church

this morning i worshipped at the Oude Kerk (the old church) that is just around the corner. it was in dutch, which made things a bit harder to follow (I don't think I caught anything of the sermon). but i still worshipped. and that is because i go to church more to feed my soul and my heart. it helps if my mind understands what is going on - and i could understand what we were doing most of the time as i can follow a standard service, I know quite a bit of the Bible (today's passages were Isaiah 56:1-7 (which i did a paper on last year), Ephesians 2, and John 2 (the part about the clearing of the temple)), and my Dutch knowledge has been focused on chapel/ prayer times and meal times.

the Oude Kerk celebrated 700 years today - and it was a celebration! There has been extra preparations and extra events all weekend.
And the Oude Kerk is very large, with the cathedral ceilings and stained glass windows and so on that one would expect of a church that old. And the music was soul-warming. and we had communion. and all of those things are good and helped me worship God, but the thing that stands out is the community there. when we prayed, we prayed for the world and for our community, including Amsterdam, which the church cannot help but see is not the Christian city that we would like it to be (red neon lights and red-lit windows are around the outside of the church) and even though i don't think most of the congregation lives around the corner like we do, they do hope and pray that the surrounding area might be more a place of God. Zr. Rosaliene was working on a display of boxes that had been filled with things (mostly by children) that display an important part of life in the church for them. And when the children came up front to have kind of a children's time, they were encouraged to speak - and there's quite a bit of laughter from everyone as he talked to them (i think about how long people had been in the church). and then when we were celebrating communion (we all went to the front of the church which had a large section for us to stand during the whole communion part), the children, who had left after the children's time, returned. And they returned with balloons and a bit of noise (as children tend to make). and combining the remembrance of what God had done for us in the body and blood with the joy of the children coming in carrying very obvious symbols of a party filled me with joy. and when one little boy's balloon popped, several people jumped, but we all chuckled somewhat. and all of it seemed to point to a community that wanted to be community - to share the gifts and joys of everyone present - and who took worshipping God seriously but not so seriously that they forget the joy and laughter involved in worshipping God together.

and so my heart and soul have been fed again. and a bit later i get to go back for Vespers.