Sanctuary

If you are the prodigal daughter, where do you go when there is no longer a home to receive you? To whom do you return when the parent is gone? How do you reconcile and make recompense for having abandoned that from which you were formed? How do you move on with life, tether line flapping in your wake and bound to nothing?

I am my mother’s savage daughter, but I have cut my hair, and I have lowered my voice. This has not proven satisfactory nor productive, causing me to feel like some cowardly traitor hiding in the shadows of warriors. My heart wants to fight, my heart wants to rage, but my body is weak and easily defeated. How can I reclaim my honor and take my place with those who have fought the good fight and brought us to this point?

Maybe this is the source of a lot of my sadness, that I have been passionate only in the most selfish of ways, only when there was something I could gain. Only when there was attention to be garnered, adulation to be showered. I have been savage only when I had lost something that was precious to me, or did not get something that I desperately wanted. I am no warrior, and I am not always honorable. Is it too late to reclaim integrity, is all hope for change lost?

To that end, I have been pondering some bad tidings from my community of faith, and it feels like the gusty winds of betrayal in the making. This is my chosen home and chosen family, so I have a vested interest in what happens there. It’s been difficult to figure out why they suddenly feel the need for literal gatekeeping at the entrances, and a newfound obsession with controlling who enters. None shall pass without the tacit approval of the masters, and that seems wrong and very far off base for a so-called welcoming community. Why is this happening now, I wondered. There have been no incidents or threats to us specifically, and we are annoyingly risk averse. We did have our HVAC units stolen several months ago, but that hardly seemed directed to us specifically. A thief was apprehended weeks later in a neighboring county, and he had made a handy sum from stealing HVAC systems in the area. He enjoyed making churches his targets because there is usually nobody there at night; several of his victims were churches of various denominations. Nothing personal, just business.

So why this hysteria in my community to get a FEMA grant to enhance “security”, having gatekeepers to monitor who enters, possibly acquiring a golf cart to “patrol” the meager grounds. The golf cart would be funny if it wasn’t so troubling. None of this feels good, and I don’t understand it. Aside from the HVAC incident, we haven’t had any break ins or vandalism or intentional damage to the building. recently Yes, attacks on communities of faith on the rise, but that’s really nothing new. We’ve all been cautioned to be on the lookout for threats for several years now, so what’s triggering this urgent response?

The uncomfortable thought now rising in my head says this is related to our congregational growth. We’ve got more new people showing up, some as visitors and some as new members. Accordingly, our demographic is changing. There are more people of color and younger people wandering through our hallways, and I wonder if that has something to do with this urgent quest to do peg counting and make sure everyone who enters is “approved”. If that is true, even subconsciously, that would make me very sad. We finally have enough people of color to have a formal affinity group, and I have to wonder if there’s not a connection there. We might bring our friends, and then we’d have a whole lot of people of color, and then…lions, and tigers, and bears – oh MY!

Where is it written that the old timers, or elders as some may call us, have to know every person who enters? We are supposed to be a sanctuary, a safe harbor for those who enter. It’s a dangerous world, more so lately, but that is when sanctuary is needed most of all. When Mother Emanuel is Charleston and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh was attacked, they did not bow to the hatred. Their doors are just as widely open as before. They understand that often the price you pay to be a sanctuary is increased risk of harm to your places and your people. To become more filtered, however, is to give power to those who would infiltrate for malevolent reasons. Next, they will be wanting to have guns carried in our sacred space, at which point they will say goodbye to me. The terrorists have won if they cause us to change who we are and how we walk through the world.

There is an old parable about two wolves howling at your door. One is good, the other evil. You want to keep them at bay with food, so you decide to cut your bets and halve the risk by feeding one. The one you feed is the one that will stay; the other will starve or move on to greener pastures. I fear that we are feeding the evil one, and that’s the one that will stay. I don’t want to live with that one. I know where to find evil, and I don’t want it to be in my own sacred space. Fear can make the most peaceful among us take up arms, and that would be a surrender to the darkness of evil.

When I watch the live cams in Gaza and Israel while this interminable war rages, I can see the Dome of the Rock standing almost defiantly in the camera shot. Will it withstand this war, with its airstrikes and tanks and carpet bombs? Time will tell, but I suspect it has seen more in its lifetime than we can even imagine. Untold artifacts of the religious and everyday lives of Palestinians lie in shreds nearby, but the Dome stands. I would imagine, on some esoteric plane, it is still needed. It anchors a people who have nothing holding them except faith. More than 30,000 bodies have been lost there, but still the Dome stands, where Abraham was prepared to make his greatest sacrifice to support his faith.

My community is prepared to sacrifice nothing. We have 1st World problems of air conditioning units and solar panels, and we forget how privileged and fortunate we are. I could not care less if someone broke into that building and stole computers and television sets, sound equipment, kitchen equipment. That can be replaced. We have alarm systems (plural), and as I keep telling these fragile creatures, if someone really wants to get in there and wreak havoc, they are going to do that. There is no alarm system or bunch of yahoos with guns that is going to stop them. You can, of course, lower the risk of that happening as best you can but let’s not fool ourselves – there is no 100% safety guarantee anywhere. That’s the price we pay to leave our houses every day.

I often sense resistance to diversity and multiculturalism before anyone else realizes it’s there. Like a dog, I sniff things no one else can yet smell, and this has my nose twitching. My hackles are raised, and I’m watching and waiting. I don’t like being in that position, because it’s my sanctuary and I don’t feel safe right now. But, it is what it is. Unfortunately, what is is kind of stinks right now.