I wrote a song that starts with the lines,
"I don't like religion and I don't go to church.
At best it's boring, and it's usually worse.
I hate watching people gulp like guppies in a bowl,
Popping their eyes and swimming 'round in little circles
-- it makes me ill." 1
And, like most writing, that is just straight up autobiography. I've gone to my share of church services in more than my share of churches, but most of the hours I've spent there could have been spent much more productively by sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away. For the most part I now only go to church if it's to take my kids, so it's usually St. James Catholic Church every third Sunday of the month (as per the terms of The Settlement).
But every once in a while I decide to step out on my own.
And lately I've been wanting to at least give a fist bump to my Lutheran roots. Not for any dogmatic reasons. Hopefully THAT goes without saying. But because I grew up with those songs and the look of those churches and the sound of those creeds and allathat. And because--oddly enough--despite 35 years of exposure (dating from 1982 when I started dating She Who Would One Day Become X2--maybe someday you'll have a wife, and then ALIMONY), the Catholic stuff just never really melted my permafrost.
So I checked out Our Savior Lutheran Church, which is very close to my house. I loved the church itself. And I felt warmly (but not TOO warmly) greeted by the congregation. But I just did not like the minister, I'm sorry to say. When I spoke with him, he proudly described himself as a Fundie, and mentioned that he did not "believe" in evolution. (I was a good boy and didn't ask if he deigned to believe in gravity.) I just could not go to a church that was squirming under that man's thumb, though.
I tried Christ Lutheran. And I liked the minister, and the church was okay, but when the service started and there were only five people in attendance--none of whom spoke English as a first language--I began to feel VERY conspicuous, and as soon as the minister turned his back to the church I bolted.
This morning I thought I'd try St. John's Lutheran Church. I got there early enough that I could sit in the parking lot and see who went in. (He CAN be taught!) And . . . very few cars. And . . . very old people. I know, pot / kettle, but there's old and there's OLD, you know? I just wanted one or two folks to knock the average age down into the 70s. Didn't get it, and I didn't go in, either. I consulted Garmin for the next closest Lutheran churches, and inadvertently drove back to Christ Lutheran, having forgotten the name, and then kept driving when I recognized the building and looked for the next one.
It was Ascension Lutheran Church. I'd actually driven to it before and had even gone into the building, but once in, I was confused and didn't know which way to go to get to the sanctuary, and I panicked and bolted. (A pattern begins to emerge.) So I thought I'd give that another go. And I sat in the parking lot and started to talk myself out of it, but with ten minutes to go before showtime I made one of those stupid promises to myself: "If another car pulls up and whoever gets out doesn't have white hair, I'm going in." So it shall be written, so it shall be done. Car, brownish hair. I went in.
One of the cool things about Ascension is that the music minister is Todd Hildreth, formerly of The Java Men, which was a very cool jazz trio. 2 Might still be, actually . . . looks like they did a show pretty recently. And his piano playing certainly was jazzy and certainly worth the price of admission in and of itself. And the cross outside is pretty interesting. Kind of a twisty scar sort of thing. The inside of the church . . . very barren. Not even any stained glass windows. And most significantly for me, no pipe organ. I really like a big pipe organ. Having my bones vibrate to the massive organ sound of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" was a pretty significant thing in the days of my youth. (Not being a smart ass here, btw. I know it's hard to tell sometimes.) I was grooving on a Sunday afternoon to that sound long before I tripped over Phillip Glass. And die Leute? Well . . . a pretty old crowd. But I did spot two Attractive Women who were not too young for me to feel lustful ambition for (subtracting the context of being in a spiritual place, of course), so that made me happy. As for the minister . . . I was a little confused. As best I could tell, the Minister minister had just left, and the new minister was formerly a (or possibly The, I don't really know how these things work) chaplain. Tried to find some information from the internet, but Ascension has the distinction of possessing one of the worst, least informative websites I have ever seen. In fact, if you decide you want to put up a website, I strongly recommend that you check theirs out, as it is a perfect instructional seminar on how not to do everything related to erecting a website.
