What does the title mean? I do not know, but it made me chuckle in an ironic way. Why am I still writing after the past two posts? Because when it rains it pours.

I have now been back to the two Christian groups I was involved in last year. Both have been fairly awkward. As an aside, I am beginning to wonder if Protestant Christians realize there are another 26 books in the New Testament besides Romans, or that it was not written by Paul as an abstract theological treatise for his degree from seminary, but let’s leave that for now.

Mostly, I have just noticed how horribly awkward it all is. I deliberately hid my sexuality last year, not wanting it to get in the way, and even though I was on my way out of Calvinism, still letting everyone (particularly at the PCA church I was attending) think that I was a Good And Elect Reformed Young Man™. And so now coming back I realize that the relationships I have were built at least partly on deception. And the work it would take to fix that would quite likely involve the eradication of those relationships. But I care about them.

The sermon was quite… interesting, as (mostly) an outsider. It was on indwelling sin nature and the wretchedness of humanity. Personally, while acknowledging the tendencies toward wickedness inside all of us, I’d rather act to counter it and move to righteousness than dwell on and flagellate myself and others over it, but that is another story. There was great talk about only partaking in communion if you accepted Christ and how that created great community and if you didn’t have Christ as your personal Lord and Savior you ought not to take it. I was considering whether I should or not, myself (a question I have come back to many times over the past several months). I resolved myself, as I have before, that until the last scraps of my faith are utterly dead I will partake in communion at whatever church I find myself, if I find myself at church. And my faith is certainly mortally wounded but I would not call it dead yet. And as I’ve said before, I would be quite happy for a resuscitation or resurrection of it. So I went and took the bread and wine. My theology of the sacrament is more that it is about God sustaining and constituting us over and above our fallacies and problems, not as a confession of faith per se but the movement of him to uphold a needy people; and I can certainly admit my need. I just have never seen it as a talisman of us displaying our faithfulness, but a symbol of God’s necessary internal sustaining power. But perhaps I should have respected their idea of it; I do not know.

But the notion of communion being especially reserved for certain people, and the baptism and comments on it just beforehand (Presbyterians sprinkle, they don’t dunk) made me realize all of a sudden that so much of this is about social ‘in’ groups. Particularly this was brought about by the pastor making the comment that relationships are hard and hurt us because of indwelling sin nature, but for those who come and share this table those relationships last, are more substantive, because we are part of one body as the Bible says, even though sin makes it hard. That is, we here are the ones who are ‘in’ and the rest are ‘out’ and thank God we can come together with these others in community. What is striking to me is how little that reflects my experience. I have almost always found my good friends – those relationships which last and are more than circumstance or convenience – outside of my church. If anything, I have found the church to be an amicable enough place when you meet expectations well enough, but as far as forming relationships it tends to be quite shallow. I for the life of me don’t understand the pastor’s insistence that this was otherwise, other than that it was perhaps wishful or idealistic thinking, or that he didn’t consider that other’s experiences of it, even those who are ‘in’, may be radically different.

But I do not know whether to go back or what to do should I do so. I do value the people I got to know last summer. But I am, I suspect through cowardice, wondering about the possibility of allowing them to know me, and whether that is just another way of saying ‘a long and painful relational death.’ I can count on one hand the number of Christians who fit easily inside mainstream Christianity who have remained my friends after I allowed myself to be more honest with them. (Heretics and quasi-heretics and those labeled heretics by others are much more friendly toward me.) Those in the mainstream who have treated me in a radically different and altogether colder manner are much greater in number. And the church I’ve been going to is well within the mainstream, as is the other fellowship.

That is to say, I do not know how or whether I can pick up the relationships I had last year. If I had not committed myself to honesty as I have, this would not be such an issue. And this is not something which I can so easily let lie for the moment, as it is time-sensitive.

But I am not always thinking about such things. I have gone out three times in the past week for photoshoots, once with a fellow intern I met who is also into photography. Three times in a week – that’s got to be some sort of record for me when I’m not on vacation. I actually just got back from one such photoshoot, though it is ridiculously cold here right now. I also am going for the first time to a Spanish/English conversation group that I found online in a couple hours. The meeting is very conveniently located only a couple blocks from where I live. Then after that I will go to a rather renowned Compline service here (whether that becomes as much a ritual this year as it did last also remains to be seen). I’ve also discovered that for some reason my categories on this blog have disappeared, which means I can ‘look forward’ to, at some point, getting my hands covered in MySQL to fix it. Euch.

Work seems to be good, I have gotten some comida mexicana autentica (though I thought it was more along the lines of Tex-Mex) from a slightly shady so-called “Taco Truck”… life moves on, life is well, and I have much photo sorting to do.