The Kingdom and Awkward Turtle, part 2

This Lent, our music director is leading Taize services every Thursday. Today was the first. We started early with a movie about the Taize community and what Taize worship is. A smattering of people sat quietly in the fellowship hall, watching.

About halfway through the movie, a woman came in and stood hesitantly at the entrance to the fellowship hall. The woman sitting next to me waved her in. She came in and put some stuff down on a chair. Then she started handing out bulletins.

The bulletins said "Taize" at the top, had a picture of a cross, and the words "United Methodist Church" at the bottom. Inside were the words to some Taize songs.

This was odd, because I did not know this woman, and I had seen the draft of Richard's bulletin, which this was not. But hey, I wasn't in charge. I figured either she knew something I didn't, or she was maybe a little crazy, in which case I would pick up the real bulletin and not worry about it.

This strategy seemed to be working out OK until Richard caught wind of what was going on, and brought her out to the lobby and asked her to leave. Only she didn't want to leave. I'm pretty sure she had no clue why she would be asked to leave. By this time it was becoming clear that she leaned a little more to the crazy side of things.

I tried to figure out what her story was. After all, she seemed to legitimately know something about Taize. I asked her if she had been there. But all she did was point at Brother Roger up on the movie screen and say that he had invited her. After a little while, a friend of hers came in. She was able to clear things up: the woman had, indeed, been to Taize, as had her friend. She had also gone to Yale Divinity School. She had also been diagnosed with dementia. Her friend agreed to sit with her for the service, which she did, with no more incidents.

Thoughts on this:

One, sometimes you have to take a step back and laugh at the hilariously absurd things that happen in the course of ministry--or, I suppose, life. Coming to a church service and handing out your own bulletins? That's great.

But second, it is things like this that should make us constantly examine what it means to be a welcoming church. Do we welcome people even when they are (non-maliciously) disruptive? If we think we should, are we able to in practice? What lines do we draw? We have certificates on the wall that declare us a Certified Welcoming Congregation. How do those accolades help us understand ourselves in situations like this one?

Third, if this woman was a Yale-trained Taize pilgrim now riddled with dementia, then I think it was probably more important for her to be there at that service than it was for anyone else. We might appreciate the beauty and the silence and the meditative music. For her, it might have been a connection to a life she had once loved, now out of her grasp. She might not have been able to worship God in the ways we often think of worshiping God. But tonight, she wanted to worship God.

In the end, even if events like tonight's are hard, awkward, uncomfortable, disruptive; whether we handle them wrong or handle them right; I believe with all my heart that they are blessings to the church. They make us think about how best to love people.

At the end of the service, I told the woman I was glad she came. I meant it.