And Where Should I Go?

The Assistant to the Bishop of the Southeastern Synod (ELCA) at the time, Amy Onstad, sent me this quote in early May 2007, the week after the Candidacy Committee approved me for consecration as a Diaconal Minister. It accurately expresses what I told that committee that I felt about the church (and they still approved me!), and what I still feel even more poignantly now. I didn't write it, but I find it meaningful. Perhaps it will also help someone else who seeks understand their own struggle.

How baffling you are, oh Church, and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer, and yet how much I owe you!
I should like to see you destroyed, and yet I need your presence.
You have given me so much scandal and yet you have made me understand sanctity.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity, more compromised, more false, and I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face, and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.
No, I cannot free myself from you, because I am you, although not completely.
And where should I go?

Taken from The God Who Comes by Carlo Carretto