Going Home

On Sunday, January 27^th, I was at St. Matthew’s, Fairbanks, the church I attended from age six until I graduated from high school and left Alaska.  It was Annual Meeting time, just like at St. Mark’s.  The St. Matthew’s folks held theirs in the middle of the church service.  They stopped after the Ministry of the Word, had a lively meeting, took a break so everyone could go to the bathroom and start their cars (it was -50 below), and then continued with the Eucharist.  My mother and I were recognized during the Peace and received little bags of candy attached to information about St. Matthew’s with a tear-off sheet that we could’ve filled in (we’re still on the mailing list, however, after 24 years). I won a can of Spam for travelling from the farthest distance (that competition is not as stiff in January as it is in June).

St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Fairbanks, Alaska

 

I loved being back at St. Matthew’s because church seemed magical again. I didn’t have to do any of it, just like when I was a child.  All I had to do was show up, sit there, and take it all in.  I was able to be present in a way that is harder when I’m at home in my regular life.  When Stew and I moved to Waterville in 2000, church became more real, less magical, I thought.  I thought that being one of the “grown ups” in church meant that I had to help make things happen, and I wasn’t sure how to do that.  I didn’t feel obligated necessarily, but I had a sense that I couldn’t just show up anymore, not because other people would expect more from me, but because I did.  I suspected that, as deeply fulfilling as my childhood church experiences had been, there was more.  Church was good because the grown-ups had made it so, and making it so has its own magic.  It’s about being part of the knowing that helps people understand that they are known.  It reminds us, in our darker moments, that we are, too, and have always been.  That’s the kind of magic that is real.  We go to church, we make church happen, to be physical, tangible reminders for each other that God has always known who we are.

At St. Matthew’s there were familiar faces, faces of people who were the age I am now when I left; softer, aged faces of people who had probably already retired back then; and there were the unseen faces of angels. I was known; it was good to be Home.  But there were many more new faces than old.   It wasn’t exactly the same, and that’s why St. Matthew’s is still there, still vibrant.  In twenty-four or so years, if Maggie and Sally come back to St. Mark’s after a long absence, I hope they will be welcomed by old faces and inspired by new ones.  I hope they’ll have happy memories of being at church with their friends, of being loved by grown-ups other than their parents, so that they will understand that they have always been known and will want to help with the knowing. 

 

“…Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  1 Corinthians 13:12.