St. Leap Year

This title is taken from my friend Raisin's blog...

I've wondered a couple times -- "Gosh, it's a leap year. Should I do something special? Should we do something special at church?"

But why? It's just a calendar date anomaly. It's not even a secular holiday. There's no meaning behind it, no special significance or special stories or myths or history. And yet, it feels special somehow.

I think human beings need to make meaning out of things. Sometimes that casts a shadow over my own religious beliefs... is this just a need I have to be part of a larger story? To mark my days and years with meaning and rhythm? So that there are special days, special places, and special objects? What's the difference between Leap Year, Superbowl Sunday, and Easter?

But I think of something my old classmate Jim Hamilton said once, about being Christian and becoming a Episcopal priest, "Everyone lives their life according to some bullsh*t, and this is MY bullsh*t." We choose the story we set our lives to.

Twentieth-century theologian Richard Niebuhr said that everyone has a god -- it might be money, their children, football, or Jesus Christ. But we all need to have something bigger than we are, something that we can look to and believe in, something to set our lives against.
I realized a long time ago that "religion" doesn't speak to everyone (I resist calling it "organized religion," because as Kathleen Norris once wrote, if you're a regular churchgoer, religion seems like one of the most disorganized things around). Maybe we all need to experience God in different ways -- it makes for a richer world.

And I'd rather stay humble and mystified in my beliefs and about this world, than sure that I know who God is.