"Dancing With the Star............."

My group is scheduled this Sunday for worship with the kids at the Youth Detention Center, and thus far, other than a thought or two, an inkling of where to go and what to say, my mind is fuzzy, unable to focus. Prayer is always the main ingredient, of course, but it isn’t like one simply steps into God's presence and begins to hear His voice framing your message. Last night I went rooting through my collection of quotes, a few Richard Rohr observations catching my interest, in particular the idea that nature, like an unruly child, both reveals and obscures the Creator. The author puts it in terms of creation “groaning” and warns that we must not go to her to construct our theology, for she will fail us every time. We can visit her once we have the details with our own grasp, allowing her to fill words like awe, glory, beauty, and terror with meaning; and it is, he continues, much like our relationship with the Church, there being a gap between what we are doing and what we are trying do, an imbalance between the incongruity of who we are and who we are trying to move with our petitions, one that resembles “a sort of dancing bear act”. I can relate to that latter analogy. Christianity, almost from my very entrance into its ranks, proved to be a walk through a maze of denominational dogmas. While, within my own bunch, I found His presence alive and working in our midst, it was also clear that our humanity stained the operation and, if that was true in our ecclesiastical identity, then surely it demanded an investigation of what we taught in our interpretation of the Word. No; I did not toss my belief in Pentecostal belief, as a whole, out the window; but I did look around at other groups within our faith and setting my eyes on the Cross, I did my best to follow the Holy Ghost within me. I also realized, at the same time, that I was just as capable of stagger as anybody else. What would remain with me in the journey, then, unbendable, unshakeable, and a promise kept every step of the way, was an assurance of His connection, an anchor-line that secured me to His love, an oasis to which I could return again and again. If only He enables me to somehow reach the kids with that gift his weekend……