minorthird

so…a month ago, I found myself in an interesting position on the train. Well, now I’m the one reading the Bible on the train…

…as part of my Myth, History and Prophesy of the Old Testement class I’ve been reading Genesis during my commute. It is very bizarre reading the Bible…on the train, or otherwise. I’ve never been into organized religion. I’ve always view myself as an atheist. Here I am reading the Bible as a literary work while others around me probably view me as getting in touch with my faith. One of the train conductors saw the book open on my lap while he was taking tickets and said, “Wow! That’s great! What version?” He then took the book out of my hands, and examined it. Is this a common practice amongst those who practice their religion in public? Did he think I would not answer the question? I think he was a little let down when he saw that it was the The New Oxford Annotated Bible, but he seemed happy, nonetheless that I was reading the Bible. Or, maybe I was just being hypersensitive to the whole situation.

What do you think the reaction would have been if I were reading the Qur’an? Probably nothing, as he would not have recognized the obvious “Genesis 2.4-3.24″ at the top of the page.

And, while that strage enough, for me, that’s not all: we’ve been going to church!

Last week we started going to a Unitarian Universalist church. Like I said before, I’ve never been for organized religion, and I’ve pretty much rejected all that have involved god (big-G or otherwide), but I don’t know how to explain this. My family was never very religious. My mother’s parents were, and my father’s parent used to be, but if I’ve been to church a half-dozen times that didn’t involve a wedding, funeral, or other ceremony that would be a lot. When we were looking for a place to get married, we didn’t want to get married in “the church” because it didn’t go with our beliefs, but we did want to get married in something “church-like.” A search for non-denominational churches turned up a bunch of Unitarian Universalist churches.

While we were checking out the UU church that we ended up getting married in, I noticed how friendly everyone was, and how much I really liked the sense of community. Ok, I know, I know: this wouldn’t be uncommon at any church, but remember I wasn’t well-versed in all things church. There was also the all-inclusiveness that struck me as very cool. For the last 2-1/2 years we’ve been trying, but not religiously (yes, I know…), to find a church like that up here. All of the things that I liked about the first church at present at this church.

Here we are months from the birth of our son, and we’re trying to be the people that we think we are. I don’t think it is possible for us to instill all the values, beliefs and knowledge that we want to our child when we may not be able to explain them to ourselves — that didn’t come out the right way, and that’s part of the problem I’m talking about. We are miles and miles away from our families, and I think that really comes into play here as well.

(when it comes to things like this I tend to have a bunch of thoughts but can never really organize them the right way, so I’ll defer to Erika’s recap)

Now mind you, this was a wonderfully non-denominational Universalist Unitarian church - while “God” popped up into the service once or twice, we also ended a prayer with “Blessed Be” and had a silent moment, after which we turned to our neighbors and said, “Namaste.” The theme was “What gives you hope?” and people got up to share moments of hope, as well as what they did this summer (while each adding water from vacations and sacred locations to a large bowl - the water will be used for ceremonies throughout the year). The church seems big on social justice, and during coffee hour, they had a table collecting signatures supporting gay marriage to send to our representatives.

Hello, my kind of church!

Now, I grew up Roman Catholic, and my mom is still reeling from the fear that we won’t be together in heaven because I don’t believe in God. And for all it’s shortcomings and disturbing interpretations of the Bible, I look back and really appreciate the routine & family time going to church gave me growing up. I think it’s really important for a child to be surrounded by a community that shares our “peace and justice” values, so that he can see that a) we’re not making it all up, b) those values are reinforced weekly and not just addressed on a whim, and c) there are other people who share those values, and they’re pretty darn cool people.

Anyway, that was our excitement - we went to church. We’re such a wild couple.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2005 at 5:00 pm and is filed under family life, I'm learneding, parental paradox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.