It’s Sunday. Its three weeks into the program. The sun beats down on the streets of DC and on Mount Lebanon Baptist Church, where I find myself sitting in a pew next to my fellow wippers..
A dead silence fills the small church. It is the first silence amongst the WIP team since we arrived! For this reason, it seems slightly out of character and a little awkward. Gathered in each pew, standing side by side, are individuals with entirely different religious beliefs from both the North and South of Ireland. Some of us feel like we don’t really belong here. After all, “this is not my religion”. “This doesn’t look or feel like my church at home.” There is, perhaps, a strange sense of intrusion.
The service begins. The pastor welcomes us all, and the choir begins to sing. Almost immediately, the congregation burst into clapping. They clap. We follow. I look around me, catching the eye of a few other team members. Without words, they speak to me. Nervous smiles, uncertain hand claps and rigid stances. It is almost as if we are afraid of letting ourselves go. What are we afraid of?
The music continues to crescendo and I begin to see the odd body begin to sway, hip begin to relent and even vocal chords begin to loosen up amongst us! The atmosphere begins to change. The church feels warmer, homelier, more natural.
The pastor surprises us with his, shall we say, direct approach to the service! He orders that we spread out amongst the congregation (most of whom are African Americans) because the church is “beginning to look like an Oreo cookie”!!! “We need to mix it up a bit. Create more of a swirl than an Oreo cookie!”. I position myself beside a sweet old lady who greets me with a tender smile.
The choir move down the aisles of the church and as they spread out amongst us, they begin the most beautiful song. “We are so happy to have you here today, welcome to our church…” they sing. One of the choir members looks at me and gives me the biggest, warmest, heart-felt smile I have ever seen.
That one smile, spoke a thousand words. I could see the sincerity in her eyes. I don’t know whether it was the singing, or the smile or the service that followed, but from that point on, I had suddenly become part of the experience.
The pastor spoke, in a way I have never heard anyone speak before. He had a rhythm to his speech, his phrases had hard-hitting emphasis, and his voice was overpowering. His booming words carried upwards, across the congregation, and they hit me, causing a stir somewhere inside me. I began to cry quietly. I didn’t know why I was crying. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t worried about anything. But it felt good.
I have spent all week trying to rationalize my experience at Mount Lebanon and I have come to a conclusion, rather than an answer. Sometimes, there are moments in our lives where we surprise ourselves. Moments when we discover the true fragility of our hearts and the hidden depths of our souls. Day to day, we hide these vulnerabilities and lock them away in our busy schedules and our fast-paced lifestyles. Discovering one of these moments for ourselves is not something we can plan for. It just happens. When we least expect it. But it usually happens when we take time out to sit back and think about the world. Shutting out the background noise of our daily lives; the worry about the next deadline, that jam-packed social calendar, or the bills we forgot to pay, to take a moment. A silent moment. To reflect. That’s when we can find who we really are, and we may surprise ourselves. As K.T. Jong once said:
“It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.” ~K.T. Jong
