Just be careful.

I drove out to James River today. I need to hear that sermon again. Unfortunately, the two copies of it they had made had already been bought.

I walked around the church for a bit. In its Thursday emptiness, I can see it more as it looks from my skeptic's eyes. The signs above the doors to the sanctuary, "Have you prayed for the service you are about to enter?," look more as they would in a documentary, corporate, and with ominous music in the background. I get a sense once more, as I did two months ago, of the earthly elements of the building. I see this massive and well-appointed structure, and I think about the dozen or so expletives my friends would drop as they walked.

I stop for a moment in the narthex, just to stand, and to listen. And I know that regardless of its size, or its trendiness, this place has a heart. The leadership is strong. Though my friends might not give it a chance, I am glad that I did. I came here to judge. And there are still things I'm not quite sure about, and that I might never agree with. But the spirit in which I first walked through those doors is no longer the one in my heart. At the very end of my first ever entry in this blog, I wrote that there's a power in this place that gives me hope that the church redeemed is not an unreachable goal. Though I no longer agree with everything I've written about James River, I was right about that.

My mind wanders as I stand there, leaning against one of the massive stone pillars that shoot up to the Loft area. I'm losing myself. I don't know me anymore. I swim between two realities, two mental paradigms, so rapidly that I'm having trouble knowing what belongs to which. Atleast with regards to my feelings towards God. The sense is less pronounced when it comes to the "issues." I'm still a tree-hugging liberal who thinks that social programs are where it's at, and that we need to spend less time worrying about the gays, and more time about the people who will die in the next 24 hours from starvation, or exposure. Although, and this is something I don't generally admit to my friends, I am, and have been for years, pro-life. I know. For shame. I hope they're not reading this.

Mostly, I'm being funny. Issues don't make a Republican, or a Christian, or a liberal. Issues make an individual. And being pro-life doesn't mean that I am against those who get abortions. It means that I think we need to get on the ball, and do everything we possibly can to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and the sense of shame associated with them. Love. Love. Love some more. And when you're done with that, go Love. And when you think you've Loved allllllll that you can, then you may consider legislation. Until then, it's hollow and controlling, and ignorant, and a quick fix.

I have a penchant for tangents.

I have this weird habit of toying with the ribbon "book mark" in my bible, as I read. I just caught myself, looping it around my fingers, pulling the slack, letting it fall to the pages of Proverbs, and picking it back up, reading, "Lean not on your own understanding..."

I'm losing myself. I wonder if I'm being brainwashed. My friends are a little concerned. Sometimes I can hear it in their voices, and sometimes they just plain tell me so. As with a text conversation I had with my best friend from junior high and high school...

Terri: "Just make sure you're not getting mixed up in a cult. I don't want to have to come down there, and help you shave your pits and legs, and de-program you."
Me: "It's not a cult, I promise."
Terri: "Ok, well, tell them to pray for me! Ha!"
Me: "Sure, will do, and I'll also tell them what you said about needing to de-program me."
Terri: "Don't you dare!"

When I told my best friend that I was going to the Women's conference, she told me to "just be careful." That was particularly funny to me given the relative danger levels of a church event in Springfield, Missouri, compared to drinking an unknown substance with some guys we had just met ten minutes before at a club in Chicago.

I love my friends. But they are just so damn goofy sometimes.

Regardless, I think...Ashley, you go to church three times a week now, and have been for the past ten weeks. You are now making an attempt at tithing to a church whose beliefs exclude you from actually being considered a Christian. These people ARE the people in all of those documentaries, need we talk about young-earth creationism again?" This is insane. Are you really about to say that you don't need to know how atonement works, but that you'll give your life to an entity that can't be seen, and can't be definitively proven scientifically or philosophically? And the core question: Can I be the brilliant and thoughtful woman God made me to be, AND do that?

Those are loaded questions, semantically. Purposely.

And yes, I think I am, and I think I can.

But.