Twenty-seven degrees is cold. There has never been a moment when I saw that the temperature was in the 20s and thought, “Oh boy, let’s go outside!” Yet it is funny how a few days of temperatures in the early adolescence can make 27º feel almost pleasant. It was that cold this morning as I walked into work and I found myself thinking, “This isn’t too bad.” It is fascinating how quickly our bodies can adapt to what at one time was the abnormal. I think that our spirits do the same.
This season is a weird one for me. This is the eighth Sunday of the year and I believe that I have been to church once; back in early January. It is almost certainly the least that I have been to church since I was a fetus. And since my mom was in church regularly during that time then it might as well be the least that I have been to church ever.
The irony is that this absence is due to my presence at the hospital providing spiritual care. On Sundays, I hold a pager, check the network for consults, make rounds, and sit with folks navigating peaks, valleys, and everything in between. Sometimes, these encounters are just chitchat. Many times, it is a sacred experience. Even when God is not mentioned, the divine has this way of showing up in the room. What I experience on Sundays is not exactly church, but it’s not not church either. I’ll often experience community, a passing of the peace, an exchange of wisdom, and sometimes prayer.
I feel a couple of ways about this. On one hand, I have heard enough sermons about the dangers of missing church on the regular. I have expressed those sentiments myself on more than one occasion. And I am mindful of the fact that even though I do not show up in sanctuary on Sunday morning, I am putting a lot of intentionality into connection with God. Not just because it is part of my job, but because it is the oxygen I need to do chaplaincy/parenthood/keeping sanity amidst American life in the Year of Our Lord 2025. So I simultaneously feel guilty and not about my absence from the pews.
There are things I miss about being at church. I miss receiving communion. I miss the space of the sanctuary. I miss sitting with my family. I miss kneeling, admitting that I have not loved God and neighbor as I should, and hearing that grace is still given to me. I miss the liturgy.
Yet I guess there have always been things from previous iterations from my understanding of church that I have missed. I miss giving communion meditations. I miss looking a student in the eye at an interactive prayer station and telling that person that God loves them. I miss the impassioned energy of playing worship music in a band at camp and silent communions on the beach. I guess what I am saying is that church has meant a lot of different things through the years and there is so much of it I miss (and other parts I don’t).
This season is where I am and I guess it does not do much good to mourn what I do not have. Now looks different and somewhat strange yet I am still finding elements of church in my life. All I can do is try my best to be open and present to however I can connect to God in this season. So I will be open to the sacred in hospital rooms, bedtime devotionals with our son, random thoughts in my journal, songs that stir something inside of me, and the strange sensation of discovering how pleasant twenty-seven degrees can be.