But I did like the sermon, for the most part. It included allusions to Ukranian-born comedian Yakov "What a Country!" Smirnoff and Harry Potter. With slides. And the minister / reformed chaplain seemed real.
But unfortunately an old couple sat in front of me, and they were the kind of old people who feel that they have to bitch out loud about every fucking thing that passes within their gravitational field. But of course I'm not going to hold that against the church.
I'll go back again. And try to sit by myself. Or maybe near one of those too Attractive Women I noticed first time out.
ANYway. I was thinking about church and that kind of stuff when I read the Bible to Jacqueline last night. We are currently reading two different Bibles every night she's with me (4 of 7, so enough to win the World Series): Classic Bible Stories and The Children's Illustrated Bible. And--hmm? Oh, right. Well, check this out:
So--hmm? Oh, right. Sorry.
Better? Yeah, I had to enhance the shit out of that second one. But there you have it. As for Alice, by the way, it's not the Alice of Adventures in Wonderland--although that Alice is quite a favorite with Jacqueline as well. This Alice is the star of a series of books under the banner Alice in Bibleland. Jacqueline has scored several of them in her journeys to Half-Price Books.
ANYway, we were reading the story of Joseph in Egypt in one of the Bibles, specifically the story about him pretending not to recognize his brothers when they came before him, and all I could think was, "This Joseph guy is being a real dick." 3 And then I started thinking about how Joseph's father, Jacob, stole his brother Esau's birthright and conned his blind father . . . and how Noah got drunk and passed out naked and his son got punished for that . . . and the stories just kept coming and coming, and I was more and more baffled by what a poor judge of character God seemed to be, in that just about all (maybe all?) of the people he picked for the big jobs were just not very good people. That's assuming that you give some literal significance to these Old Testament stories, of course, which I'm not saying that I do, but still . . . from Adam straight on down to the end of the OT, it's pretty much a Dick Convention, and Christians who do take this stuff as history or even quasi-history have some thinking to do.
The best I can come up with is to just think of the O and the N Testaments as completely separate things which have been artificially linked for political and sociological reasons. As in early Christians trying to co-opt That Old Time Religion in order to validate their new thing. Kind of like The Mormons. But if you cut Jesus lose from that OT connection, Christianity improves at least 43%m, I think.
Though there are still some dick moves in the NT, of course.
More news as it happens.
1 Oh, here it is . . . assuming that this link works. If not . . . faggidaboudet.
I tried Christ Lutheran. And I liked the minister, and the church was okay, but when the service started and there were only five people in attendance--none of whom spoke English as a first language--I began to feel VERY conspicuous, and as soon as the minister turned his back to the church I bolted.
This morning I thought I'd try St. John's Lutheran Church. I got there early enough that I could sit in the parking lot and see who went in. (He CAN be taught!) And . . . very few cars. And . . . very old people. I know, pot / kettle, but there's old and there's OLD, you know? I just wanted one or two folks to knock the average age down into the 70s. Didn't get it, and I didn't go in, either. I consulted Garmin for the next closest Lutheran churches, and inadvertently drove back to Christ Lutheran, having forgotten the name, and then kept driving when I recognized the building and looked for the next one.
It was Ascension Lutheran Church. I'd actually driven to it before and had even gone into the building, but once in, I was confused and didn't know which way to go to get to the sanctuary, and I panicked and bolted. (A pattern begins to emerge.) So I thought I'd give that another go. And I sat in the parking lot and started to talk myself out of it, but with ten minutes to go before showtime I made one of those stupid promises to myself: "If another car pulls up and whoever gets out doesn't have white hair, I'm going in." So it shall be written, so it shall be done. Car, brownish hair. I went in.
