witness

I had another privilege at Tom's: speaking about God to someone who is, I think, in some way searching.

She was a college student who's paid by some government agency to help with Tom's son, Slate, who has cerebral palsy; she spent an afternoon at Tom's place with us, taking Slate outside for a walk and playing Candy-Land with him, and then stayed for supper as well.

She asked me why we were doing this walk. I have an array of short answers for that question ("It's a pilgrimage" "It's a faith walk" "It's kind of a spiritual thing...") and tend to pick the one that I think will be accessible to the asker, and watch their eyes to see if they're interested and I should explain more fully. (Or if they looked interested in the first place, I give them my favorite: "Well, we just got real excited about how Jesus sent his disciples out with not much and told them God would take care of them, and he says seek first the kingdom of God and your needs will be provided for, so we wanted to try it.") I think I told her it was sort of a spiritual thing, and then launched into the longer answer above; she looked surprised and a little intrigued, and didn't say anything more at that point.

But later she initiated a conversation about church. She used to attend as a kid, and was thinking of attending again but didn't know where to go. She queried me about my denomination (a bit hard to answer, but the Plow Creek church is Mennonite so I say that if they really want a denomination) and about denominations I'd recommend. I'm not very good at that, so it was a bit inconclusive... but later, as I sat at Tom's computer working on my book, she started the conversation up again. It was strange and interesting to her, she said, to meet people who took God so seriously. Everyone she knew mostly went to church and then didn't think about it anymore. That got us going a little more!

I told her about my year and a half of doubting, and how the question of whether God existed seemed like most important question in the world. I tried to explain why it seemed so important, why I could hardly imagine not taking it seriously. Tom came in at some point and the three of us kept talking--about heaven and hell, about judgmental churches, about taking God seriously. About her choice of a church, which she was still interested in; about feeling the presence of God in a church meeting and how you know it's real. That's the moment that imprinted itself on my mind: Tom and I, both from our different experiences, telling this girl with calm certainty that yes, sometimes you do experience the real presence of God, so much so that everyone in the room knows it, and we've experienced that. She seemed like someone who didn't need to be told theology she already knew, but simply needed someone to bear witness: this is real, I've seen, this is the most important thing there is.

And that's what we're supposed to do, I think. Bear witness.