Muscle memory..

It's Sunday morning and instead of being in church, I'm sitting here before a keyboard. It's not that I'm a loafer, or have backslid'. It's just that my lovely wife occasionally works with some friends in a catering business doing weddings and related gatherings. This particular morning she is working someones fiftieth wedding anniversary and left us at 0 dark thirty.

After thirty years, having the warm spot in your life leave the bed at five thirty in the morning creates a void in your day, I don't care who you are or what day it is.

Having the driving force for getting up get up and leave kind of takes the onus out of getting up. If you can follow that you'll do fine with the rest.

It's not that I don't like going to church, because I do. I love being in a gathering of people who are all of one mind. At least on the surface anyhow. That's no indictment against anyone, I just know from experience that lots of people find themselves in God's House on Sunday morning for lots of different reasons.

Take myself for example. These days I go to God's House because I know it's the right thing to do. Sometimes it doesn't "feel special" and a lot of times I don't necessarily feel His presence. But I'm in a valley right now and I've had a faithful heart long enough to know that it isn't all about feelings.

It's a lot about muscle memory.

Muscle memory is a conditional thing where we work at something repetitiously enough that it turns into a habit that the muscle remembers without conscious thought. Like driving. You move your feet on the peddles and go through the motions of shifting (if you have a manual....some folks have forgotten what those are) without ever consciously thinking about what you are doing. Your muscles and brain have conditioned themselves through habit to do the task without needing specific conscious thought.

Another example.

I've spent some considerable time training for combat in my lifetime and can draw and fire my weapon with a fair amount of speed and accuracy without conscious thought generated towards the action. While you definitely need to focus on the reason, you don't have to tell your brain to tell your arms to tell your hands to....well you should have the idea by now.

So I go to church sometimes because I have fallen into the habit of getting up on Sunday morning, because as Christians it's something we are supposed to do. I, along with my family, have done that for a long time. I feel odd when 11a.m rolls around and I'm not ensconced in a sanctuary somewhere. I feel that "oddness" encroaching on me now....almost like a guilt for not complying with the standard established. You're in non-compliance Keith! You're slipping Keith! You're letting folks down Keith! My wife would frown at me (internally), if she were here and she went and I didn't. Mostly because having talked about this numerous times, she feels the same habitual pull as do I. She suffers from this same muscle memory that I do. Come Sunday morning, it's where you should be.

The problem arises from this simple fact. While we have met some wonderful people in the new church we now attend.....and I truly mean that. People with hearts of gold. People who are more than willing to step out of their way and be a friend, help a friend, pray for a friend...it isn't the norm. And that not because of bad people, just a very challenging environment. Too many people and too short a time, too big a building with too much space and not enough closeness.
It's like working for a large corporation where you go to a cubicle, do your thing and get to know those nearest you but have little connection with the place as a whole.

In that environment, with a fixed point of contact, your desk and those around you, it even differs from the church setting where there are multiple services and seating for fifteen hundred folks. We seldom see the same people two weeks in a row. We see those folks assigned as greeters at the door repeatedly, but you have people coming in behind so it's a casual hello and on you go. Find a seat, say hello to the new folks near...listen to, and hopefully participate in, the worship, absorb the message, say goodbye to the folks nearest and go to lunch.

I ken it to eating because I'm hungry and know I must to feed the machine, but have no real zest for the meal. If you don't eat, you starve. Likewise, if you don't fellowship, the vine withers. The ember dies unless it is nestled amongst the coals.

I don't want to die spiritually so I allow my muscle memory to function. Most of the time. I've been known to fumble the holster snap on the draw....this usually results at a miss on the target. Sometimes I leave church with the satisfaction of knowing that I have been obedient to my habit but really gathered nothing from the experience. This same feeling comes at times after having read the obligatory few verses each morning and then moving along with my day. I have eaten but never tasted the food. This is not an ideal situation to be in. It is however, a commonplace situation for many of us at various times in our lives.

One might say, "why stay if you're not happy?." Very good question. But then you're back to "it's not always about the feelings". Sometimes you just gotta eat to feed the machine.

Sometimes the muscles just function and you find yourself walking through the front doors, not realizing how or why you are there.

Or maybe it sounds like I'm describing a chore more than an opportunity to fellowship with God's people.

Truthfully, sometimes it is.

Truthfully, I'm scrambling.

More truthfully still, sometimes I feel like the late Chris Farley who has just rolled uncontrollably down a mountain side, flipping and flopping, bouncing and sailing through the air...occasionally coming to rest against a log or stone only to have it give way and further his trip down the slope...then coming to a rest at the bottom, torn, bedraggled, hair standing on end....looking back up the slope, slapping the dust from his clothes and exclaiming "what the hell was that!!!!"

