Note to Self

I just popped out of bed where I was reading, "The Cloister Walk" by Kathleen Norris. It's been one of those books that come along once every five years or so, like "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", where I can feel my life changing as I read. Things are changing.
So, yes, I just popped out of bed and I am writing this down to remind myself to think some more about it: Sometimes, I approach church, or faith, or God with a payment plan. I make my payments in effort, or belief, or simply showing up with my church heart on, and if I don't get a return for my investment I re-evaluate the terms of the agreement. But how much of the meaning to be found and held close to my soul from church, or faith, or God, is simply inside the showing up, inside the sometimes bland/bad/boring experience of the experience? When I went to Bolivia I worked hard to overcome the idea that this work we were doing was not about proving a return on an investment in monetary terms, it was about relationships. But do I approach God with a "return on my investment" set of attitudes?

It's like this.

Once, I was telling a man about a couple in my church who had been married for years and years - raised a family together, worked hard, survived sorrow, became these memory keepers of each others lives, and then, the husband died and she was left alone and old with no one who knew what her face looked like when she was twenty-three.
I told this to this man and he said that it all seemed like such a waste. "All that work and you are only alone in the end."

I don't know. I don't know. When did life become as containable as a grade three math equation?