Church-Shopping

Church #1:

I guess the easiest way I can describe it is with a food analogy. For communion, the ushers passed around a loaf of homemade, white bread. As I ripped off a piece, I couldn't help but notice how like the church itself it was. The walls and the floor were as white as the bread, and the pews and the piano and the cross on the far wall were the same rosy gold as the crust was. It was small, but had nice high ceilings. They had good lights, and widows all along the wall, wide open to the sun and the breeze.

The minister was a little bit old, but he was big and wore a black suit with a white shirt and a bright red, silky tie. He had curly black hair, a graying beard and bushy eyebrows that almost hid his glinting eyes. When we met, he took my hand in both his giant own hands and I watched him process my name and attach it to my face. When he spoke, his voice was much softer than I had imagined. The sermon and the ideas and the language were traditional and kind of old-fashoined. We sang a few hymns, and prayed, and took communion.

I spent most of the sermon and an hour afterwards watching the people. Fifty people total: mostly younger families, maybe only three other people my age. The place was full of children, coloring away in their family pews. Everyone was was clean and well-dressed, their eyes were bright, and they sang better than the 300 peple in my own church. All of the little girls were wearing bright skirts and bright, patterned leggings. After church, the kids went to play in the patch of woods next to the church. The men all went outside in the sun, with their jackets off and their sleeves rolled up, studying some construction that was going on in the front of the building. The women stood in the tiny foyer by the open doors and asked all kinds of questions about me and how I was doing with the move. One woman invited me to her house to help make applesauce, which I had to decline since I didn't do any homework yesterday.

I've been to churches like it before and haven't liked it. I have always thought that they were too quiet and comfortable. I have always steered away from tradition in religon. This church was not about bringing people into the faith, it's definitely made for people that already have their faith. But is was exactly like the communion bread; it was clean and fresh and comforting and wholesome. Everything else about my life is new and challenging, and that isn't what I need from God right now. Today I needed something that I understood, something simple and relaxing.

So, I don't plan on going there every week. But once a month they have church luncheons, and I think I will go on those Sundays. All of the mothers were planning for next week's luncheon, baking breads and pies and making sauces and desserts. So once a month, I think I'll go and be comfortable and well-fed by mothers, and get dragged all over the place by their kids.