Just out for a run, Part II

See Part I here.

Because I wasn’t raised with the idea that church is a status symbol, the idea feels very foreign to me. And if I’m being honest, it feels wrong. It feels in opposition to everything that I believe. Even living with it, watching the explosion in my hometown over the years, I shake my head. I can’t imagine that church, of all things, is what makes you feel superior. That thought to me, at it’s core, is counter-intuitive. I have no idea what would possess someone to scream across a parking lot, or at a person on the street. It doesn’t register in my mind to address someone that way.

I made a mistake here, though, too. In becoming defensive, which was my first reaction, I made assumptions about that woman, too. I grouped her into a category, compared her hair to a very large state, and I got angry. Understandably? maybe, but only second did I think that she was probably the minority in her church. Out of all of those cars spilling out of the parking lot, into the surrounding streets, only one person thought it was appropriate to yell to a stranger. There are probably a lot more people who’d just attended that same service that would be embarrassed by her actions. Embarrassed for her. Generally speaking, no matter what we believe, where we direct or nurture our spiritual selves, I think most of us can agree that there is a way to do it, and yelling at a stranger on the street is probably not it. That’s extreme, and those are the people we see on the news.

A few days removed from the incident, I still thought about it each day. That is likely what brought me to writing about it here. I eventually even felt some compassion for the woman, wondering if maybe she’d had a bad morning. Maybe her designer glasses were shielding more than the sun. Maybe she needed to yell that for herself more than for me. Or, she was having a particularly great morning. Maybe she heard something in church that morning that moved her. Maybe she heard something that lit a fire in her, and she wanted to spring into action as quickly as possible. She was too excited to keep it in, and wanted to shout to the first person she saw, but directed it wrong.

Which is what I’m now left believing. Not because it’s undoubtedly true, not because I know it for sure, but because it’s what I hope for. I hope her action stemmed from something good.

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These words haven’t been extremely easy to write. I feel like a tangent on any one piece of information here could take me days to sort through. I have a ton of mixed feelings about what church is to my community now, to the country now, and how that differs from what I knew when I was younger. Still, there is so much for me to know. I only have a very small picture, and I fear with almost every sentence that I’m denying something that is fact somewhere else, in a place I don’t yet or may never know.

What I do know now, and what I didn’t necessarily know years ago, is what I believe. It took me a long time, and many trials to be certain of my faith. Now, when someone comes to me and wants to discuss their faith, and church, and God, I get excited. If they want to teach me something new, or more about how they learned, what they believe, I am honored. It’s not unlike when someone comes to me and tells me they want to become a runner. I love watching someone open a new chapter of themselves, or reveal a part of themselves to me.  Not that I’m anyone’s mentor, I’m an observer at best, but to me there’s so much privilege in that part of the human experience. I am allowed to watch someone progress. It is sitting in the background at it’s best.

Maybe that’s what is hardest for me to take when it comes to the people yelling about God in parking lots— it is the opposite of watching or guiding. It is abrasive, and a spectacle and everything that makes me uncomfortable. And that is what I’m pretty sure is the point for me having experienced this whole scenario on  my run in the first place. Every run isn’t supposed to be smooth and easy. We go on, knowing what we know, doing what we do anyway. Just around every corner is the chance of growth.