Wishing for What We Think Should Be

Life doesn't always work like out like the ending of "When Harry Met Sally" or "Cinderella." I wonder about that craving deep down inside that wants this kind-of-perfect-ending for life's situations. Where is that craving located in our bodies and souls? I think for me it is located around the corner from my spleen and down the hall from my liver in the Office of Fake-Reality-that-Really-Should-Be Real. You know Mr. Jones?--He heads up that office.

Certain life rituals put this particular Office into frantic overtime trying to produce as much energy as possible to override reality's particulars and instead paint a picture of what this office would prefer the eyes to see. Weddings are one of those big work orders. A friend's stepdaughter is getting married soon and even though this family has blended itself in several different ways, the tension between what this young bride always wanted--the "ideal" life story--and the reality of what is--stepparents et al--this tension is playing itself out in the traditional question of "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?"

It would be easy enough to answer the traditional, storybook way, "Her mother and I do," and yet, there are more people than just her biological mother and father who give this daughter away. In not wanting to make any one person in the family examine foundation-level feelings, the temptation is just to gloss it over and pretend like we are one big happy traditional family. Office of Fake Reality, job well done. You pulled another one out.

As I begin UrbanLife at First Church, the squeaky question that is spoken of with raised eyebrows, is this: What is church for the urban young professional with career as priority one in life? What is church and are we willing to suspend what we think is church and pretend that someone outside the church might offer insight into our question that scares us like the monster who hides under the bed.

Where in the church does tension get played out between the "ideal" church story and the reality of what church is? What would it mean to acknowledge and breathe through those tensions instead of glossing over the question and simply answering, "Her mother and I do?"

"The smarter a person is the more he needs God to
protect him from thinking he knows everything."

-- Native American
proverb