It was over a year ago when I began this Substack with the essay “The Orphaned Church”. After leaving our third church in four years, I needed to process some messy emotions. First, I was grieving the loss of a beloved community, and second, I was harnessing frustration over two other communities for various reasons. I grew tired of the building as well as the whole charade of church being only a Sunday activity. I also grew tired of feeling like a stranger in the family of God; no matter how long we’d attended a community, we still felt largely unknown. When I spoke with other church attendees about my experience, many said they felt the same way. What is the friggin point?! I would ask. I don’t need to show up and listen to music and a sermon, I can do that shit in the comfort of my car. So we walked away from church as we knew it and reluctantly claimed the unfortunate label of orphans. But what came after that, I still have yet to truly understand.
It was about six months after that first Substack, I found myself under a large pine tree taking shelter from the first snowfall in Portland. A small group of us huddled together, exposed and open to the elements.
Blessed are you, winter, dark season of waiting, you affirm the dark seasons of our lives, forecasting the weather of waiting in hope.
Bundled up with hats and gloves, we felt the fresh air on our faces and communed with the trees as we did with one another.
Blessed are you, winter, you teach us valuable lessons about waiting in darkness with hope and trust.
We poured hot coffee into compostable cups to warm our hands and temporarily left our pine shelter for time alone with God who shines bright even in the dead of winter.
Blessed are you, winter, your inconsistent moods often challenge spring’s arrival, yet how gracefully you step aside when her time has come.1
We read from the Gospel of Luke for Advent and took the Holy Communion.
This meal we are about to share is a miracle and a mystery—a gift of earth, water, wind, and fire, and of seeds buried in the earth and cracked open. This bread and this wine, with their many meanings, are gifts of life to the living.
For followers of Jesus, these gifts assume particular meaning. Jesus broke bread with outcasts, healed the sick, and proclaimed good news to the poor. He yearned to draw all of the world into the heart of God.2
This was the beginning of our coming home and letting the lamentable title of orphan be taken by the winter breeze.
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Religious orphaning happens when the particular is replaced with the obscure. When religious organizations lay sole claim to resources, community, and security, there seems to be a natural void that occurs when you step outside its boundaries. But what if those things are actually birthed from culture, having you believe that church is a particular “home” and outside those culture-generated norms, you are “homeless”? We did feel orphaned for a time but orphaned from what we knew as church, completely unaware that an experience of God and of community still very much existed outside the particular. We’ve always known this to be true theologically, believing God’s presence is ubiquitous, yet we never fully experienced it ourselves.
It has been an interesting feat to explain to our family that we are still a part of the capital C, Church. Even more so to ensure them our spiritual lives are still very much intact but we no longer get our spiritual nourishment from the place that once fed us. In actuality, we were starving when we left the traditional church. We felt anorexic from the lack of intentional community and spiritual formation. A claustrophobia began to set in as we attempted to engage Christian community within the confinements of its prefatory structure. Nothing seemed to encourage us to explore the wild Kingdom of the Divine; it was take and eat and come back next week.
But we are not orphaned. We never were. We may not enter a building on Sunday mornings or someone’s home on Thursday nights for Bible Study but we are not orphaned. Not in the slightest. We are edge walkers, listening to God through the wind alongside a few spiritual companions. We haven’t left one tradition for another, jumping from traditional church to Wild Church. We simply followed the path out the door into the woods and found that God was there too. Our communion still consists of bread and wine but all of creation partakes. We still listen to sermons, not by a single person but by many; you’d be surprised how much you can learn about the transformative love of God by gazing at a blade of grass.
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You are also not orphaned, regardless of whether you still attend traditional church or not. There’s a distinction between being orphaned and being disconnected. Perhaps you are feeling the disconnect not only with a spiritual community but also with your own soul. This can be remedied. God is available to you at all times, it simply takes turning into your own soul and engaging the God who dwells there. Easier said than done, I get that but he’s there. Community on the other hand, you may need to give yourself permission for it to look differently. Maybe you long for the tradition of Sundays but have yet to find a community that fits. That’s okay. It’s out there, it may just take some time. Perhaps you’re part of a traditional church but still feel like a stranger, this is a conundrum I have little advice for. Building community also takes time, even when you are seemingly surrounded by it. You may need to begin building your own small community. And if you find yourself unable to enter another building for a while, that is okay too. You still belong. Maybe you could begin building community with a book club that meets regularly to discuss helpful books like “Faith After Doubt” by Brian McLaren or “Searching for Sunday” by Rachel Held Evans. Or you’re a bit nutty like me, you want to start a Wild Church in a park! Whatever it is, God and community are still present, even if they don’t take the same shape they once were. You are still not an orphan.
Jesus said he would not leave us as orphans and this is still true.
No matter where you find yourself, God is there with you. Even if you are surrounded by people in a building or huddled under a pine tree on a snowy Sunday morning, God is there, gathering her children. Listen to his loving whisper… You belong, you belong, you belong.
May you feel the gathering Presence of God surrounding you, drawing you inward to belonging and gently sending you out towards one another.
Many blessings,
Winter Blessing by Macrina Wiederkehr & Joyce Rupp
Communion Liturgy from Church of the Woods by Father Steve Blackmer
It's so nice to hear echoes of my own feelings in your journey. I have felt so welcomed in by the Wild Church Portland community. Whereas my "church shopping" experiences before were love-bombing on the first Sunday, followed by decreasing interaction each week; I feel like at WCP I get to know everyone a little more each time and folks get to know me. It's incredibly refreshing and feels so much more like a natural/normal/healthy community building experience.
I love where your faith has taken you. It seems so life giving. I think after spending more than 15 years in a particular church environment that nothing will ever be the same again for me. It was through my young adulthood and so formational. So I'm trying to not look for that feeling which I so long associated with God but was also very much about place. The wilderness is so very disorientating. You model a beautiful openness Colette to discovering God in fresh ways. It gives me a lot of hope.