Church Hopping

Today I went to check out the El Paso Quaker meeting to continue my search for a church here in the westernmost corner of Texas. One of the most exciting parts of the experience was figuring out how to get there. Googlemaps informed me that the trip was a 2.9 mile bike ride which should take about 16 minutes. Realizing my propensity to get lost as well as my rusty biking skills, I decided to give myself a 15 minute cushion and left the house 30 minutes beforehand. To many, a mere three miles on bike would be no big deal. But for me, biking is a challenge that has nagged annoyingly at my conscience for the past year and a half. I've wanted to be a biker for the obvious reasons but have felt too intimidated to become a fearless Philly biker like so many of my friends. I took a big spill last year while going on a practice ride around my North Philly neighborhood and still have a raspberry colored scar on my knee to prove it. I am traditionally a klutz, so it is hard to imagine that I'd have the coordination and savvy to navigate the streets of a city where drivers blow through stop signs and honk with reckless abandon.

El Paso is a different story. Biking here has been so empowering! El Paso is not a bike-friendly city, per se, but there are two things about biking in the downtown area which fill my heart with joy: 1) Drivers don't seem to be in a hurry and 2) The streets are wide and mostly empty. It feels so freeing to pedal down these desert streets, soaking in the heat and the quiet, inviting houses colored in desert hues. I can just picture stoop sitting at one of these stuccoed homes, chatting on a lazy Sunday afternoon, watching day slide into night as the heat transforms into cool breeze. The biggest obstacle I encountered on my little journey was figuring out how to get to the other side of highway 10 which slices El Paso through the middle. It turns out that my Googlemaps directions had been slightly misleading, and that if I had in fact turned left on Piedras Street I would have proceeded onto a highway ramp where bicycles are prohibited. A few random twists and turns around some back alleys and railway road tracks later, and I found my way to the other side. I arrived at meeting exactly as it was about to start and was welcomed by a lovely older woman named Dee, from Pittsburgh.

As I had anticipated, there were six people present, probably all over age 60. Quakers are not, shall we say, the most populous of religious groups. Philadelphia is a Quaker hub, so the biggest, most diverse Quaker meetings that are in existence in the US are most likely found in Philadelphia. Even so, during my visits to the Quaker meetings in the city of brotherly love, I struggled to find others in my age demographic. In paying the El Pasoans a visit, I pretty much knew what to expect: some peaceful, quirky elderly folk who would be very excited to see me. I couldn't help but wonder if I would stumble upon a tall, young, handsome, glasses-wearing Friend who had relocated to El Paso to work on border issues. No such luck. Simply some Quaker prototypes with long hair and long flowing skirts and some contemplative silence. As I settled into the silence, I was at first overwhelmed by the randomness of my visit. What was I doing in this room with six strangers? How did I suddenly find myself so far from "home," from the Northeast, from my hippie church community where I blended fairly easily? I closed my eyes and felt a slow sense of peace as I began to picture my Quaker relatives sitting in the room with me, validating this crazy, somewhat solitary journey of mine. A young woman inexplicably curious, still, about Quaker faith. Maybe for family, maybe for tradition, maybe for simplicity, maybe for the mysterious pull of Quaker meditation. I found the silence to be heavy as I wrestled with questions, wondering how I could make myself a better, more willing volunteer at our house. Wondering how I could speak an encouraging rather than disparaging word, wondering how my response could be an unconditional "yes" to our guests and "yes" to this work of being present when often my instinct is to retreat. I felt comforted by the idea that God uses as as we are, that we are not asked to become perfect people before serving but rather to drop everything and follow him. God works in and through our brokenness.

I couldn't help but smile to compare this Quaker group with the Catholic church, Sagrado Corazon (Sacred Heart) which I had visited within a few weeks of arriving. Sagrado Corazon is a large Catholic church that mainly serves undocumented Latinos in the Segundo Barrio neighborhood of El Paso, one of the poorest in the country. I attended the first mass of my adult life there with my A-house roommate, kneeling and standing and reciting to the best of my ability. I was struck by the beauty of the service, by the reverence inherent in Catholic ritual. From decor to style to numbers to language, the Quaker meeting and the Catholic church I attended could not be more different. Quaker meeting seems exceedingly stripped down and individualist, Catholic mass seems steeped in tradition and the importance of communal confession of faith. For now I'm enjoying my freedom to be hybrid, to meditate with the Quakers and participate in liturgical worship with the Catholics. Next week I may just visit the Unitarian Universalists.