thoughts i had during church today

Good afternoon, all! It’s a sunny Sunday here, and I spent a few hours at church this morning. Sometimes I think everyone else is much better at faith than I am because I’m not very sure what the scripture readings or sermon were about. I got caught up in my own thoughts, which might be the real point of church: to allow us moments of reflection in a world where those moments of silence are increasingly difficult to find.

Anyhow, here’s what I was thinking about during the sermon this morning.

• we really new need prayer books.
• Fleabag is an amazing show
• do i have leftovers for lunch?
• i should write a blog post about this!
• wow, this priest is METAL
• i wonder what my bangs look like right now
• ahhhh I’m MOVING to GERMANY
• German church is fun
• what will I get when I go to dm for the first time in 5 years?
• i should eat less dairy
• this service is eternal. like Jesus!

Then the sermon ended and the participatory part started again. Going to church is important to me, but it isn’t always particularly meaningful or fun. Some days you just want it to be over, and that’s okay. Today wasn’t a mindblowing spiritual experience, but the community was still there, which is one of the most important parts.

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church night

Today as I was driving to church, I remembered one aspect of my childhood that most people in my current city have not experienced: having to listen to Baptist kids complain about getting homework on a Wednesday. The evangelical movement that was everywhere in my small town in the ’90s and ’00s isn’t as powerful as it used to be, meaning some of my stranger childhood experiences are relics of a bygone era.

“But it’s church night!” was the inevitable rallying cry for about half my classmates if we had a Thursday test or Wednesday night assignment. As an adult I can see how annoying it must have been for teachers to dish it out on a night where you would not have time to complete an assignment, As a fairly pious tween, I found this offensive. All I heard was my classmates accusing me of not being “Christian enough” or being the wrong kind of Christian since I didn’t go on Wednesday. In case that wasn’t clear, several of my friends attempted to get me to go to their church during this time because they were worried that I wasn’t saved. Methodists don’t “get saved” in the evangelical sense.

I’ve been learning more and more about the conservative/evangelical religious establishment in the US over the past few years. From Good Christian Fun to memoirs from exvangelicals to the Jonas Brothers’ documentary, reactions to the evangelical movement that many of my friends were involved in are everywhere. It’s made several memories from my past snap into clear focus, like why going to FCA or Meet Me at the Pole was so important for these kids (they thought they were being persecuted) or why everyone and their sister went to The Nightmare at Guts Church in Tulsa in October (Halloween is the perfect time to get scared straight).

The most amazing things about going to my current church as an adult is how right and free it feels. Religion in small-town Oklahoma was always tainted for me by a stifling feeling of dust, box fans, and conservatism. Even though the church I grew up attending was okay, the weird theology all my friends were exposed to and their reactions to it made me uncomfortable to even belong to the same religion. Now I attend a church steeped in tradition and love, where I feel comfortable and safe. None of the kids at my church complain about homework on “church night,” and I doubt that many of their classmates do either. Not all endings are unhappy.

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vegan lent: a retrospective

I did it! 40 days later, and I broke my vegan fast by eating a ton of pizza with my family. Then I ate a massive amount of cheese…..and half a bag of mini eggs on the day after Easter at work. This is definitely not the best approach to going back to dairy products, but it was a delicious one.

Overall, I had a really good Lent! I enjoy this season more than any other; it’s nice to get back to basics. I chose being vegan for several reasons, but the connection to the ancient church’s practices was the main reason why I wanted to try this out. The major drawback to this was that I had to tell people that I was vegan for Lent. I think you shouldn’t tell other people what you’re giving up, but I had to do it at times to explain why I wasn’t eating the delicious free food at work. And there was a ton of free food.

My office used to have lunch brought in about once a month, but that tapered off for a while. Now everything’s busy, so we’ve started getting lunch again. Naturally, this was pizza or something else I couldn’t eat, which really tempted me. I actually ate a bagel that wasn’t vegan on the second or third day because I forgot that it was Lent already.

The actual cooking wasn’t that difficult since many of my favorite dishes are already vegan. It was less easy finding replacements for my fave sweet treats, though. I was never entirely successful with making any myself, so I ate a lot of coconut ice cream. However, I think this is why this was a great choice for me. I always forgot to miss social media after a week or two. In fact, I think I’m still fasting from Twitter from 2017. With veganism, I really had to grapple with my choices every single day. I was constantly aware of the sacrifice being made (and why I was making it).

I’m not sure if this practice brought me closer to religion, but it was nice to have something tangible to give up, and something tangible to look forward to at the end. Butter tastes so delicious now, and I found a few more recipes that will go into my regular rotation. Lent is always an interesting experiment since it’s really easy for me to give things up – perhaps next year I’ll go for something extra meaty.

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an unmagical christmas

Going to church on Christmas Eve is a lovely tradition that I look forward to every year. I love sitting with my family all in one pew since my grandma usually sits in the choir. However, Christmas Eve is also one of my favorite services to nitpick. It’s deeply strange how much the service goes on about how Mary was a virgin. (My favorite verse is about how she and Joseph waited to consummate their marriage until after Jesus was born. 1) I don’t think we need to know that. 2) Ummm….why did the gospel writers know that?!) I’m also not a huge fan of all the snow carols because I grew up in a place where it doesn’t snow much in December. Christmas is still valid if it doesn’t snow!

This year was different. The church I grew up in finally finished building a new fellowship hall. (The bones are there for a new sanctuary as well, but it’s not complete yet.) The congregation moved over there around Labor Day, and this was my first time visiting the new building. I had been at the last service at the old building, and people talked about how much they were going to miss it. I thought it was kind of strange because the old building had leaks in the roof and was 50% mold.