One of the cool things about Ascension is that the music minister is Todd Hildreth, formerly of The Java Men, which was a very cool jazz trio. 2 Might still be, actually . . . looks like they did a show pretty recently. And his piano playing certainly was jazzy and certainly worth the price of admission in and of itself. And the cross outside is pretty interesting. Kind of a twisty scar sort of thing. The inside of the church . . . very barren. Not even any stained glass windows. And most significantly for me, no pipe organ. I really like a big pipe organ. Having my bones vibrate to the massive organ sound of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" was a pretty significant thing in the days of my youth. (Not being a smart ass here, btw. I know it's hard to tell sometimes.) I was grooving on a Sunday afternoon to that sound long before I tripped over Phillip Glass. And die Leute? Well . . . a pretty old crowd. But I did spot two Attractive Women who were not too young for me to feel lustful ambition for (subtracting the context of being in a spiritual place, of course), so that made me happy. As for the minister . . . I was a little confused. As best I could tell, the Minister minister had just left, and the new minister was formerly a (or possibly The, I don't really know how these things work) chaplain. Tried to find some information from the internet, but Ascension has the distinction of possessing one of the worst, least informative websites I have ever seen. In fact, if you decide you want to put up a website, I strongly recommend that you check theirs out, as it is a perfect instructional seminar on how not to do everything related to erecting a website.
But I did like the sermon, for the most part. It included allusions to Ukranian-born comedian Yakov "What a Country!" Smirnoff and Harry Potter. With slides. And the minister / reformed chaplain seemed real.
But unfortunately an old couple sat in front of me, and they were the kind of old people who feel that they have to bitch out loud about every fucking thing that passes within their gravitational field. But of course I'm not going to hold that against the church.
I'll go back again. And try to sit by myself. Or maybe near one of those too Attractive Women I noticed first time out.
ANYway. I was thinking about church and that kind of stuff when I read the Bible to Jacqueline last night. We are currently reading two different Bibles every night she's with me (4 of 7, so enough to win the World Series): Classic Bible Stories and The Children's Illustrated Bible. And--hmm? Oh, right. Well, check this out:
&
So--hmm? Oh, right. Sorry.
Better? Yeah, I had to enhance the shit out of that second one. But there you have it. As for Alice, by the way, it's not the Alice of Adventures in Wonderland--although that Alice is quite a favorite with Jacqueline as well. This Alice is the star of a series of books under the banner Alice in Bibleland. Jacqueline has scored several of them in her journeys to Half-Price Books.
ANYway, we were reading the story of Joseph in Egypt in one of the Bibles, specifically the story about him pretending not to recognize his brothers when they came before him, and all I could think was, "This Joseph guy is being a real dick." 3 And then I started thinking about how Joseph's father, Jacob, stole his brother Esau's birthright and conned his blind father . . . and how Noah got drunk and passed out naked and his son got punished for that . . . and the stories just kept coming and coming, and I was more and more baffled by what a poor judge of character God seemed to be, in that just about all (maybe all?) of the people he picked for the big jobs were just not very good people. That's assuming that you give some literal significance to these Old Testament stories, of course, which I'm not saying that I do, but still . . . from Adam straight on down to the end of the OT, it's pretty much a Dick Convention, and Christians who do take this stuff as history or even quasi-history have some thinking to do.
The best I can come up with is to just think of the O and the N Testaments as completely separate things which have been artificially linked for political and sociological reasons. As in early Christians trying to co-opt That Old Time Religion in order to validate their new thing. Kind of like The Mormons. But if you cut Jesus lose from that OT connection, Christianity improves at least 43%m, I think.
Though there are still some dick moves in the NT, of course.
More news as it happens.
1 Oh, here it is . . . assuming that this link works. If not . . . faggidaboudet.
2 His church bio says that he also "performed with Aretha Franklin, The Shirelles, Martha and the Vandellas . . . Bob from Sesame Street . . . [and] Norah Jones." Not a bad resume. The church bio does not include, for some reason, the fact that he composed the soundtrack to a short pornographic movie, The Little Sex Shop of Horrors (2008). Hmmpf.
3 Obviously not without mustard, but still.
3 Obviously not without mustard, but still.
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