I think the church in general has to be open to the way in which they need to be reintroduced to their own stuff by people who have chosen it as adults.

Q: What was your process of choosing it?

Of course, it doesn’t feel like I chose it. I didn’t go to church for 10 years. I was violently de-churched. I hated Christianity and Christians for 10 years, and then I met my husband.

He introduced me to it. I’d been clean for four years at that time. [The Lutheran church] was the only place that didn’t feel like a self-improvement program. The Lutherans said, “Nobody’s climbing the spiritual ladder. There’s no spiritual self-improvement program here, and God’s continuously rescuing us, continually coming to us, always interrupting our lives. This is the direction.”

I went, “That is what I’ve experienced.” I fell in love with the liturgy, too, which I’d never experienced. It felt like a beautiful gift that we have that we’ve been given by our ancestors to caretake for the next generation. It’s this gorgeous thing, like entering the stream of the faithful.

It’s been flowing for a while, and you get to enter it and carry it, and then the next generation comes and carries it along.