Bit By Bleary Bit

I'm really sleepy. I think after I finish typing this, I shall go to sleep--shockingly early, at least if this week is any sort of period over which to determine a trend. I don't think I've slept earlier than 12am on any day this week, including Sunday night; and the worst of it is that I haven't had any particular reason to do so. I just sleep really late, surfing and reading random stuff and so on, and then I wake up the next day and vow that tonight I'll sleep earlier, but then I get back to the room and after dinner there's people to talk to over MSN and so on... And last night I slept at 3am, because I was reading Basilisk in its entirety (34 chapters of manga!).

...so yeah, tonight I sleep early. Earlier than 12am.

Tomorrow morning the church worship team is having a retreat. I'm not going. It's not that I have some sort of fundamental opposition to the idea of retreats, and it's not that I don't like the rest of the worship team either. The problem is I don't know them well enough to have an opinion one way or the other, for the most part; some of them I know better, but only bits and pieces--"that one will tell me to do something when I'm already doing it", "that one tends to lose the rhythm when attempting a particularly complicated arrangement", "that one always comes late"--I know nothing about them personally, apart from the very obvious--"those are married, that one is the brother of that one". And there is my objection. Retreats are all very well and good, but I have trouble seeing the point of waking early and travelling very far with a group of people, only to immediately split up into individuals for most of the time and only regrouping at lunchtime. Or during the sermon. And if I were to go to the retreat, I would go and return and not know any of them any better.

I'm not being cynical, but if after three years of service together I still do not know most of their names, I don't think a retreat is going to serve any sort of team-building purpose. I mean, there was a worship team appreciation dinner some months back, which I did go to; and I went and I came back, and I spoke to (and was spoken to by) nearly nobody while I was there, except for the kind of things everybody says when at table. Things like "pass the salt, please" and "want some crab?" and "toilet break"--things that require no response other than a nod. I don't mean to be accusatory either; I'm not the easiest person to talk to and I suppose I can be offputtingly silent at times. But I have no friends amongst the people I serve with in church and that makes me very diffident about dinners and retreats and suchlike.

Of course at this point somebody will start raising the question of why I continue to serve at all, then, and they would have a good point. The Gobbler asked it of me some months back, after all. At the time I said that service builds one's sense of being in a community. When one contributes, it makes one feel that one is needed or that one belongs. At least that is how I see things. Of course I'm not needed in the team; the very few times I've been unavailable for serving, they found a substitute or made do without very well indeed. In fact the pianist, in my current church, is only really needed during the Doxology, when no other instrument is being played. And the other reason I serve, but I didn't tell the Gobbler this at the time, is that I rather like serving in the worship team. I quite enjoy it, even if I know none of the other people who serve alongside me--and of course, I am not known to them. And, of course, there is the entire reason of serving--gratitude to the One being served, without which the whole thing falls apart into senselessness. This weekend especially I've been thinking about this issue--not least because of the retreat being planned. I think I've formed a coherent opinion for myself on this issue.

Today was the baptism of some of the people who attend the after-church Bible study. It was very nice, and I especially liked the bit where they had somebody read out a verse for them (that they had picked out beforehand) before they went under the water; and there were at least eighty witnesses, of which I think it's safe to say 75% weren't believers. It almost makes me look at my own baptism with some... disappointment, perhaps?--nostalgia is something that happens to other people, I often manage to remember the bad parts better than the good parts--when I was baptised I hadn't ever met the officiating pastor before, and it was all rather hurried-along and quickly-wrapped-up, and the lunch was relatively disappointing, and the schedule for that day wasn't even adhered to. But I'm glad that they at least will remember their baptism with, I hope, happiness.