i thought i'd post though about st. judes youth group. i attended today for the first time. the priest is all right i guess although he was rocking this crazy denim priest's shirt, it made me giggle a little. he looked so down homey with his beard and the denim shirt that you could just die.
so i met a few new people. it was kind of funny, there were like three guys but then like seven or eight girls. kind of an odd balance. we talked about the parable of the guy who pays all the vineyard workers the same wage even though they all come to work at different times. i remember i used to find that parable really confusing but these days i actually find it kind of a relief! i guess i think it's good to know that we're not being judged by god on our abilities or even our suitability but simply by god's own merits which we might not understand. i'm even okay not understanding. considering the culture we live in where people are always hating on others for getting welfare or whatever when they "don't deserve it" i think it's a relief to know that god looks out for people like that. maybe we're called to look at things in a different way, like we're all beloved or whatever.
it's funny i should be writing this because i felt like there were moments where people definitely weren't remembering that we're all beloved! more and more i'm coming into the sense that this is really hard for people to understand. like there was this one girl, lucy, who showed up late to bible study, and when she came in the priest totally called her on it in like the most embarrassing way possible - he was like, "welcome. what time do we start bible study?" and everyone goes, "one-thirty!" she looked like she wanted to melt right through the floor, i felt so bad for her. and the worst part was the priest didn't even seem to notice. he just kept going on with his work. or later these two girls rice and jenna were getting snippy with each other. rice is kind of a firecracker - i really like it - but i got the sense that afterward she was really hurt and was trying not to show it. oh and when they were fighting there was another girl sitting in between them and they were just fighting around her, and she REALLY looked like she wanted to melt into the floor.
as i think about all this stuff, though, i seemed to feel this profound sense, when i was there, that all of them didn't want it to be like that. even though the priest was kind of not paying attention to people's feelings, he seemed really interested in what all of us thought about the text. and even though people were having weird hissy fits at each other or whatever, i felt like all of them were searching for something beyond themselves. god it looks so hokey when i write it though. i feel my old cynicism creeping in again but this time i'm not going to listen to it. for the first time i feel like i'm somewhere for a reason. i don't know what the reason is, though. i guess it doesn't matter for now.
i'm going for sure next sunday too.
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