at with my hands, and I feel this has everything to do with my decision to get personally involved immediately upon setting foot in the church.
The solution to my fear and anxiety was so simple, really: I serve tea and coffee.
Having never done any sort of missionary work which undoubtedly requires a much stronger test of faith than to merely ask the rota committee if they'd like another volunteer on Sunday mornings, I can only guess that this feeling might be similar to what missionaries feel when they leave their home church communities and go elsewhere into the world to do good works. For me, I can't even personally say that I have a home church, and that is my own fault, something I will talk about soon. Nativity Episcopal has been a church that I have enjoyed visiting, but even after two solid years of going there multiple times a month, that is still exactly what I feel like inside the church: a visitor. At St. Edmund's, I have only attended five church services (missing two Sundays because of Jennifer's visit, and then because of a tourist opportunity throughout the city), and yet I know when I step inside those old doors, the smiling face who hands me the hymnal, book of common prayer, and program for the day is going to know who I am, and ask me kindly, "Welcome back, Elisabeth, how was your week?" No one at Nativity has ever offered to drive me home from service because it was raining, and yet today my fellow parishioner John did just that, and drove me home to Kringsjå so I wouldn't have to wait for the tram in the rain. I didn't even have to ask, and didn't even think to ask, and felt humbled and grateful all the same.
If I had stayed at home in Huntsville and continued struggling with my relationship to Nativity, I think I would have completely given up entirely and resolved to just stay home on every Sunday from then on. But leaving home and coming to stay here in Oslo has been like my own little missionary excursion just for myself; the good works I'm doing are for my own spiritual growth as a Christian and Anglo-Catholic, something I can say without arrogance or conceit, and I know now that St. Edmund's has not been the solution to my "church problem," but my catalyst for solving it. I had to completely remove myself from the South and all of my preconceived notions of what it meant to be a Christian in the South, and an educated student in the "Bible Belt," in order to see what good could be done for myself, as well as for these people whose lives I touch only briefly every Sunday, by getting involved no matter where I am. It sounds trivial, but by helping Geraldine set up for coffee in the mornings, or remembering that Rev. Sammy can't take milk in his tea, or that Andrew and his wife always have two coffees a piece, I strengthen not only my connection to my fellow parishioners, but my faith in the divine as well.
Having gotten to this point in my introspective blog entry, I'm not entirely sure how to end it. I've shared a lot of very personal and private thoughts with all of you that I hope has been revealing about me as a person in lots of positive ways. I hope you don't walk away from this entry feeling as though I've done nothing but wax sanctimonious at you for however long it took you to read from start to finish, because really, this is just a testimony of what has helped strengthen my faith in a way nothing else has.
Sometimes the first step really is as simple as washing out a teapot.
