Leadership Journal

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 the nicest possible way. But I do not leave family gatherings with the feeling that I have just received some kind of spiritual chemotherapy. I do when I leave church, though, it's like something horrible inside of me is healing.

Believe me, church was the last place I would have ever imagined wanting to be; and so I understand why now it is the last place Sam wants to be. I think he would almost rather spend Sunday mornings getting his teeth cleaned.

"Let's go, baby," I say cheerfully when it is time for us to leave for church, and he looks up at me like a puppy eyeing the vet who is standing there holding the needle.

I did not mean to be a Christian. I have been very clear about that. My first words upon encountering the presence of Jesus for the first time 12 years ago, were, I swear to God, "I would rather die." I really would have rather died at that point than to have my wonderful brilliant left-wing non-believer friends know that I had begun to love Jesus. I think they would have been less appalled if I had developed a close personal friendship with Strom Thurmond. At least there is some reason to believe that Strom Thurmond is a real person. You know, more or less.

But I never felt like I had much choice ...