Blessings Are Where You Find Them

We meet in the Senior Center. Sonora had two Episcopal Churches and both left the Diocese. When St. Mary in the Mountains started as a new faith community we had to find a place to meet. That place was, and still is, the Sonora Senior Center. We have no permanent fixtures and we have to set up for each service and take everything down afterwards. Our altar is a sofa table with a removable top. Our cross is hung behind the altar on a rolling partition. We have a pulpit that we drag into place for each service. We have a lectern too, but that we put by the front door so we have someplace to put the bulletins and the visitor's book. If you need a BCP and Hymnal, they are in a box by the front door - help yourself. The chairs are stackable and not padded. We also have a credence TV tray - in genuine wood - from WalMart. The Senior Center is a busy place. Most Sundays we can take our time after because the bridge group only plays every so often. On Ash Wednesday we were in a small room on the other side of an accordian partition from the Wednesday night drum circle. It wasn't too bad if we chanted the liturgy along with the drums. Our music is either piano or guitar but never both because the piano is out of tune, and a smidgen flat, so that you can't tune a guitar to it.

We've been there since January 2008. We all miss the trappings of a permanent facility - a real church, as most people would put it. That's where the part about blessings being where you find them comes in. The blessing is that, because we don't have a permanent facility we have become a real church. Huh?

Really, it isn't so hard to see. I can look back and see many times in my life where the buildings and the trappings took on more importance than the liturgy and the reason we were there - to worship God in community. I can also remember, when I was very young, spending a lot of time looking at the stained glass windows. We don't have any stained glass windows, but if you look to the left of the altar and up a bit you can watch the lighted "EXIT" sign.

Because we don't have these things we have become a faith community in a very real sense of the word. We pitch in to set up the chairs, the altar, the credence TV tray, and the rest. We sit together in a relatively small area. Microphones? We don't need no stinkin' microphones. The place simply isn't that big. Our annnouncement time can, and frequently does, turn into a sort of free-for-all. When we do the Peace, we all greet everyone else. When we are done, everyone pitches in to put it all away again. The able-bodied stack chairs, move the pulpit and lectern, and dismantle the altar. Those not able to do that help with the smaller things. Even visitors pitch in most of the time - and we let them. When we have a Bishop's Committee meeting we shoehorn ourselves around Fr. Martin's dining room table. When we have a dinner or celebration we usually do it at someone's home. We know each other. We care about each other. We strive to see God in each other. And because we all pitch in, we all feel part of that community.

Don't get me wrong - we don't want to stay at the Senior Center forever. Buildings have their uses - the church office is in a corner of my living room and it would be nice to put it somewhere else. Not having to double as a furniture mover would be nice, as well. But until that day comes, we will continue to set up, take down, and have Bishop's Committee meetings at Fr. Martin's house. We are blessed by this effort. Blessings are where you find them. You can find them in a church building, in a Senior Center, around a dining room table. You find blessings in all of those places because that is where you find people and community - and that is where you find God.

Carolyn Woodall