It's kind of bizarre for me to talk about missing going to church, as I seem to have spent most of my life complaining about having to go. Of course, living at home, I was complaining less about church as a concept and more about my literalist Sunday School teacher and thinly-veiled misogynist preacher. Which is not also to say that I didn't toy with evangelism at various points in my life. I went to teen revivals (mostly at the suggestions of a deeply religious aunt), I loved my vacation bible school, I was enamoured with a teen Christian group who came to my high school and even got suckered into buying some cheap red wristband that said "PRAY." I remember being particularly fascinated by a boy I met at a forensics event (the speech and acting competition thing, not the CSI thing) who wore a class ring with a cross etched into his stone and who lectured me on having parents who didn't believe in heaven and hell as literal places. Actually, I've always been fascinated by deeply religious boys, though in college I mostly was interested in tempting them to stray.

In Michigan, we semi-regularly attended two churches, Andrew's Church of the Brethren and my Methodist church. And although I hated giving up a good weekend sleep-in, was frequently annoyed by unfamiliar hymns at Andrew's church, and also just a little uncomfortable with the level of touchy-feeliness at Andrew's church, I really enjoyed belonging to a community not related to school, and being challenged to live a life more meaningful.

But we haven't regularly attended a church since moving to Tucson. We've only tried once, and discovered that the local Church of the Brethern is of the conservative variety, rather than the leftist, queer-friendly, anti-war, social justice variety I so enjoyed in Michigan. We've spoken a few times about other churches we might try, but on a Sunday morning, there always seems to be something else to do. Laundry, visiting the farmer's market, whatever. And I guess I've mostly been okay with that, as I haven't really insisted we change anything about it.

But lately it seems like there's been something calling me back. Whether it's all the time I've been spending lately at the Quaker meeting house (who seems to host meeting for every other progressive organization in town), to my deep admiration for my father-in-law, who spent the past month as a project leader for a disaster relief building project through his church and who is now preparing to go to Palestine as a part of a peacemaking team, to finding out that at ex-boyfriend recently suffered a punctured lung on a similar peacekeeping mission (which I learned about on Aljazeera, of all places"), to listening to my husband describe the Church of the Brethren to a friend at our reunion....

Anyway, I've been struck by two things. One is a need to reconnect with the spiritual side of myself, and with a spiritual community. And the other is a deep dissatisfaction with how I am living my life right now. I am not doing enough. Going to graduate school is not enough. I'm now doubting if being a college professor, even in environmental science is enough. I am not living the depth of my convictions. I am too worried about preserving my priviledge and increasing my "economic security." In the meantime I'm reading stories about a woman whose worst environmental sin is that she doesn't grow her own organic produce (really), and thinking about a man who I knew and went to art shows with and got drunk with who risked his own life for his beliefs about justice, and listening to a cd mix a friend sent to me about political activism that is breaking my heart.

And what in the hell am I doing with my life?

This was intended to be a post that talked about a liberal faith, based on works and social justice, and how I'm sick of the conservatives defining all religion in their narrow literalist terms. But I got distracted. Maybe I will try again later.