"The thing I am most desperate to keep you from finding out about me is . . . I want to belong, but I do not know how." There was a time when being a part of a church was not a decision you made but a reality you inhabited. That time has long passed: today the church experience of an entire generation is often summed up in one word: none. Erin Lane's church experience might be better described in two words: "It's complicated." Having grown up in a church, she has an appreciation for the beauty of liturgy and the promise of a covenant community. Having graduated from divinity school and taken a job in spiritual direction, she has an appreciation for the structured, shared pursuit of theological and spiritual integrity. Having married a pastor, she sort of had church coming. But still, it's complicated, for many of the same reasons that other life commitments are complicated--for many of the same reasons that life these days is itself complicated. Read Erin's story and you'll laugh and nod and go silent and perhaps even shed a tear, as your memory is refreshed about the cost of commitment to a community of complicated people, as your fear of belonging is brought into tension with your longing to belong.
