As an Episcopalian, I’m simultaneously averted to and intrigued by change. It’s one of our great ironies, I guess. We ordained an openly gay bishop (Gene Robinson) and a female presiding bishop (Katharine Jefferts Schori.) I was proud of my church communion on both counts. But adjusting to a different tune for the Great Doxology at my church in North Carolina? That took some time. Standing for the reading of the Psalm? Never felt quite right. I was happy to be home, where everything was just as I left it, and we stood at the same times and knelt at the same times and the pews were just so and every face looked at least vaguely familiar, though many are never quite paired with the proper name, probably another result of starting at Christ Church as a spacey little kid.

I sat outside the parlor after church as five year olds and septuagenarians came by with their cake and lemonade and asked me how South Carolina was (North Carolina, actually) and commented that they didn’t see me at the grocery store (well, probably because my sister works there, though we do look a lot alike) and gave me the biggest, most love-filled hugs and welcomed me home. Some stopped by for quick theological discussions, and after a year of college I’m even better at pretending like I know what I’m talking about. My dad had lock-up so we stayed pretty late after the service and I watched all the families file out. Little girls in shiny shoes walked by with coloring books and stuffed animals; I remember needing a coloring book to get through the service, and I remember feeling a lot bigger at that age than those girls seem to me now. Maybe that’s part of growing up—realizing you’re never as old as you think you are and you never quite have it figured out.

I love my church because I think it follows that rule. It knows it’s growing up along with all the parishioners and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The church is a family as much as those parents and the shiny-shoed kids they drag behind them, and like a family it loves and disagrees and grows apart and grows together and breaks and mends. I can glance around quickly at the peace in the middle of the service and know that that person and that person disagree on how to teach Sunday School, and that person uses gender-neutral language and that person could care less about pronouns or feminism, and that person thought we should have put money into fixing the potholes in the parking lot and that person wants to renovate the organ and then we all fall into order and break bread, together, on our knees. We have more in common than we know. That’s part of being a family, too, and that’s why I am happy to be home.