Mennonite Fellowship and the Dream of Phil Collins

On my flight home from Portland I was bookless. I finished my 2nd go around at the entire Hunger Games series and had 6 hours with nothing but my thoughts and my journal to entertain me. Luckily, I find myself highly amusing.

Free flowing ice cream is a common theme

There was about a week at my job where the children were obsessed with creating their "worlds" in the form of chalk drawings on the playground. Our practicum student would help them draw elaborate pictures of the various things that comprised their "dream world". Our usual black rubber playing surface was covered with colorful images of rainbow fish and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and dog houses and families holding hands and for some unknown reason the great state of California. So, as I was searching my imagination for something to do on the plane I took a lead from my children and decided to create a magical world of my own. Here's what I came up with:

In my world... (i actually wrote these things)

 

1. You wouldn't have to wear shoes because all the grass would be soft and it would always be sunny and 85 degrees.

2. Ice cream would grow on trees but somehow magically always be the perfect temperature.

                                                                   3. Bugs would co-exist with people peacefully.

                                                                   4. Giant tulips would grow year round.

                                                                   5. Everyone would have summers off.

Yup. And that was as far as I got before my naivety and stupidity came crashing down on me.  Clearly, I love summer time and my ideal world would be one where summer lasts forever. It's just - the grass doesn't get green without rain and neither do giant tulips for that matter. And if everyone has the summer off then who the hell is going to be running the electric company or picking up all the trash? We'll leave the ice cream tree thing alone because a lot of my dreams were crushed in that moment and I enjoy believing that somewhere in the world exists edible shrubbery covered with sweets like the ones in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Everything can't always be sunshine and rainbows. Sitting there on the plane it occurred to me that you either take the good with the bad or you get nothing...



This week was both BREATHTAKINGLY AMAZING and REALLY FUCKING HARD.

And I do believe that's life in a nutshell.

How do you balance these two? The beauty and the crap. That's what I'm struggling with.

Saturday I spent the day snuggling and shopping and swimming and sunning and laughing and dancing and eating fudge pops and watermelon for dinner. A truly magical day full of love and happiness! Then, BOOM, the "not guilty" verdict came down for George Zimmerman and it shook me to the very core. I couldn't stop myself from shutting down. The world is a horrible stupid place full of horrible stupid people. How could this be happening? It's just not right! I feel like crying. I feel like vomiting. This shouldn't be happening! I was having such a good day.


I couldn't wrap my curly tendrils around what was going on. So I sat in the dining room of Nathaniel and Rebecca's house in a stooper staring at Facebook, drinking wine and waiting for an explanation.

All that came to mind was the voice of the great Phil Collins singing -

This is the world we live in
And these are the hands were given
Use them and lets start trying
To make it a place worth living in.

I swallowed my wine along with realization that this is indeed the world we live in. The kind of world where things like this happen - horrible shitty awful things. But it's also the kind of world that includes swimming pool dance parties and thoughtful intelligent people who speak out for justice and change. This world we live in is both BREATHTAKINGLY AMAZING and REALLY FUCKING HARD.

I ended up staying the night at Rebecca and Nathaniel's house. We stayed up late doing Tarot card readings and eating sandwiches and having a sing-a-long. Then in the morning, I tagged along to their church - St. Louis Mennonite Fellowship. Well, Rebecca actually didn't come. She's not a morning person and this church started at 9:30 am. (We went to bed after 2am. Woo!)

You know what else is breathtakingly amazing and also really freaking hard?  Raising kids. I can't really tell you much about the service at STL Mennonite Fellowship because I spent most of the time being distracted by Rebecca and Nathaniel's two adorable children, Soren (4) and Margot (2), as well as the MANY other children in attendance this Sunday.

This is the ever adorable Margot, who
was so excited about church she wouldn't
stand still long enough to take a non-blurry
picture.

We were running late, as I hear parents of small children often are. There were several children running around the sanctuary. A little girl in a light cream and green dress offered me a lick of her bright red sucker. Though tempting, I politely declined and encouraged her to find her seat.

The play of "The Good Samaritan"

The rest of the service went something like this...

We sang a song I didn't know. We prayed. Margot and Soren ran to the back of the church to get bags filled with books and crayons and coloring pages. People said stuff. Nathaniel sshhed the kids. More people said stuff. I sshed the kids. We sang something else I didn't know. I held Margot and we both just sang "la la la". A drama group did a super cute  interpretation of "The Good Samaritan". Nathaniel took the kids to sit up front with all the other little people. Then they did a children's sermon about helping all of God's people (who incidentally is everyone). Then the kids came back. Nathaniel went up to read a Bible passage and I tried desperately to help Margot understand the concept of being "quiet".

