Church and the Ripken Room

I was in the Ripken Room of the Frog Hollow Inn in Cooperstown, New York, late one summer night, unable to sleep. I tossed and turned and struggled and cursed until I was finally able to find, not sleep exactly, but a low enough level of consciousness to allow, if not an epiphany, then at least a moment of insight. I sat up in bed and knew for the first time (or at least admitted to myself for the first time) that I had to quit my job. I’d been fooling myself for over almost four years--convincing myself that I was content there (I have a great capacity for this kind of contentment--Shawn calls it my Drone Mentality,) when in fact I had to get out. Decided that night that when we got back to Cincinnati, I’d find a job working for the Reds. That’s what I need, I told myself, a job I could care about.

The fact is that I didn’t care about my job. Didn’t care about the largest home improvement warehouse retailer in the world. Didn’t care how much mulch the west side of Cincinnati bought each spring, or how many power tools they gave as gifts each December. Didn’t care how much credit I brought in for defective merchandise or how many returns I could get onto tomorrow’s UPS truck. And I certainly didn’t care how much income our store generated for some multi-millionaire CEO in an office in Atlanta.

What I did, and do, care about are the people I work with. Those relationships are real. Ruthie and I have been in their homes, and they’ve been in ours. We’ve been to restaurants and ballgames with them. We’ve been to their weddings and we’ve enjoyed their receptions. I have a standing appointment with several coworkers, every Wednesday at a restaurant near the store and I don’t like to miss it. I care about their lives. I care when their babies are due. I want to hear about their sons’ baseball games and how their boyfriends’ bands sound. I want to hear how their daughters’ dance competitions went and whether or not they’ll be able to avoid their divorces. I care about them--far more than I do the soulless world of retail.

I continue to go to work, to punch in and out every day, because I have to. I have bills to pay. I haven’t landed that job with the Reds yet--I haven’t been qualified for any of the positions they’ve posted so far--so I continue to go to work.

It occurred to me one Sunday morning sitting in a pew that I had for maybe my entire adult life approached my church experience the way I’d been approaching my job. I went because I had to. I didn’t really care about what went on there, apart from the people involved. I liked some of the people a lot. One area where the two differed, though, was that at the store, there wasn’t any pressure to connect with people I didn’t connect with--to force (lie?) my way through any surface level, sincere sounding conversations. At the Depot, we all go about our business and when, over the course of time, a given relationship begins to grow, we cultivate it and let it become what it will. In my experience in churches, though, there’s always been a (sometimes) tacit expectation that we’ll all be instant best friends who “hold each other accountable,” and are “transparent” with one another regardless of the reality of human relational dynamics.

On top of that we were always handicapped by a synthetic social setting--i.e., the Sunday morning meeting--where not only was time limited, but where the accepted standard of behavior was some kind of hyper-spiritual daze where we said spiritual sounding things and talked about books with spiritual sounding titles, and were extra pleasant and friendly in a creepy, Return of the Archons kind of way. I guess what I’m saying is that historically, I’ve felt freer to be myself at work than “at church” (though again, can you really be “at” church?).

It was also true that, like work, the best times--the times that felt the healthiest, and most satisfying--happened apart from the “official” functions. Where Sunday mornings were a wash, a burrito with Justin was great. Even our Tuesday night small group meetings were hobbled by Expectations. We eventually realized that when my cell phone alarm went off at nine O’clock and the meeting was officially over, the conversations got realer, regardless of who left and who stayed late. Expectations were sucking the Life out of what I was doing, yet I kept going. Just like work. Punching in and out, but never really happy about it.

I’d decided that night in the Ripken Room that the instant I could figure out another way to pay the bills, I would walk away from the Depot, and from retail altogether. I haven’t yet found my escape, but I keep my eyes open, and in the meantime I’m grateful for the friends I’m making there.

I realized that Sunday morning in my pew that at thirty-one years old there was less binding me to a weekly meeting--and to a way of approaching faith and Life and God--that didn’t (maybe never had) made sense to me, than there was keeping me at my job.

Jewel said, “No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from.” I think maybe she was on to something.