After yoga class on Saturday I packed my car with all my dirty clothes, my adorable dog, and headed home. I hadn't been home since before my pilgramage up north and really missed my parents.
The home my parents live in now is not the home(s) I grew up in as a child. It feels like home because my parents are there but one of the most significant reasons it feels like home is because I get to go to what I consider my home church- University City church of Christ.
There is something like going to your home church that is very restorative. I feel like I did my more of my 'growing in the spirit' at University City than anywhere else. I love it not because the sermons are great (they are) or the singing is amazing (sometimes it is, sometimes it's just average). I go because somewhere inside University City is my history.
My parents met at UC, got married there, I was brought there as a child. Those people there know me. They knew me as Betsy Dean, most of the older men and women still call me that. They know me as an adult. They went to my sister's wedding, my grandfather was baptized there. It's probably the place that knows me best. Those people have seen me at my weakest moments, they care for me, they love me. They have known me through all of my life there is something about that intimacy that makes going back there renewing to my spirit.
If there is a place where my history lives, where it lives that is beyond my parents' hearts, it is inside University City church of Christ.
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1 comment:
what a kind and thoughtful tribute to what church should be and look like. they're not always perfect, but our home churches are our history, and that can be worth a whole lot more than perfection.
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