This week’s post is the last in a series. “What We See” is worth considering, whether it’s our town, our lives, or our churches. Scroll to the two prior posts if you missed them, so you’ll be up to date on this conversation.
If we see spaces differently based on our life experiences, emotions and perspectives, then it must be true that we sit down in vastly different churches, even if we are on opposite ends of the same pew.
I walk into my home church and those gleaming floors still bear the footprints of beloved, faithful souls who were the church for me, through my childhood and beyond. I hear the echoes of the Seven-Fold Amen that the long defunct choir used to sing at the close of worship. I glimpse myself as a child, roving, exploring, hiding, and playing while Mom helped with altar flowers or copied bulletins or prepared to teach her Sunday School lesson. I cannot help seeing this church through the haze of those—and hundreds more—memories and people and comforts. All of this is deeply embedded in who I am, and what church is for me, and the meaning of faith and God and beloved community.
The person sitting down the row from me may, by contrast, have no such associations. Surely she will notice things I barely see. I could speculate on what those things might be, but I cannot fully know. Where I see friendly faces glad to greet me, does she sense reserve and judgment? Where I sink comfortably into long-familiar hymns, does she wonder what “diadem” and “overborne” even mean?
I puzzled over a banner in a church I once visited. “Let Co and Let Cod,” it seemed to announce. I felt certain this was not some confused Jesus/fish/ichthys reference, but it took me a bit to puzzle out that those felt C’s were G’s whose horizontal bars had drooped. Had I spent more time in 12-step recovery circles, I likely would have grasped the meaning more quickly: Let go and let God.
And I wonder, had I known that saying better, would I have seen C’s or G’s? Maybe my mind would have filled in what was not visible to my eyes. I suspect that was true for the people who entered that church week by week. They knew what it was supposed to say, and perhaps couldn’t see that it didn’t, any longer.
Erwin McManus, in his book An Unstoppable Force: Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind (Group, 2001), points out that we don’t see what’s there right now. He asks us to go and look in a mirror, really look, seeing the details. “If you look close enough, a new person will begin to appear…. Most of us never really see our present selves. We look in the mirror, but only see the image of who we were.” (p. 91)
(So, if you dare, pause a minute and go do this. Or pick up your phone and snap a selfie right now, and then actually look at it. What do you see? Are there any surprises?)
McManus goes on:
Most of us are captured by the past…. What we call the present is really a mental construct formed out of our memories. We choose not only a place to live, but also a time. Most of it trails behind reality. (Ibid.)
What an insight: When we sit in a church we’ve attended for awhile, we see it as it used to be. That’s the truth behind the “Let Cod” banner; people who attend there literally don’t see it. It’s the truth behind water-stained wallpaper and once-vibrant art prints that have grown dim. We see them as they were, once.
It’s the truth behind the comment a long-time member said at my church, in a time when several new families had begun attending. “I know everyone in our church,” this person said. I knew enough of this man’s interactions there to be sure this wasn’t true. But McManus’ insight clarifies that comment. This man wasn’t seeing the new people! He literally was only seeing the people he did know!
How would it change your experience of church if you entered the building armed with this awareness? I’m not sure any of us can ever quite see the church as it actually is. We will still see through a filter of experiences in and out of the church that affect what we can comprehend and the impression this space will have on us.
But knowing can still make a difference. Maybe we can pause like Erwin McManus invited us to do in the mirror. If we really look, maybe we’ll notice those banners or bulletin boards that have grown fuzzy and faded, and rethink what we do there. Maybe we’ll take down or replace those signs that no longer point in the right direction. Maybe we’ll see more clearly what feels outdated and dare to renew our space, even if it means changing that well-loved spot where we saw our daughter married or the pew that always belonged to Doris, that dear pillar of the church.
And beyond all those questions that relate to the church building, being aware of what we see (or don’t) will change us for one another. If we are to have any chance of welcoming the stranger and the guest who has only just today dared to enter this space, we simply must take the time to imagine what this experience might be for her, or him, or them, and to be open to how they might react, or what it might bring up for them.
We may only get this day to help them know we see them, and they matter, and what happens here matters in their lives. Let’s show up in this time, and this room, and with these people, new and old, as best we can, and let our different experiences there meld into something amazing.
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