A Summer Sunday

It was a freakin' BEAUTIFUL day today. Sunny, mid-70s.

Jeff went sailing/racing all afternoon and looked like a happy golden retriever when he was done (a wet golden retriever but perhaps "wet" and "happy" are redundant with golden retrievers.) He sailed two races and they didn't come in last. The came in 2nd and (via a complicated handicapping system) 7th.

Given that the guy who does the handicapping and scoring is who Jeff is sailing with, it sounds like it's an honest system if not an easy-to-understand system.

I took the train down and joined him as they were coming in off the water. Met two other ex-pats, a husband and wife from Hong Kong and Boston, respectively. They sail together and they also weren't last, though they were a lot closer. :)

Enjoyed the sausage sizzle afterwards.

I, on the other hand, tried a new church this morning. Presbyterian, for possibly the first time in my life. It had an interesting website so I thought I'd give them a try.

As a lifelong Lutheran, I am used to a certain kind of traditional worship format. It looks a lot ... Catholic (which is ironic if you know church history at all) or at least the way Catholics used to worshop, according to my Catholic friends. (To which I reply: whatever!)

But here I am in a new city/country/continent/hemisphere and I'm willing to experiment. The primary alternative to "traditional liturgy" is "prayer and praise".

* No altar.
* No crucifix.
* Groovy rock band (drums, guitars, electric keyboard), usually fronted by a cute (young, of course) blond or Asian chick.
* No hymnals.
* Lyrics to songs (not "hymns", thankyouverymuch) projected onto a screen where the crucifix would normally be. Very upbeat, simple, and inspiring.
* Hand-waving and the occasional "Amen".
* Mostly songs punctuated by prayer, some more songs, a catchy sermon, another prayer or two, some songs, maybe an altar call, more songs, more prayers.

All very happy-happy-joy-joy. So very not Lutheran. Lutherans are, frankly, a little skeptical about "happy-happy" and downright nervous about "joy-joy".

Aside: from a woo-woo/metaphysical/chakra point of view, I find churches either very grounded (chakras 1-3) or very ethereal (chakras 5-7). I find traditional mainline churches to be very grounded. I found the prayer and praise liturgies to be very ethereal. In the best world, a church would embrace both. Still looking for a church that's found out how to do that.

I've been experimenting, therefore, with the happy-happy-joy-joy churches. Today's looked like one of those, at least from the website.

Well, the reality was a wee bit different.

Yes, they had a band -- two clarinets, a flute, and an upright piano. But they were fronted by a cute young Asian chick.

No crucifix but they did offer communion and so they had a table on the side with the communion ware and, yes, a cross.

Lyrics to hymns (yes, hymns) projected on a screen. And they were, well, hymns. And an odd mix of perky/upbeat and .... dour.

No handwaving. No Amens.

Hymn/song/hymn/ thing punctuated by a bit of history and communion.

The pastor started off with an acknowledgement that today is Reformation Sunday and gave a verbal high-five to Martin Luther. Oh, I wiggled in self-satisfaction in my seat at that one, what with being Lutheran and all. However, he then went on to explain how thousands and thousands of people were burned at the stake (The implied evildoer? Those darned Roman Catholics!) for believing that all they needed was faith to be right with God.

Also, that buying indulgences allowed you to commit adultery with no spiritual repercussions.

Um.....yeah.....that just might qualify as a gross over-simplification.

The prayers were long and one that really caught my attention asked God to help us defeat this evil interest in Halloween, which is just a celebration of the dark side of humanity and has caused thousands of deaths.

Aside: Australians are not at all sold on the whole Halloween thing. From what I can tell from the paper, they're split about 50/50 between "ah, it's just a bit of simple fun and lollies" and "screw it, it's an American thing and we don't need to be following Americans anywhere!".

The sermon -- 30 minutes! -- was...hmmmm.....well....there was the bit about pornography and the difference between men's and women's porn. That was, ah, instructive.

There was the somewhat tortured explanation of how we all avoid farting and burbing when we start dating because we want to impress our boyfriends/girlfriends. We start farting and burping in our relationships at some point because we're disappointed that they don't satisfy us spiritually and we just don't care any more. And here I thought it was just because we'd finally gotten to a point in our relationships where we could comfortably be ourselves.

Also, because holding in farts and burps for 30-50 years is just a bad idea.

And that Nicodemus (Gospel of John, chapter 3) was a religious SuperHero in his day and time. I actually kinda enjoyed how he worked that bit of understanding.

But I think maybe next Sunday I'll try a different church.

Attending this church, though, required a bus trip to a new suburb which is always fun. It's a way to explore what's out there and there's some very interesting looking suburbs.

Plus, the day smelled glorious! We are deep into spring here -- the equivalent of late April/early May in DC -- and everything is blooming and the scents are intoxicating. They are not omnipresent but when a swath of scent wafts past, I almost have to stop and just sniiiiiiiiiiif. Delightful.