Apparently there is some sort of a kerfluffle in the mainstream protestant church I attended as a child. The one that The Commander does not attend with anything approaching regularity but still sorta keeps tabs on. I’m not sure exactly what is going on, so I’m not gonna blahg about it but I attended a service at that church a couple Memorial Day weekends ago and it was a bit surreal. First of all, I was up there for Memorial Day weekend. I did not have fancy clothes with me. We were staying at the cabin and I was planning on walking the beach! I had shorts and leggings and tank tops and hoodies and ratty old Chaco sandals and polartech socks and one rather battered skirt. And my ski jacket. Hey, it was COLD that weekend! The church was going to “recognize” memorial donations that it had received in honor of my old coot and a bunch of other people that Sunday, so we felt obligated to attend.

And so we did. I’m not sure if I have *ever* dragged the GG to anything at that church. I’ve been to his old church, The Shrine of the Silver Dollar Little Flower, on Woodward in Royal Joke, for weddings and funerals. The Shrine is a beautiful place and the GG and his twin of terror got all over that place when they were kids including whatever secret places are there. My family, or at least my branch of it, celebrates weddings and funerals more or less outside the church these days. Agnostic is about the best way to describe me and I’m not really sure exactly what the GG believes but he has been okay with my beliefs for almost 30 years, so I guess we’re cool.

So, going back to my childhood church was pretty surreal. I managed to cobble together an outfit that I’m sure made me look more like one of the witches in an average production of MacBeth than an upstanding church-going woman. Black hoodie, tattered black skirt, polartech socks, and Chacos. Definitely not the elegant outfits The Commander dressed me in as a child. And then there was the whole thing where people kept saying to me something like, “Your mother has been telling me about all the wonderful things you are doing.” Which, of course made me wonder what the heck I had been doing! And then there was the sorta evangelical stuff that happened during the service itself. I do not remember anybody in that church ever going off into the kind of spontaneous I-feel-the-lord song that happened when I was at that church that Sunday. I had no problem with it. I thought it was interesting. But it was very different than the church services I grew up with. Which, admittedly, were so boring I could hardly stand them. Except for the singing. Of the regular old hymns. With the beautiful organ and the choir.

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