I feel rather like the earth has moved under my feet.
We had our Thanksgiving a day early because of relatives' traveling issues. I'm not even going to talk about the saga of the turkey, which Jessica was appointed to cook (with me as sous-chef, gofer, and Moral Support). Let me just say that deciding to use Alton Brown's turkey recipe was our first mistake, not because it sucked -- it did precisely the opposite -- but because it flew in the face of tradition and necessitated a number of steps which were slightly incomprehensible to other people and even to us once it got to 4 in the morning. A further complication was that the turkey refroze in the refrigerator at approximately 2 ack emma last night. So anyway, I'm going on a scant minimum of sleep and the drain of socializing with a number of very nice people whom I have just met -- thank God they were nice.
Plus, I'm contemplating a change in denomination. I've been doing the contemporary Baptist thing for about 8 years, and it's been great because it has reminded me of some of my more enjoyable times in church during my childhood. The people I've known have been wonderful, and I've always thought it was just a problem with me that the worship format tended to make me self-conscious. Well, this past Sunday I visited an Episcopal church -- the oldest church in Springfield, I seem to recall being told -- and though I was quite nervous juggling the Prayer Book and the hymnal and the order of worship (Jessica came with me and helped me keep track of myself and the page numbers -- "my Jewish Worship Assistant!" I said, which she thought was really funny), I really liked it. One would think the formality and ritual would make me more self-conscious than the free-form chorus singing. Well, it made me self-conscious, but in a different way: I sensed in the midst of my fumbling with responses and books and kneeling that if I were used to this, I would quickly cease to think about myself at all, and begin to think about the Person one is supposed to think about in worship. In the sort of worship I'm used to, it's kind of up to me to create that worship -- induce the feelings (but not too much! just enough), think about my penitence in the proper way without dwelling on it, and just generally exude an aura of carefree Christian spiritual competence. And I've never gotten used to it. This liturgy and order of worship, on the other hand, is the spiritual competence and experience of hundreds of years' worth of Christians, laid right into my hand and making me a participant in the Body -- I can feel it right there, on a normal Sunday, reading the same Collect that Episcopalians and Anglicans have read year in and year out since Shakespeare's time -- and in Shakespeare's time they weren't exactly making it all up from scratch either. I haven't stopped thinking about it. I downloaded the Book of Common Prayer from the internet and have been poring over it in my spare time. Since most of it comes straight out of the Bible, I haven't found anything in it yet that yanks my earlobe critically. Should my enthusiasm about this be unequivocal? Well, it is, at any rate -- so far. It's very strange to think of myself changing over from a nondenominational charismatic approach to a bells-and-smells approach (Jessica's term; it tickles me), but I feel like something inside me has gone all relaxed. I like it.
Jessica asked me if my ardently-Republican grandmother would still send me a birthday check if she knew I was becoming an Episcopalian Democrat. I told her that to my knowledge she hasn't stopped sending marks of affection to my uncle and aunt in Washington -- and my aunt is a Democrat lobbyist. Which by the way, thanks to all who sent me email greetings for my natal day, and cards in snail mail. The thoughts (and the money!) are much appreciated. Mmmmm-wah.
We had our Thanksgiving a day early because of relatives' traveling issues. I'm not even going to talk about the saga of the turkey, which Jessica was appointed to cook (with me as sous-chef, gofer, and Moral Support). Let me just say that deciding to use Alton Brown's turkey recipe was our first mistake, not because it sucked -- it did precisely the opposite -- but because it flew in the face of tradition and necessitated a number of steps which were slightly incomprehensible to other people and even to us once it got to 4 in the morning. A further complication was that the turkey refroze in the refrigerator at approximately 2 ack emma last night. So anyway, I'm going on a scant minimum of sleep and the drain of socializing with a number of very nice people whom I have just met -- thank God they were nice.
Plus, I'm contemplating a change in denomination. I've been doing the contemporary Baptist thing for about 8 years, and it's been great because it has reminded me of some of my more enjoyable times in church during my childhood. The people I've known have been wonderful, and I've always thought it was just a problem with me that the worship format tended to make me self-conscious. Well, this past Sunday I visited an Episcopal church -- the oldest church in Springfield, I seem to recall being told -- and though I was quite nervous juggling the Prayer Book and the hymnal and the order of worship (Jessica came with me and helped me keep track of myself and the page numbers -- "my Jewish Worship Assistant!" I said, which she thought was really funny), I really liked it. One would think the formality and ritual would make me more self-conscious than the free-form chorus singing. Well, it made me self-conscious, but in a different way: I sensed in the midst of my fumbling with responses and books and kneeling that if I were used to this, I would quickly cease to think about myself at all, and begin to think about the Person one is supposed to think about in worship. In the sort of worship I'm used to, it's kind of up to me to create that worship -- induce the feelings (but not too much! just enough), think about my penitence in the proper way without dwelling on it, and just generally exude an aura of carefree Christian spiritual competence. And I've never gotten used to it. This liturgy and order of worship, on the other hand, is the spiritual competence and experience of hundreds of years' worth of Christians, laid right into my hand and making me a participant in the Body -- I can feel it right there, on a normal Sunday, reading the same Collect that Episcopalians and Anglicans have read year in and year out since Shakespeare's time -- and in Shakespeare's time they weren't exactly making it all up from scratch either. I haven't stopped thinking about it. I downloaded the Book of Common Prayer from the internet and have been poring over it in my spare time. Since most of it comes straight out of the Bible, I haven't found anything in it yet that yanks my earlobe critically. Should my enthusiasm about this be unequivocal? Well, it is, at any rate -- so far. It's very strange to think of myself changing over from a nondenominational charismatic approach to a bells-and-smells approach (Jessica's term; it tickles me), but I feel like something inside me has gone all relaxed. I like it.
Jessica asked me if my ardently-Republican grandmother would still send me a birthday check if she knew I was becoming an Episcopalian Democrat. I told her that to my knowledge she hasn't stopped sending marks of affection to my uncle and aunt in Washington -- and my aunt is a Democrat lobbyist. Which by the way, thanks to all who sent me email greetings for my natal day, and cards in snail mail. The thoughts (and the money!) are much appreciated. Mmmmm-wah.
