Contemplations of the Nocturnal Mind

The world is a different place at night. There's something about after hours; something about being awake in a house full of sleeping people; or going through the motions at work when the world seems to have shut down; that makes you think about your life a lot more. It's like time slows down at night. There's not as many distractions, so your thoughts suddenly start to get louder.

During these past weeks of night shifts, I've thought through everything it seems. I've pondered issues of morality and personal values. Friendship, sacrifice and service. The appropriate steps to decision making (Which, in the end, leave you unsatisfied with a headache of mixed signals). And personal flaws and short comings.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about church. And I don't mean about those big buildings with crosses on them and signs out the front lawn, but what church really is. About what it means to be a part of church. About commitement to churches. About what church is really supposed to be, and what it has become. About all my muddled memories of church, colliding and breaking into each other to give me a lopsided sort of collage, with no real center or focus to it.

The thing about church that keeps striking me over and over again, is that it is not about me. It's not about if I feel good going to church. It's not about me getting some slice of satisfaction every sunday morning. It's not about how much I got into the worship, or how much I learned. Church is an opportunity for me to set aside the selfishness and greed that has been running my life the other 6 days and give something instead. It's a chance to draw closer with my second family around me in service.

I am torn between two churches. Torn between my own values and what I know to be true. I don't want to be a person that hops from one church to another, looking for some particular type of church that I want, and leaving whenever things aren't done to my specifications. And yet I also want to be useful.

Can you be a part of more than one church without merely drifting? Aren't we all, as family, connected anyway, regardless of which building we file into Sunday morning?

Why do we have this unspoken demand for commitement and membership?

But maybe, the reason I sit at night analyzing "church", is because it's easier than thinking about the fact that this whole internal dilemma might just be because I feel guilty. The kind of guilt you feel when you've let down someone you love, or taken the easy road when the right road got too steep.