Reader, I was wrecked going to church in this new building. The song may say that the church is the people, but many of the people I knew in that church passed away over the years, and my memories of them are tied to the old building. It’s strange to go from a building where I knew every nook and cranny from too many games of hide and seek to count to a new one where I don’t even know which door is the entrance. I’ve just been a visitor there for almost ten years, but knowing the building so well let me ignore that truth and hold on to one last piece of my childhood.

This brings us back to Christmas Eve. Normally, we’d be sitting in a pew surrounded by stained glass windows. This year, we were sitting in folding chairs in a windowless fellowship hall. I was feeling lost and out of place – like someone had sucked my personal faith out of the room. I felt like I should be happy or at least not annoyed – Jesus being born is generally perceived as a good thing to Christians – but it felt like a blank space inside my soul where my happy Christmas feelings should go. They came back after church when we retired to my grandparents’ house for food and gifts, but it was so strange for it to be absent in that moment.

I’ve been thinking about that service ever since, and what it means to grow up and let go of your childhood. I want to put a nice bow on this story, but all I can come up with is “there’s always next year.” So, dear reader, there’s always next year.

joy & emergency

I was at church this morning, as I often am on a Sunday, when the priest said that life is not an emergency. The main theme he touched up is that advent is a time to slow down and reflect upon our lives. The main problem with such a theme is that I usually slow down and reflect in that exact moment, so I’m not quite sure what else he said in the sermon.

Although it has been eclipsed by Lent and Easter for me in recent years, for most of my childhood and adult life, Advent was my favorite holiday. Not Christmas, Advent. I love the feeling of anticipation and the whole world being born anew. The candles and the story that everyone knew by heart seemed like magic to me. It was very surprising for me to learn as an adult that this was a period of fasting and penitence for most of Christianity’s history. Joy being replaced with guilt seems so strange to me since I didn’t grow up in a guilty-heavy faith tradition. However, this knowledge helps to build a bridge between where we are as a society when it comes to celebrating Christmas and where the modern church would like us to be.

As far as I can tell, no one really wants us to eliminate time spent celebrating with loved ones or gifts given; it’s the sheer gaudiness, enormity, and lack of sentiment that the holiday can take on that is offensive in a religious context. Churches love Christmas and Advent; all they want, aside from the religious message, is for you to take a second and realize that a) your entire life is not an emergency, b) it’s okay to be low key, and c) you are loved.   

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The lectionary was especially nice this morning.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

is it funny?

This morning, I found myself at church, which is a pretty common occurrence on a Sunday morning when I’m at home. The service went as expected – opening hymn, collect, and then the readings. The first reading was from 2 Samuel, and told the story of how David got in trouble for marrying Uriah’s wife. So God sends Nathan to David , and Nathan tells David a long parable about sheep and rich and poor men. David gets really upset about the poor man taking advantage of the rich man, and then Nathan has to point out that David is the rich man in this scenario. This is a very serious story, but….I found it funny. “You are the man!” seems like such a funny thing to say, even though I knew it wasn’t something I want to make light of.

Finding something ridiculous instead of taking it seriously is my first reaction to so many situations in my life. I’m like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.  “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?” That’s not the type of person I aspire to be, but it’s the type of person I am right now.  Especially at work, where things are so repetitive, it seems easier to keep from being bored if I find things funny. And I will never pick being unnecessarily stressed over an opportunity to keep things in perspective, but that isn’t the same as looking at every situation as a thing to make fun of.

I read an article on this not too long ago (which, unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me find) which discussed how young people tend to go to humor as a first reaction. We’re a generation that laughs first. I don’t think that’s the worst thing, but someone needs to be keeping things serious! And, of course, I think a large part of this is what we post on the internet. People don’t want to post downer things about their serious thoughts on saving for retirement given the current economic situation, but a joke about the lady who always uses Siri at work? Classic.

As I spent the rest of the service worrying about how I view the world, I decided it all comes down to how I respect others. The reason why The Office isn’t really funny when you stop to think about it is that so much of the show hangs off the premise that bullying another person because they’re annoying is fine. I want to show more respect for others than that, so I’m going to try to bite my tongue a bit more often in the future. I know it’ll be a process, but hopefully it’ll make me a compassionate person.

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Thoughts & Prayers

I’m twenty-six. Mass shootings in the US have become a matter of routine for me since they’ve been normal for as long as I can remember. One of the things that annoys me most about these tragedies is people offering “thoughts and prayers.” Aside from the normal and correct argument that we should take concrete actions instead of simply offering thoughts and prayers to the victims, I take offense with the thought and prayers themselves for two reasons.

The first reason is that thoughts are automatically lumped in with prayers. Although people may exist who have mastered the trick of prayer without thought, I have not. The whole point of prayers made in this context is that you are intentionally asking God to intercede. If you’re worried about offending non-religious people, you can simply say “thoughts.” Thoughts and prayers is redundant.

The second, greater reason is that if you are religious enough to offer prayer in response to a tragedy, you should at the very least do some preemptive prayer. Right now, ask God to change the hearts of those in this country who want to do harm. Ask God to stop this violence by aiding those who will enact sensible gun laws. You should not wait until the moment of violence to ask for God’s aid.

Sometimes you have to take action instead of merely waiting for God to intercede. He gave us free will, so we should use that to the best of our ability. The greatest commandments (for Christians) are to love the Lord and to love your neighbor  as yourself.* We can’t love from afar; love is taking action. Organize. Donate. Make calls. Change the world.

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*Matthew 22:37-39