Last Saturday night, a minister friend ask me where I’m going to church these days. Likely he just asked to make conversation, what with Sunday coming and all. I’m confident he didn’t realize I don’t have a short answer for that one. If fact, after I rambled for a minute or so, I bet he was wishing I’d go ahead and say, “nowhere.”

Turns out I stayed up very late that night watching college football, slept in, and began drafting this essay about the time the liturgists in my time zone were reading the call to worship. Maybe the answer actually is nowhere.

I do worship at a couple churches about once a month at each, and there’s one on the west coast I follow a little on line. I give a some money to all three, chat with the pastors, am moved by the music, support their mission events, and consider the folks who call these churches home my friends. So, it’s not quite “nowhere.” But, that isn’t the model I recommended to folks for over thirty years as a local church pastor.

I do practice spiritual disciples daily. I have spiritual friends I check in with concerning soul matters on a regular basis. I study and write, and I hand out food a couple of times a week. Probably wouldn’t qualify as a philanthropist, but I do lean into generosity. I try my best to be caught on the side of justice and mercy in what I say and do. To sum up, I hope to live in such a way that friends and neighbors have good reason to answer in the affirmative if asked if I’m a Christ follower. Does that count? Maybe.

Still, where to I go to church these days?

Quite frankly, I now find church on the other side of those brick walls. Like the psalmist, I believe the heavens sing of God’s glory, and stones can worship. Like St. Francis, I believe the first cathedral is the one outdoors. I am comfortable calling earth “mother” and sky “father.” After all, I am made of of sky, earth, fire, and water. We must be relatives. I preach to, and am often preached at, by woodpeckers, crows, snakes, and trees.

I’ll throw this in there too. Somehow over the last few years, my ability to see Christ in others has extended beyond cute kids. On clear days I can see the divine in the despairing fellow holding the “Help” sign at the stop light. Also in my friends around the poker table, the holy Muslim, and the self-proclaimed atheist. On really clear days I am even able to see the sacred in the fearful ones who seek to divide and oppress.

Maybe it’s part of old age. If you get old and have been paying attention, you realize mercy and forgiveness is the way to go. You see God working in places without a baptismal font or altar table anywhere in sight.

I am not by any stretch encouraging folks to discontinue church attendance. A church filled with the spirit of Christ is a wonderful thing. I have been nurtured and kept by such. I believe I still qualify as a church person.

I am saying though, that for me, the answer to my friend’s question is actually, “everywhere.”