Happy Easter from a lapsed Catholic and a self-proclaimed heathen*. When I was growing up, my family was involved in a Methodist church. The one that my grandparents and all of my local relatives attended. It was a relatively mainstream protestant church, where people dressed properly and behaved themselves impeccably but there was none of that evangelistic/fundamentalist stuff. I think that if there had been any of that stuff, my dad would probably have rebelled against the whole thing. In his later years, he told me that when his family walked to church on Sunday, he was always the last in line, walking backward. I think he was a dreamer who wasn’t quite sure about who God or Jesus were and didn’t get his childhood questions answered or maybe didn’t know how to ask them. I didn’t know that kid. The dad I knew was a steadfast church-goer and volunteer. He did the books for the church and sometimes kept the electric company at bay and he passed the collection plate and made sure his little family was there and dressed properly every Sunday, whether he wanted to be there or not. Er, actually The Commander was charged with keeping children dressed properly, NOT Grandroobly.

When I was 16 and said I would rather ski than go to Sunday School, my dad gave me his blessing. I told him some rot about how skiing in the great outdoors was my way of communing with god and, even though we were often at odds with each other in those days, sometimes terrible odds, I am pretty sure that I saw him wink at me.

In the last few years of Grandroobly’s life, he decided he wouldn’t go to church any more. He was done. When I moved on from my childhood life, I chose to raise my children outside of any church. I wanted them to learn the golden rule from me and not some Sunday School teacher, although I did have some wonderful teachers there.

So, here were are. It’s Easter and we had a great time here but there was no church or an Easter basket or any Easter candy, exept for what I sent to Cali earlier in the week. We did walk down by the river this morning and you can click here or on the pic for a Flickr set.

* The GG grew up in a Catholic family. I didn’t, as you might have figgered. We get along. Really.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 4th, 2010 at 6:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.