It was Penn's birthday yesterday and I surprised him with tickets to a concert at a local jazz club. There are some well-known jazz venues here that have been around since the 1920s, and Penn has been wanting to check one out for a long time but we'd just never gotten around to doing it. When he challenged me to pick something fun to do for his birthday, I decided that it was time to finally check out the jazz scene. I used to think that I didn't like jazz music much, but through Penn's instruction (documentaries from Netflix; samples from various musicians when we're driving in the car) I'm definitely starting to appreciate it and even enjoy it. Last night's show featured a jazz bassist who played with everyone: Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, a bunch of other well-known people. He's more than 70 now and still going strong. He played the bass in a really classy suit, accompanied by a pianist and a guitar player. The club is in a dark, candlelit basement. It was very small and intimate. I really liked the atmosphere of the whole thing, and I'd definitely do it again.
Anyway, I was worried that since we'd gone out last night we'd be too tired to want to go to church this morning, but we were up at 9:00 and got to church by 10:00 in time to claim our usual pew before the place totally filled up. Church was PACKED. The church we've been going to (the church where we're going to get married in January) has a decent-sized congregation anyway. I'd say about 200-250 people attend every week. It's big enough that it feels like a bustling, active place, but not so huge that nobody knows each other. The pastor knows everyone's names and details about their lives. At least, that's how it is normally. Today there were at least 500 people there, maybe more. It was a nice service. There was an entire brass instrument quartet and a big kettledrum to fill out the music, there were Easter lilies everywhere, and it was fun seeing all the kids in their Easter outfits. Easter really isn't much of a holiday unless you go to a church service, so I'm glad we made it this morning. On the drive home Penn and I were talking about how much we like the church we've been going to. We've been going regularly since January, and I realize that's only three months so far, but in the past ten years this is by far the most consistent I've been about going to church. My whole childhood church felt kind of like a drag, like something I had to do because my parents were forcing me to get up on Sunday mornings. Then for the past ten years church was something I still thought about fairly often but I just couldn't figure out how to justify my intellectual, logical life with any sort of faith, and I was very turned off by all the right-wing Christian mumbo jumbo which seems to have been growing more and more prevalent over the past decade. I had no desire to associate myself with any of that. I realized something, though. If all of the reasonable, sane people leave the Christian church, then church becomes nothing but everything I hate about it now: a bunch of zealots pushing their views on everyone else and trying to muddle in government and law where they do not belong at all whatsoever (or, at worst, becoming psychotic extremists who believe it's okay to kill for their faith, as we saw with that news story of the religious militia in Michigan earlier this week). I listened to a radio program the other day about women's roles in various faith communities. One of the panelists was an Orthodox Jewish woman who is pushing from within her church to allow women to have more parity with men. The host asked, "Why not just stop living the Orthodox lifestyle and become part of a more liberal Jewish group that allows women more equality?" and the woman basically said (and I'm paraphrasing big time), "Because I fundamentally like the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, there are just a few man-made elements of it that I disagree with. And the only way to create true change is from within, so if I leave then the situation will never change. If I stay, I may be frustrated, but hopefully in the long run I can make a difference." That made a lot of sense to me. I need to keep going to church, if only to prove that all Christians don't have to interpret the Bible literally and believe that homosexuality is wrong and that the Earth was created in seven days (oh, wait, six days. The seventh was for resting) and so on. I suppose when it comes right down to it I'm much more interested in the spirit of the law then the letter of the law, and the spirit of it all--loving each other, treating each other with respect, being generous, taking care of those who cannot help themselves, giving thanks for life's blessings, finding comfort in sorrow and strife--well, I definitely believe in all of that. So I'll keep going to church.
Now, I feel genuinely blessed to have found a church with a pastor that has a sense of humor and provides thought-provoking, entertaining sermons. In general, this church just seems reasonable and friendly, and I feel no guilt for being so skeptical and cynical. Instead I feel like the message for me at this point is "Of course you're skeptical. Most reasonable people are. But faith is not about reason, and you have your whole life to keep working to feel it." I've never before been excited about going to church, but now I actually look forward to Sunday mornings, and I'm bummed on weekends when we can't make it to church for some reason. I never thought I'd end up feeling like this. As Penn said this morning, "Every Sunday I'm just surprised that I don't hate having to get up to go to church." Exactly. For the first time it doesn't feel like an obligation, but instead something I honestly like doing. I just hope this pastor sticks around for a while!
