Church Is My Hockey

They lost. 5-0. Sigh.

I am getting ready to head out for a hockey game. Our hockey player is in Midget now and the games are usually fast and fun to watch. Sometimes they win, sometimes they don't. This hasn't always been the case. For awhile, our hockey team was great at being the second winners.

I kinda suck at being a Hockey Mom. It doesn't come naturally to me. I don't like being cold. There are games ALL THE TIME. I'm still not certain what 'icing' entails. You can't visit during game time cause you actually need to be paying attention when (if) your hockey player accomplishes something while on the ice. There's the potential for breakage, such as the boy's collarbone (2014). Until they were big enough to stay on their own, I would gladly stayed home with the other three children while my dear spouse went to hockey. I did go, but certainly not at every opportunity.

One time our hockey player had forgotten his water bottle so I popped into the change room to give it to him. It was the last season when dads and moms were still permitted to enter the dressing room--although God only knows why you would want to (you know what I'm talking about if you have smelled the inside of hockey dressing room, but I digress). Anyway, I found out that, after I left the dressing room, the parents who were there had turned to each after I left and asked, "WHO was that?" It wouldn't be so sad if it wasn't 2/3 the way through the season.

There was one season in which both the coach and team manager were hyper-excited about hockey. They were all amped up for the many possibilities for team bonding and the extra ice time that could be purchased. At the end of it all, we parents had to endure multiple cash-calls, sell raffle tickets and had to transport our hockey players around town A LOT. It was driving my dear spouse and I a little around the bend--cause, you know, this was only ONE of FOUR children we had to accommodate for extracurricular activities. Within a month of hockey starting that season, we had to sit down and talk it through with each other because if we didn't get right with hockey sooner than later, we might have to kill the coach and team manager. Kill them DEAD.

What we concluded, after a good discussion and a few beers, is that hockey was the coach's and team manager's epicentre. Each of their lives were centred around hockey--their family's schedule, their charitable giving {we also had to do fundraisers for charity in this season of hockey cause 'that's how the kids will learn to give back'}, their socializing {sure! let's go in another tournament so we can all stay in a hotel together and have fun each evening!}. It all began to make sense. For them, the world revolved around the hockey schedule. Hockey was their community, their family, their support network.

Not so for us. Church is our hockey.

Particularly when our our family was younger, our week would involve a church meeting or two for either my dear spouse or I, the kids would go to youth group on Friday, there might be a family social event on Saturday and the week would conclude with the church worship and Sunday School on Sundays. Now that I'm clergy and all four children are in youth group, church is even more a part of our week. A great portion of our charitable givings are done through the church. Social events often involve being at the church or being with church people. Church is our hockey.

Church is also Anne Lamott's hockey. I have already a book by Anne Lamott in the 52in52 Book Challenge but once I like an author I usually start collecting all their books. So, there is more than one Lamott book in to-read pile. This week I picked up, Stitches. It was a quick read but powerful. I feel like I shouldn't HAVE to say it was powerful, being that it was an Anne Lamott book--you should just KNOW that her work is powerful. She is such an amazing writer. Anne is quite frank about her brokenness, her desire for wholeness and her open, tender heart that cannot stop her from loving other broken and vulnerable people. It's not hard to relate to what she has to say.

Anne talks about the struggles of being human in God's perfectly imperfect world. She talks about loss, grief, pain and hurt. She also speaks about love beyond measure, healing, hope and the utter and total kindness that is possible in this broken and damaged world. She speaks about the necessity of being with people who love you and with those you love. The necessity of making a family through which you can strive to heal and become whole. Where you will be supported and where you can offer support. And love. Always love. Anne tells of her church family and how it has given shape to her life journey for over thirty years. This is book of how miracles exist in this world of ours. Thanks be to God.

This is Anne speaking of her church using the metaphor of darning and the use of a darning egg:

The repaired sock..."This is sort of a miracle--good enough again. Wow. You're weaving, in effect, starting with raggedy edges, going back a bit to the one spot that can still hold new thread. It definitely helps to have a darning egg as you go through life. Trust me on this.