I miss the music. I miss the drums and the piano and the bass. I miss the clapping and smiles, and the rhythms that helped me fall in love with God. I miss knowing every song and anticipating every change in beat. I miss, most of all, the feeling I had when poorly singing the songs I grew up on. Maybe the music is a microcosm for missing home and the place I went to every Sunday for 18 years. Seeing the same people and hugging the same children every sunday, anything different seems foreign. But I’ve learned that foreign isn’t bad. Foreign forces you to grow and test what has been instilled in you. What is foreign is tough and complicated, but it is worth the struggle period. In fact foreign is necessary. Without foreign, you remain in a bubble, incapable of escaping the world where everyone has the same opinion as you. I’ll be forever indebted to my church family and the man that they have helped me become. However, I would be doing them a disservice if I didn’t expose myself to what is considered foreign. If I didn’t grapple with Bhagvad Gita or understand the anti-semitism found in the book of John in particular, then I remain in a world that does not exist.
Perhaps I should have begun this by saying, I miss the comfort. The comfort made me feel good and safe. I felt that I was the best at my bubble: I knew bible trivia better than anyone else, I could recite scripture, and I genuinely loved God. I enjoyed going to church and I learned more and more about God every week, but I wasn’t being challenged. Instead I pull the blanket of a church over my head and ignored any outside opinions. I ignored variation, and different paths and focused solely on the ideas I knew best. I can no longer stay under the comfortable covers, I have to come out and at least look at the blankets of Buddhism and Hinduism and simply other people’s way of thinking about Christ. I have to try to understand and climb off the shoulders of christianity and look at everyone on the same eye level.