Why Sam Goes to Church
January 1, 2003
Sam is the only kid he knows of who goes to church, who is made to go to church two or three times a month. He rarely wants to. This is not exactly true. The truth is he never wants to go. What 7-year-old would rather be in church than hanging out with a friend? It does not help him to be reminded that once he's there he enjoys himself, that he gets to spend the time drawing in the little room outside the sanctuary, that he only actually has to sit still and listen during the short children's sermon. It does not help that I always pack some snacks, some Legos, his art supplies, and any friend of his whom we can lure into our churchy web. It does not help that he genuinely cares for the people there. All that matters to him is that he alone of all of his colleagues is forced to spend Sunday morning in church. You would think, noting the bitterness, the resignation, that he was being made to sit through a six-hour Latin mass. You might wonder why I make this strapping, exuberant boy come with me most weeks, and if you were to ask, this is what I would say. I make him because I can. I outweigh him by nearly l00 pounds. But that is only part of it. The main reason is that most of the people I know who are doing well psychologically, who seem conscious, who do not drive me crazy with their endlessly unhappy dramas, the only people I know who feel safe, who have what I want—connection, gratitude, joy—are people in community. And this funky little church. It is where I was taken in when I had nothing to give, and it has become in the truest, deepest sense, my home. My home-base. My relatives all live in the Bay Area and I adore them, but they are all as mentally ill and as skittishly self-obsessed as I am. Which I certainly mean in ...
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