I usually pray on my way to school, pray “through the neighborhoods.”  About a month ago I began to count the houses of worship on my route from Hyde Park to Englewood, a poor, high crime area on the city’s south west side. I think there are 35 on my 20 minute route.

There is St. Thomas and Divine Solid Rock and Apostolic Overshadowing Holy Church of God and All Nations Pentecostal Assembly and Blooming Rose Deliverance Assembly to name but a few.  The names intrigue me but even more my prayer has become a questioning of God.

How can there be so many places of worship and prayer and so much poverty and crime?  Who are the people who come to pray and then leave to live and die, or maim, or stay inside their homes  for fear?  What is the place of “church” in our world today – is it a structure to calm us one day a week?  a place where we come to bury the dead and hope for a better life?  a source to strengthen our resolve to live together as brothers and sisters?  Is “church”, as place, an empty shell from the eras past because what goes on there no longer ignites the fire of justice and love and peace every day of the week?  What do people pray in these places and what does that have to do with everyday life?

My conversations with God are about wholeness in the everyday for everyone without boundaries or categories; with or without buildings or rituals.  My ride to work makes me realize how much God wants his kingdom to come to people and people want God to be with them…and how hard it is to live that way all day, everyday, in every way not just keep the Sabbath. Especially as we enter the season of elections I wonder at the place of “church” and how we “use” our God for our own ends when God’s end is love , forgiveness, compassion.

By the time I get to school I have moved from church to faith, but I am left with lots of questions about “religion” and its place in our lives.