Then it was time for the sermon. You know, that time when there is only one person talking for an extended period of time and everyone else is supposed to be really quiet and respectful. It usually comes after the children have already been required to sit silently for about 30 minutes and they are starting to get restless. Yeah...while Soren and Margot are FANTASTIC children they are NOT QUIET and are always full of energy and wonder. Nathaniel and I took turns sshing and saying "please whisper" and "you are being too loud!". I folded paper fans like I used to do as a child when I was required to sit through boring grown up talk. That entertained them for 5 minutes. Nathaniel was giving kiddie back massages to increase calm. I drew Margot a picture, which ended up pissing her off because it was HER piece of paper and I was NOT to touch it. There was crawling under the pew. There was sitting on laps. Standing. Walking. Margot and I took a brief tour of the grounds outside when the quiet became too much. We found a pine cone. Hooray!




 

 

Holy crap. Church with kids is exhausting...and kinda fun. I get bored listening to long sermons too, so when Margot needed an outdoor moment I was thrilled to join her. Also, this church didn't seem rattled by the chaos and chatter of it's many young members. People just spoke over the whines of little voices and carried on. I loved how inclusive this place was of children - the busy bags, the children's sermon, kids helping with various aspects of the service, etc. It would explain why most of the congregation was young families with young children. It wasn't clean or polished, but it was real. Children are a handful, but they bring such joy and life to a building. For the final song I held Margot and we swayed to the music making up our own lyrics (there was only one Hymnal and since Nathaniel is a professional singer he took the book). Margot belted out "la la la, Hello Kitty" with the most beautiful and infectious smile on her face. It was precious and heartwarming even though I was kinda tired and ready to go home. Once again - taking the good with the bad.

Soren finding a pine cone of his own and looking too adorable holing his children's Bible.

After the service ended I realized I had almost no idea what was said during church. I vaguely recalled one brief moment in the sermon where the guest speaker spoke about loving and helping your "neighbors" - all of your "neighbors". I remember this moment, because she specifically included both George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin in the list of people who are indeed our "neighbors". Loving all of God's people means just that - loving all of God's people including the super awesome amazing ones and the ones you'd like to punch in the face.


Uh. Yeah, I'm definitely still working on that one. No easy task there. But I suppose she's right. Though I'm not quite sure how loving and helping George Zimmerman would look in this moment.


After the dust settled from yesterdays decision I was able to collect my thoughts. My first reaction to events like this, as I outlined earlier, is to break down and lose all hope for the world. So, maybe not the most helpful reaction. I know I need to quit doing that. Bad things don't negate all the wonderful things happening in the world. It's just a sign that there's more work to be done. There are still good people fighting the good fight. My facebook feed was filled with outraged comments and videos of marches for justice and upcoming vigils for Trayvon's family and suggestions on how to get involved and effect change. Basically, I saw LOTS of people who were acknowledging the world we live in and using their hands to make it a place worth living in. They weren't giving up (like I was) and that brought me comfort and clarity. Phil Collins would be proud. (That song is actually a Genesis song, but it's confusing to say Genesis in a church blog so we'll just stick with Phil. The other guys understand.)

Also...there is Soren and Margot to think about now. And Madrid. And Lowery. And Claire. And Rosa. And Rylan. And Brynlee. And Teddy. And Lew. And Max. And Ruby. And Memphis. And Ophelia. And Scarlett. And Izzy. And Mia. And all my precious preschoolers. And all the babies my friends are going to be popping out over the next few years. And maybe, just maybe, (no promises here Mom) a little one of my own some day. If not for all the freaking kids everyone is insisting on having we could just burn the place down and call it quits, but nope, apparently we are going to have to fight tooth and nail to help live out Phil Collins' dream. For the sake of the children. I'm not entirely sure how we are supposed to do that but I have a feeling it has something to do with standing up for what's right, teaching them about truly loving and helping their neighbors and being a living example of God's love. And probably recycling and addressing climate change would be helpful as well.



I'd like to end with just a fun little unrelated tidbit concerning my church visit today. After service I wanted to snap a picture of the church sign. In my excitement I tripped over my feet and me and my blue polka dot dress went tumbling into the dirt with the comic grace of one Miss Mary Catherine Gallagher. I screamed out a very loud "OWWW!" as I felt myself bounce off the ground, skip an inch or two and crash again. I rose to my feet laughing and limping noticing a variety and scratches and sore spots as well as two jammed fingers (typing has been hard today). I snapped a picture I did NOT use in today's blog and slowly walked back to the car. Margot questioned, "Why'd you hurt yourself Sarah?" Because I'm ridiculous in practically every way Margot. Then I went home and ate a fudge pop while I nursed my wounds.

 

Good day my friends. Good day.