Speaking of Easter and church, I promised to update you on my Lent project. I was going to try to be still and not do anything other than just sit and think for ten minutes every day. You guys, it was SO HARD. It was even more difficult than I thought it would be. I did really well for the first month, but the past couple of weeks I have to admit that I skipped my quiet time on more days than I did it. The problem is that there was always, ALWAYS something I could have been doing in those ten minutes. I needed to be straightening up the house, or walking across campus to get to the library, or reading something, or answering an e-mail. Trying to be still for even a short amount of time every day made it really hit home for me that I'm constantly doing something, that I quite literally never give myself a break. My life moves way too fast, to the point that I realized that even my leisure activities feel rushed because I have to squeeze them in before work demands my time again.
In the end, the best thing that happened for me in terms of my Lent resolution was that I ended up doing a lot of baby-sitting the past few weeks. My usual baby-sitting client has added some additional hours every week, and I spent last week taking care of my cousin. Being with those babies (the little guy I usually watch is 15 months old, my cousin is 9 months old) was exactly what I needed to do. Watching them play and observe the world, I realized that they're not constantly rushing from one thing to the next thinking about what else they need to do. I had my cousin at the park on Thursday and she spent five whole minutes sitting in one place and staring at a screw. Just a silver screw holding together two sides of the playscape. She had no desire to go anywhere else. That single screw had her full attention, and since I wasn't rushing her to get anywhere she was able to look at it until she finally felt like doing something else. I realize that eventually life with kids gets incredibly hectic, too, but life with a baby is actually extremely simple (or at least life with these two particular babies is incredibly simple!). With my cousin, for instance, she'd wake up in the morning, I'd feed her some baby cereal, we'd play with her toys in the living room for an hour or two ("playing" at this point mostly means picking up a variety of things and handing them to her or putting them somewhere so she can crawl to them and then examine them by pushing buttons or shaking them or whatever) and then she'd take a nap. While she napped I'd read or do a bit of school work. Then she'd be up and I'd feed her again, then we'd go on some sort of short outing to the park or the infant room at the science center or the local library. Then it was time for another nap, then more food, a little bit more crawling practice, then a bath, then bedtime. There is a routine and a cycle, but every part of it is something simple and her needs are so easy to meet and it should have been really boring but I found the whole routine really soothing, actually, and every day there was a sense of accomplishment because, hey, the baby was fine and healthy! Mission accomplished!
I'm sure it would eventually get dull and I'd miss the rush of the life I have now, and the work that I'm doing. But I have to admit that I enjoyed the simple time baby-sitting time a lot. That's a relief to me, knowing that perhaps I won't go completely mad when I'm home for a while taking care of a baby one of these days. It turns out that I might actually enjoy it more than I thought I would. If nothing else, it's going to force me to take life slower and to let go of a lot of the extras that fill it up right now. I think that will be good for me.
In the end, the best thing that happened for me in terms of my Lent resolution was that I ended up doing a lot of baby-sitting the past few weeks. My usual baby-sitting client has added some additional hours every week, and I spent last week taking care of my cousin. Being with those babies (the little guy I usually watch is 15 months old, my cousin is 9 months old) was exactly what I needed to do. Watching them play and observe the world, I realized that they're not constantly rushing from one thing to the next thinking about what else they need to do. I had my cousin at the park on Thursday and she spent five whole minutes sitting in one place and staring at a screw. Just a silver screw holding together two sides of the playscape. She had no desire to go anywhere else. That single screw had her full attention, and since I wasn't rushing her to get anywhere she was able to look at it until she finally felt like doing something else. I realize that eventually life with kids gets incredibly hectic, too, but life with a baby is actually extremely simple (or at least life with these two particular babies is incredibly simple!). With my cousin, for instance, she'd wake up in the morning, I'd feed her some baby cereal, we'd play with her toys in the living room for an hour or two ("playing" at this point mostly means picking up a variety of things and handing them to her or putting them somewhere so she can crawl to them and then examine them by pushing buttons or shaking them or whatever) and then she'd take a nap. While she napped I'd read or do a bit of school work. Then she'd be up and I'd feed her again, then we'd go on some sort of short outing to the park or the infant room at the science center or the local library. Then it was time for another nap, then more food, a little bit more crawling practice, then a bath, then bedtime. There is a routine and a cycle, but every part of it is something simple and her needs are so easy to meet and it should have been really boring but I found the whole routine really soothing, actually, and every day there was a sense of accomplishment because, hey, the baby was fine and healthy! Mission accomplished!
I'm sure it would eventually get dull and I'd miss the rush of the life I have now, and the work that I'm doing. But I have to admit that I enjoyed the simple time baby-sitting time a lot. That's a relief to me, knowing that perhaps I won't go completely mad when I'm home for a while taking care of a baby one of these days. It turns out that I might actually enjoy it more than I thought I would. If nothing else, it's going to force me to take life slower and to let go of a lot of the extras that fill it up right now. I think that will be good for me.
Anyway, Penn and I are going on a long bike ride and then I'm coming home to eat deviled eggs. Hope you're having a good weekend, whatever you're doing!
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