St. Paul's

[vaneramos]

Just a quick check-in to mention I'm working away from home this week. Les and I are installing the refurbished manuals and pedalboard into the organ at St. Paul's Basilica. This is a fussy and delicate job. We expect to finish on our third day, tomorrow. Meanwhile, I get to spend my nights with Danny.

But I'm away from home in more ways than one. Obviously I'm not a church person, but here's where we're working. Grand old churches have little in common with the evangelical sojourn I took for a few years, so there's little here to trigger discomfort. But I'm not immune to its splendour. It is like traveling in a glorious country where I have no roots.

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[pippasporch.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Been slowly reading backwards through your very moving journal, Van, and I have to say ~ I hope you don't mind me being so unconventionally blunt ~ that it feels a bit as if I have found a brother.

So many similarities between our lives! You like the Baebes? And Earthsea! And you are also gluten intolerant? How strange is that? Though, if you've stopped by the Porch often enough, you will know that spiritually we differ somewhat on the outside, since I talk to Jesus. =)

That said, I find it delicious that your work takes you into churches! You've got to smile at that!

I love the buildings, though I am wary of the folk who congregate in them. Organised religion quite frankly leaves me feeling very uncomfortable these days. It doesn't change the fact that I live close to God. But the older I get, the more I shy away from the judgementalism which seems so part and parcel of perhaps especially Christianity that I don't even want to associate myself with that name anymore.

And I find it so encouraging that two opposing poles on the spirituality continuum can exchange ideas without turning it into a battle. I know enough ~ and you say it somewhere as well ~ that neither side will ever be able to convince the other to change their convictions. So we might as well find the good in each other and live side by side. See the amazing and breathtaking beauty in each other and celebrate this wonder of being human!

Acceptance. It is all about acceptance...

Thank you for sharing your side of the penny.

(: Pippa