Church Ladies and BibleSpeak
I went to church last Sunday with my mom's friend. My mom won't go anymore because her church was one of the United Churches that voted against ordaining homosexuals. For a while, she just sent money. Then she stopped doing even that. This same church also just recently voted overwhelmingly not to amalgamate with another local church, thereby scuttling any chance either church had of surviving.
Looking around at the average age of the existing congregation, I'd give it two more years before everybody's gone to their great reward. Gawd religious people are stubborn idiots.
Anyway, it's been years since I went to church, but I used to enjoy going to this one because I liked a guy whose mother was a bigwig alderthingy and he had to go every Sunday, so I went every Sunday, too. Gawd only knows how I managed to sit through all that BibleSpeak without listening to any of it, but as I sat there last Sunday listening to the zippy new minister read dreary passages from the Bible that would then be regurgitated in modernspeak by families that looked like they'd just popped out of the 1950s, I realized it was all brand new to me.
I also couldn't believe how absolutely absurd it felt to be sitting in a United Church as if we were living 2,000 years ago with people taking it all so seriously and with such solemn reverence. Really, anybody who thinks organized religion is any less of a cult than Scientology is deluded. There is nothing weirder to my mind than sitting in church listening to teenagers from 2009 try to "hip up" BibleSpeak as some kind of antidote to the obvious fact that 99% of the congregation is over 80 years of age.
And no one could have been more aware of that than my mom's friend, who I'm pretty sure goes to church because she likes to sing hymns (which is something I like to do, too - it's just too bad the entire service isn't hymn singing). Certainly she didn't pay much attention to the service as she'd jab me every now and again to point out a fellow parisher who'd just nodded off (or died... it was hard to tell) and later, as we headed to her car (she's one of the few drivers left in her circle of friends so they're after her to be really sharp for her upcoming driver's test) she said, "I'm sorry the service was so dreary".
"Oh well, I guess it's Easter, so..."
"Oh my goodness! You're right - THAT'S why it was so dreary. I must not have been paying very close attention. It's too bad you won't be here next Sunday - we could go again."
To which I said, "Yeah, now I'll never know what happened to Jesus. Those disciples sure turned out to be jerks, eh?"
Anyway, she has a good sense of humour and we both laughed at that one. Then she told me about an old school chum of mine (who'd recognized me from high school and said "Hi, Sooey" as if it hadn't been 30 years since he'd last seen me) who sings in the choir and whose wife sings in the choir, too, except that she wasn't his wife when they met because they were both married to other people and wasn't it nice how people could still meet at church and get married.
We shared a laugh over that one, too. Anyway, I'll go back next time I'm home because she really enjoyed bringing me (and where else does one get to belt out hymns?) but honest-to-Pete, remind me not to drop acid before I go - church is trippy enough, thanks.
Addendum: I should mention the fact that as I sat there and listened to the story of Christ, I wondered how it was that a Conservative could sit there and listen to the story of Christ and not spontaneously combust. I mean, I felt politically to the right of his message and I'm a Socialist. Being opposed to Sunday shopping is one thing, but throwing a rock through the store window by way of protest is something else entirely. Although, I guess it's not technically trespassing, which, unless I heard the Lord's Prayer wrong (the theme from Maude was running through my head while I recited it) is one of the seven deadly sins. Still, crucifying a guy for smashing up a temple seems pretty harsh - even for Biblical times.
