I've got a crush....

and this is so weird, but kinda wonderful. I preached at a church today that I jokingly say I'm "vulture-ing," meaning I'm waiting on the pastor to retire so I can just slip in there. It's terribly close to my house (I could bike!) and I've been sort of wondering what's going to happen with it for a while.

But today, I sort of fell in love. I'm a little starry-eyed with a crush on this church. It's clearly early in the relationship so I haven't seen the warts yet and all that. I've only seen the warmth, the welcome, the absolute non-issue of my young-female-with-kids-ness, which is boringly still an issue at some places, the music that I love, the conversations where I can both be myself AND be really present for people in their stuff...

and then there was the moment. A few moments, actually, while I was distributing communion. As I gave each and every person their bread and said "the body of Christ, given for you," it came over me in waves that IT REALLY WAS. Every person looked beautiful to me, every person looked like someone Jesus would want to love. Usually, and this is sort of a secret, communion is a beautiful time for me, but you notice little weird things about people, lines on necks, lipstick awry, stuff like that. I'm not saying it's a good thing, it just happens when you have to get close enough to people to feed them. But today, everyone was lovely, for a few moments. I thought, in sort of an out of body way, "I am seeing with the eyes of Jesus."

And there were some other great moments, like when everybody actually GOT my sermon and seemed to enjoy it and have fun with it, and when I got hugged in a decidedly non-creepy way by two people on two separate occasions, just "so glad to see you back!"

Anyway. If I never am called there, okay. But it was a lovely day, I have stars in my eyes, and I have some hope that a church can be a place that is healing and wonderful in the midst of the hard work to be done. And I'm feeling that tug again, to find a place, to be that pastor, because that is so much of who I am, even with the interruptions.