Church

So a while ago I mentioned my beliefs and said I'd write more later. It's only taken me a few months to get back to this.

A little personal history first, maybe? (or maybe a lot)

Dad was raised Roman Catholic. Ate fish (or some other non-meat entree) every Friday of his life (at least) until he joined the army, mass every Sunday (or sometimes Saturday, when he was a teenager), and nuns for elementary school teachers. All of his siblings are still practicing Catholics, most of my cousins are, too, as far as I know. Dad's first wife was also RC and his older kids were raised in the church. I think Anna was the only one who still went. Dad was heavily influenced by his Jesuit teachers and basically came away with what I do is between me and God. So he managed to escape Catholic-guilt.

Mom's early church was a Southern Baptist one. PawPaw resigned from the church because he disagreed with some racist policies they had. Granny was too embarrassed to go to church without her husband and Mom thought "woohoo no church on Sundays!" So Mom didn't attend any where for several years. When she was a teenager she went to the Methodist (I think) church with some of her friends, because they had a good youth group. When she was younger she had "walked the aisle" and been baptized mainly to get the preacher to stop bugging her about it. Her older boys were raised in S. Baptist churches, as far as I know. One sometimes attends mass with his wife; the other is Baha'i. Mom isn't sure there is a God.

I didn't grow up in a church. I liked going to mass with Grandma when she visited and kind of liked all those wedding masses I went to for my cousins. (Except for the one in Latin. I don't think the priest really knew what he was saying, but you could tell who'd been an altar boy pre-Vatican two.) I went to church/Sunday school sometimes with my friends, if I spent the night. I'm sure both my grandmothers, anyway, worried about the fact that we didn't go to church. At least, Grandma knew I'd been baptized.

Someone gave me a comic book version of the Bible. I kinda' wish I still had it. It was much better than a children's Bible I read one night while babysitting. Yes, I read about 3/4 of that "Bible" in one evening. That one glossed over a lot of the sticky bits. (For example, Jacob was sold into slavery by his BROTHERS because they could make money off him, which they wouldn't have made just KILLING him. The whole averted fratricide angle was not mentioned.) In fact I think the Old Testament portion was actually shorter than the New Testament. It also glossed over the inconsistencies of the 4 gospels....

A few years ago, when Nettie was about 2, Mom decided that she really need the social network that a church provides. She knew Dr. Charlie through work and thought if Dr. Charlie could preach there 1st Pres couldn't be all bad. So she and Nettie started going. And I started going. I even started going to Sunday School. I got fairly comfortable in my class, but not enough to talk much. I joined the choir. I really enjoyed choir. I joined the church. I like the traditional style church service and choir. I find Sunday school interesting; I like learning about how other people think. (Liked my lit classes for the same reason.) But never felt like I quite fit in. When I dropped out of choir because I was too exhausted to go to Wednesday evening rehearsal, I lost all interest in getting up for church on Sunday morning. So, now I go on Christmas Eve and Maundy Thursday.

Tune in later for some on what I actually believe. (I promise it won't be three months from now.)