Ugh. I’ve got a good feeling about this

I don’t know how to deal.

On Sun­day I went to church for the first time in prob­a­bly almost two years. I’ve gone spo­rad­i­cal­ly to St. James Epis­co­pal here in San Fran­cis­co. They don’t make any demands on me to declare belief in any­thing in par­tic­u­lar and I love being a part of a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple with a desire for spir­i­tu­al nour­ish­ment with­out stric­ture about my com­pli­ance with the com­mu­ni­ty. Mary Moore Gaines, the Rec­tor of St. James, is a fire­crack­er, too. I always love her sermons.

OK, so why did I stay away for so long? I’m a doo­fus. And it’s hard for me to get up and drag myself to the oth­er end of town on a Sun­day morn­ing. Lazy. That’s all.

Of course, there are no coin­ci­dences in the spir­i­tu­al realm. I show up after two years’ absence and what is the ser­mon on? The Para­ble of the Prodi­gal Son. Uh huh.

I intro­duced myself as new because Mary Moore specif­i­cal­ly said “or any­one that has been away for a year or more.” I’d nev­er seen her call new mem­bers up to the front like that, but after­wards this beau­ti­ful woman came up to me and intro­duced her­self and said that she is new to St. James, too, hav­ing attend­ed for only a few months. We got to talk­ing and con­tin­ued the con­ver­sa­tion down­stairs over church-basement-coffee.

One of the mem­bers of the church came by with the com­mu­nion chal­ice say­ing that the amount in the bot­tom was left over and that he need­ed some­one to help fin­ish off the com­mu­nion wine. She and I both passed on it, I said I don’t drink, and she said, “I abstain.” Ka-ching. Yes, so we both go to meet­ings and we showed up at the same church.

We talked about a lot of stuff, like bicy­cling. And she’s from Mass­a­chu­setts and I’m from New Eng­land too. Holy cow! She gave me her phone num­ber and email address and I went from there think­ing, “OK, that’s total­ly weird. I just went to church and scored digits.”

I wait­ed the req­ui­site cou­ple of days to avoid being seen as a stalk­er, and sent a simul­ta­ne­ous email and voice­mail on Wednes­day. I invit­ed her to lunch or brunch after church next week and she coun­tered by declin­ing because she won’t be at morn­ing ser­vices but invit­ed me to come along to work at a soup kitchen Sun­day morn­ing with her. And then also invit­ed me to the meet­ing for which she’s the sec­re­tary on Saturday.

So woo hoo and delir­i­um ensues.

I mean, wow. I’m just kind of not used to this. And of course I know it might be noth­ing at all, some­one with whom I share some inter­ests and that’s it. Who knows? But I’m way more ner­vous and scared than I care to admit. It feels kind of like look­ing down from the air­plane about to jump out. It’s a long way down and there’s noth­ing vis­i­ble to catch me.

So yeah, trust. That’s real hard to do. Have to walk through fear and excite­ment and not get too hung up on out­comes. But some­where there’s got­ta be a bal­ance between being detached from out­comes and hav­ing hope, right? I mean, I don’t dare hope that she could actu­al­ly be roman­ti­cal­ly inter­est­ed in me, but that does­n’t seem healthy. Yet hav­ing hope is set­ting myself up for dis­ap­point­ment and I should­n’t do that.

So do I walk in not car­ing what happens?

Well, first of all, I don’t real­ly have the option of not car­ing what hap­pens. I care.

Sec­ond, if I can suc­cess­ful­ly stop car­ing, well then what’s the point of even show­ing up? If I’m not hop­ing to find some­thing bet­ter than being alone why don’t I just sit around by myself?

So I reject this doc­trine of total detach­ment. I can’t let go of out­comes, not total­ly, and if I could I would­n’t want to. So I show up and I’m going to show up with my pre­con­ceived notions and my desires and every­thing just as I am. So be it.

What’s dan­ger­ous and scary is the notion that I don’t deserve to be in a rela­tion­ship and that I don’t deserve a nice apart­ment in a safe neigh­bor­hood and that I don’t deserve to be hap­py. Why? Because if I were tru­ly in accep­tance, I would­n’t feel the need for these things. I’d be hap­py just the way I am. Right?