{"id":46854,"date":"2018-06-05T13:15:13","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T19:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/?p=46854"},"modified":"2018-06-05T11:19:15","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T17:19:15","slug":"the-view-from-the-balcony-sanctuary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/the-view-from-the-balcony-sanctuary\/","title":{"rendered":"The View from the Balcony: Sanctuary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I left a minister speechless. It wasn\u2019t intentional. He only asked me a simple question and I answered him as honestly as I could. But he didn\u2019t know what to do with my reply.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some background here\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Forty years ago I was a seminary student, training to be a minister through music and youth work. For ten years that\u2019s what I did full-time. I continued to work in church music and youth ministry on a part-time basis off and on until about ten years ago. I also went back to school and became a Licensed Professional Counselor, which is the way I now make my living.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was a young woman who was in the youth group of my first church who died at the age of 47 a couple of weeks ago. I attended her funeral and afterwards the family asked me to stay for lunch with them. That\u2019s where I meet the pastor who officiated at the service. He did a good job for the most part.<\/span><\/p>\n

There were six of us at the table. We ate and talked and got to know each other a bit. When the minister was leaving he asked, \u201cWhere do you go to church, Randy?\u201d With nary a thought I said, \u201cOn The Balcony above City Grocery.\u201d He looked bumfuzzled. \u201cDo you know City Grocery?\u201d I asked. He said he did. I continued, \u201cI call it the \u2018First Conversational Church of the City Grocery Balcony\u2019.\u201d Now he was the proverbial deer in headlights. He spoke not a word as he turned and left.<\/span><\/p>\n

I looked at an old friend and said, \u201cI hope I didn\u2019t offend him. I didn\u2019t mean to. He just asked me where I went to church and I told him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So let me explain\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not against organized religion per say. There is much good in it and I have had many good experiences in churches. I just don\u2019t do it anymore. As my spiritual beliefs evolved I was growing more and more uneasy about saying what I truly believed in the context of religious institutions and the fallout thereof.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few years ago I went through an extremely tough period which left me flat on my face in the mud\u2014more broken than I had ever been before. When I began to pick the pieces back up, there was one thing I decided to leave behind\u2014the mask I\u2019d been wearing.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Balcony became a refuge for me. As I made more and more friends I began to realize the joy of the freedom of being my authentic self without fear. The Balcony became holy ground for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

The vast majority of people I meet on The Balcony are open, friendly, caring, and lacking in pretense. And what I experience on most Balcony days is love. Pure and simple. And love is the heart all of the world\u2019s major religions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hardly a day on The Balcony goes by that I don\u2019t meet someone new or deepen my connections with those I now consider family. They\u2019ve seen me through some major ups and downs. They\u2019ve cried with me and they\u2019ve laughed with me. Sometimes they laugh AT me. I\u2019m happy to laugh along.<\/span><\/p>\n

From my crow\u2019s nest I get to see the flowers bloom and the rain fall. I get to swelter under the scorching sun and huddle against the piercing winds of winter. I see people in all states of life: young, old, happy, sad, sober, and over-served. And through all of this, of all Balcony dwellers, I am most greatly blessed.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I go to the First Conversational Church of the City Grocery Balcony\u2014every chance I get. Like the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) we don\u2019t have a pastor or a priest or a rabbi or an Iman or a Zen master. Love and kindness are the top things on the menu there.<\/span><\/p>\n

(We don\u2019t pass the offering plate either, but we do make sure we tip well.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026and that\u2019s the view from The Balcony.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I left a minister speechless. It wasn\u2019t intentional. He only asked me a simple question and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":39753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11902],"tags":[12670,1895,31,12671,10286,10878],"class_list":["post-46854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-randy-weeks","tag-balcony","tag-church","tag-city-grocery","tag-first-conversational-church-of-the-city-grocery-balcony","tag-randy-weeks","tag-the-view-from-the-balcony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/2017-5-11-View-from-the-Balcony.jpg?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}