The Happier Times of Days Gone By

you know.......I feel so old.........not in the sense that I've put on another year of my life and my joints are starting to protest, but just that I feel like I have all these weights on my back that I never realized was there before

Today was probably the first day during the entire week when I had some time to wind down (hence me reappearing after the last post)......but so much seemed to have changed since then...it doesnt seem like it's about being a rebel anymore, but it seemed to have stirred a deeper question - where do I really belong?

I always thought that Vancouver had been my home, and that church had been more a family to me than anything.......but something seems to have changed this week. Maybe it's a mood thing, maybe it's not, I don't know

Having been traumatized with a few half-way-across-the-world moves as a kid, I have been quick to attach myself to this church. True it's no secret that our church is plagued with problems, and it still is, but over the years something seems to have changed. In our effort to move forward and improve we seemed to have lost something along the way. The spontaneity, the genuine care and support. Everything seems to institutionalized and sterile now. This felt especially so after the Sunday school meeting today

Despite the current system being "better" than what it was, there is a great part of me wishing it would somehow just go back to the way things were. I don't even remember how I became involved with Sunday school. But it just happened one summer. For some reason it was just me and henny teaching. There were the Saturday nights pouring through websites frantically trying to think of what to do with the kids the next morning, because there was no cirriculum. There was the blue sky over our heads and the green grass under our feet, becuase it was summer and we spent much of the morning outside, seeing as no one really cared about how we did things, so long as the kids were taken care of. I suppose that was where I found the childhood that I had lost. But now it all fades into distant memory.......

I must say, the new Sunday school arrangement is our finest yet. It's a great program and I'm surprised myself that it was this elegant. But it is just a program, no matter how perfect or how elegant it is......We seemed to have travelled down a road that is now completely irreversible. In our ambition to become as successful as other churches we've traded spending time with the kids because we want to be with them for a teacher rotation. We've traded the fun and games and let God work His magic along the way for curriculum that seems to be geared to all the other kids in the world but ours. We've given up the random trips to all over the place for consent-formed activities, and we've let legalities and parental consents cloud over our hearts to care for and help the kids.

What have we done?! What have we done...........