Confusion and uncertainty reigns.

Sometimes I come to a stop, thinking it's all over, I get comfortable...
And then the ground shakes and away I go again, tumbling, falling totally out of control.
Knowing only one sure thing.....that eventually there will be a bottom.
Wondering one thing as surely, what condition will I be in when I finally land?

Where did the cog slip? When did the critical piece fall off the wheel? When did the axis of the planet tilt that one too many degrees that the seasons fell out of kilter, clouds occluded the sun and the world turned to perpetual winter?

For twelve years I existed in a dreamlike state. One where the sun shown and everything was wonderful. My lovely family was healthy, normal and in sync with my life (I must add, that God in His infinite mercy and grace has kept this a constant, then and now, and though it has saved me, I fear for them). I attended a church I felt I belonged to...not from habit or rote, but ingrained in it's function. Ensconced in it's walls, the fabric of it's order, a pillar of it's foundation. Or so I thought.

My health, though challenged, was met with Grace and superb in it's effect through that Grace. I worked, I played, I paid my bills. I socialized, I recreated, I lived my life with my face upturned to those blissful rays. I basked in the light of what appeared to be a blessed and charmed life.

I guess I lost focus on the ground somewhere though....because it appeared that in all that "eyes closed basking in the giddy warmth" I wondered too close to a cliff edge....it's overhanging lip crumbled from beneath my feet and over I went.

In the span of one year, these three years past.....

I lost almost 80 thousand dollars because I trusted the people I worked for...listened to their counsel, invested in their future.

My dad was diagnosed with acute adult leukemia...and subsequently died after several painful and heartbreaking sessions of chemotherapy, remissions and relapses. I left my home and my family and stayed by his side for six months until he finally succumbed.

An employee I hired to help cover while I was dealing with my dad ripped me off for close to 12 thousand. We had entered into a diversification venture where I bankrolled a curio shop. In my absence, he stole the merchandise and sold it independently.

In the process of helping people who later abused my trust and left me hanging, I was charged with a series of heinous crimes that I didn't commit. I went to jail and lost my business. The authorities released me but froze me from operating for three long years. The case just recently reached trial. I was forced to defend myself, acting as my own attorney because the system failed. Without work, I couldn't afford an attorney and because I own my own home, I didn't qualify for courts assistance. I finally stood as the proverbial fool in front of a jury that had some sense, looked at the facts and graciously found me not guilty. Unfortunately, throughout those three long years, I was treated as though I was guilty until that innocence was proven. My savings gone, my reputation shattered. Standing at the bottom of the hill....looking back up and asking myself..."what the hell was that?!!!"

In the middle of all that I left my church and the 12 years of the devotion, blood, sweat and tears surrounding it. On the basis of principle, after it forced a punishment on my son, I walked away. A punishment that I knew to be outside of the tenants of scripture. I had to look them in the eye, renounce their spiritual authority over my life and tell them goodbye. All without the benefit of a council with it's board of elders. All in what appeared to be a routine exercise in the politics of religion and "protecting the church's reputation".

My world got very, very small. I armodillo'd....I turtled up....I pulled everything in, put up a fence (literally), loaded the shotgun, set it beside the door and waited. For what, I don't know. A therapist I visited for a bit said it was out of an anticipation of putting the final half pound of pressure on the trigger. I tried to explain that my faith would prevent that final pull...but I don't think she bought it. I finally quit seeing her for fear she might be right.

But God is greater than feelings. He is greater than circumstances. He is greater than failure, wanting, needing and yes leprosy, metaphorically or otherwise. When all else failed, I knew He was still there. How? Because I still have my family. I still have my reason for existing. I still have that foundation that underlies all else. I have love. And not philios....physical kind of love, feeling love, fleeting love. But rather agapas. The love of God expressed through compassion, caring and sacrifice. The kind of love that enters the heart and makes a person sure, beyond doubt, that they would die for those they love. That is my reason. When all else was stripped away. Pride, possession, passion...what was left was humility. Standing humble before my God today I know that even if I don't pay homage to my muscle memory and wander into a church, I can know (and do) that He loves me and will always be there for me. I trust that on the far side of the valley, He will have placed me where He wants me.

When the tree falls in the forest and no man is near enough to hear it's cry of anguish, God does. I will write and I will archive these words to purge my soul....and I will leave a small door open for those who wish to enter my sanctum. Whether they appreciate my words or not they will have read them, a muscle movement remembered...