Dear Reader,
This morning I woke up and GOT up in time to go to church. (Cue applause!). I had suggested to my husband that we try out churches as a social experiment, see the different forms the church has in New York. That way we won't be "looking" for a church and come away disappointed. Instead, we will just visit a plethora of churches and be surprised when we find "ours." So, the two churches we were interested met at 10:00 am ... insane! So I found one in a nearby village that had a FANTASTIC looking website. This place was rocking! So, we jumped in the car and found it.
It was awful.
They were meeting in an old church building that I guess they rent. Old, not in the sense of quaint and beautiful. Old in the sense of dark and dingy. And downright dirty! A keyboard near us was covered in dust. You could see back in a little choir room and it was all disordered and looked dirty. Someone had unwrapped something and just left the cellophane wrapper on the window ledge. There was one dying plant arrangement on one window ledge and two little plants in styrofoam cups. The people seemed very poor, but were quite welcoming. If we had decided to go there, though, I would have had to come in and scrub it down from stem to stern. (Never get to use that expression much ... not sure what it means ... boating terminology?). Anyway. That's not going to be a problem. I met the pastor out front while my husband parked the car. He seemed quite nice and said he was on a semi-sabbatical, so he was here but the pastor emeritus was preaching. My ears immediately pricked up. Pastor Emeritus means ... OLD! Well, the guitar wasn't tuned, and the three singers all seemed to be using a different key for the music. It was sad ... but sincere and I could overlook that. But then the preacher got up and it was just terrible! He used this old-time, revivalist-style, LOUD voice! And it seemed like he was going to make up in this one sermon for all the years since he has preached last. Seriously. He probably had six sermons in all of that. But, it was kind of sermon-by-concordance-search. That's sort of the expository equivalent of paint-by-numbers. It was like he got out his concordance and looked up the word "trust", picked out the ten verse he liked the best and read them all verbatim. Then, he looked up the word "providence" and did the same. He threw in an example from time to time. Like, for "providence" he used an experience from years ago, when he and his wife decided not to go some where and returned home only to find that they had left a pot of water on the stove and it had almost boiled dry. Now, I don't know about you ... but I have done this very thing. I've ruined a couple of pots and one ceramic teapot, but it's scarcely something that's going to go down, in my book at least, as a major act of Providence! And, if that's all you've got to offer, then that's just not much. Anyway, it just went on like that. Another illustration he used from a more recent event also included a pot of water that had almost boiled dry. So ... guess how long he preached?? MORE THAN AN HOUR!!! We were about to die and were struggling to stay awake! Maybe that's why he uses a loud voice, to keep people from falling asleep? As we left, the pastor came running to catch up with us and said that he was preaching next week and he hoped we'd come back and he and his wife would like to have us over for lunch afterwards if we came. I felt so sorry for him! He was obviously very embarrassed.
We came home and ate lunch and then watched a House, M.D., episode to shake off the ick that had settled on us.
So ... here's a question for you. Am I and my husband the only two Christians who think the movie "Heaven Is For Real" is just awful?? I mean, it's interesting and all. Did the kid go to heaven? Did the other little girl who painted a picture of Jesus that the little boy recognized also go to heaven? Maybe the book was better, but I just thought the movie was boring and couldn't even be rescued by Greg Kinnear's enhanced-blue eyes! And I thought that his little burst of anger at God was fairly pathetic. I mean ... if her going to be angry at God (and who hasn't been?) ... then really be angry! Don't just kick a couple of chairs. Of course, I know that I'm talking about a screen-writer's adaptation of the book, not the man's actual experience. But ... I'm just so tired of hearing all of this, "God took my child!" stuff. Maybe, just maybe, I should ... hmmm ... WRITE something about it!
Anyway,,the rest of the day I mostly worked in my study. It's actually starting to come along a little bit. I think I may even be able to put together my glass desk by myself.
I think I scheduled Allied to come pick up the empty boxes tomorrow. I still have a million things to get done, but if I apply myself hard tomorrow, maybe it can pull a good bit of it off.
Well, that's it for me. I hope tomorrow is a great start to your week.
Lisa
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