Vaguely Part of a Community

Much of my life, rebellion and humor came from my introduction to Sunday service. It did not happen until fourth grade. A classmate's father was a minister in a Presbyterian Church. I went there because I liked what he had to say.

He and my father played basketball which was a productive use of their time. Going to someone else's church ran its course. A parent misspelled my name and it looked so rude I no longer wanted to be involved.

She could have asked how to spell it. I used to do that in hotel reservations. There are as many Mary Anns as there are variations on how the name is spelled. I never seen the name Brittany spelled the same way twice. None of which has to do with the decision a couple years later to send me to church.

Both parents attended Catholic School all twelve years. They put me in public school and eventually switched me to private because my fifth grade teachers sucked.

I was not understanding long division and the teacher didn't care. I was sent to a better school and understood why. Before that I was sent to church and CCD. That was my first encounter with nuns. Both were wonderful and have gone on to ancestry.

Church on my own and CCD were easy to handle. Sunday services with my parents were strange. My father saw it as the gateway to going out to breakfast. I didn't mind that. My parents were not married in the church. They were legally married as I learned years later in the stupid divorce.

It wasn't like Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon who never married, were together twenty-eight years and when the course was run they went their separate ways with no fanfare or tabloid coverage.

Because my parents were married by a Justice of the Peace they felt they could not take communion. I was not yet able to experience the Sacrament of Holy Communion. It was incredibly strange that everyone stood up to receive Eucharist except my parents.

My father was notoriously late for everything so it was uncommon we attended a whole mass. He perpetuated the bad habit of leaving after Communion. It was one more place I felt like an outsider.

Sort of like, I don't know, everywhere in the world? The most fascinating part of church for me was running children. I don't recall taking my sister to church when she was at running age. The only time my mother threw up during her pregnancy was before mass one day.

I don't know if pregnant throw up as much as we were told they did back then. It could happen. Not all the time. I never left the church. A lot of it left me. No one cared whether I attended Sunday services or not.

If no one cares whether you are there are not- go home. That might be the leitmotif of my current articles. I always thought the disconnect with school began with visiting the public library. There was knowledge to attain and not for the limited purpose of passing a test.

School meant less when I could learn without rote memorization. Church meant less or organized religion did when I could quietly reflect rather than reciting The Lord's Prayer.

Someday I shall write an article of the humor in The Lord's Prayer. It's a great prayer which I would not satirize. It doesn't change the fact I have certain friends whom I want to lead not into temptation and deliver from evil.

The concept of work life balance was manifested by "On earth as it is Heaven." Since I was half heartedly brought into a religion, I did what I could and probably went further. My beliefs will live forever whenever I visit a church at off hours to quietly reflect and on social media where it comes up more frequently than it ever did in working life.