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12/12/2004: "Progress"

There is something inherently troubling about a house that can hold a hundred people without being exceptionally crowded. I went to one last night for appetizers, and it was hard to imagine that this was a house that a family chose to live in, this house with its looming spaces, distant ceilings, expensive appointments and decorative landscaping. Every thing was selected to be on display. Like the books: recognized classics, in matching bindings, but plainly never opened or bought to be read.

That part of the evening encapsulated everything I loathe about our church: social climbing, status seeking, voyeuristic. Appearances took precedence over practicalities, and frantic activity overrode quiet depth. But then we moved on to dinner, somewhere else, and I saw what is good in our church. The dinner hosts were new to the area, and the house they had bought was an eighteenth-century farmhouse, a vestige of history in the middle of tract housing. We didn't all know each other well but we all had something to share, and we became comfortable with each other. Some of us were grieving, some in poor health, none of us were perfect and all of us were born unto trouble, but we managed to extend the hand of friendship across the divide, and the sparks flew upward.