This is a small post, less than 300 words, but a cosmos is buried within it.
I'm learning that the more firmly I believe some things, the more I have to be willing to believe them loosely. I have to love more, open more, want more. And it's not going to look conservative or mainstream or Protestant, even though I'm still all of those things. It just won't look that way.
One of my best friends, the other night.
I read a post once about the LGBTQ community and how they've been marginalised by the church. The comment section was a minefield of privileged opinions about a hard and offensive gospel that should be preached in the face of the gays and hollered and yelled so that our country doesn't hurl itself into the abyss of sinfulness.
I'm thinking of Ethan.
Ethan, who believed until a year ago that Jesus hated him, wanted to harm him. Ethan started going to church in the autumn. Ethan is gay.
At a certain point, you realise how little you care about some things. What matters, when you're in the middle of the grocery list and the phone call where Ethan tells you for the fourth time in two days that he can't believe he's allowed to pray, is that someone you love is learning about the One you love.
The rest is a conversation for another year, if at all.
We are no one's Holy Ghost, as my friend Joy has more than once said.
I place a baguette into my basket and wrench my eyes closed to keep from crying in the middle of Morrisson's.
And He really hears me?
Holding the phone so tightly, so securely.
Yes. He does.
And that's enough for this year. More than enough.