Since moving to Columbus I've been thinking about places to meet new friends...
One place I decided to visit was church. Church is such a big thing down here. Having said that not everyone goes to church every week, and many that do aren't super religious, for some it's a social thing. For others, you can get discounts on the good church daycares if you are a member of certain churches (and then of course are the people who are actually religious). But at work the other day, we prayed before a colleague's retirement breakfast. Yep, at work with my boss. So that's a bit odd for me. I've also been asked by numerous colleagues if I had found a church yet. It's like visiting my grandparents at work.
I do not want to join a church and pretend to believe what people there believe just for networking reasons, or particularly for daycare discounts...Yuck. Growing up with my background (father being a Southern Baptist minister) some of the people who were looked down on the most were people who really only came to church for the big important days like Easter or Christmas. So while other people might be okay with being an occasional churchgoer (and I do not fault them for that at all) for me it either feels like something I have to be all in on, or not really worry about. Which has been quite problematic for me, because it's not something I want to do every week (and I disagree with a lot of the more literal/conservative viewpoints), but also not something I want to never do. So I have quite a bit of dissonance about this.
So what I decided to do today (quite a long background preview to get to this point) was go to an Unitarian Universalist church, as I felt that I would not have to pretend to believe everything they did (since they have no real set religious dogma). It was held in a house (not someone's house currently). There were probably about 50 people there and for the space it was pretty full. Joanna and I were the only ones who went since I wanted to skope things out before bringing Dean (see what childcare options, etc there were). I'm actually really glad I went. They are accepting of everyone's viewpoints and backgrounds. One greeter said his background was Methodist and one said his background was Jewish. There was at least 1 openly gay young couple (might have been more, but they were the only ones who identified themselves as such during the church service). The age of the group was definently trending toward older, but there were other people there who had kids too.
Cool things about the service
- It was a lot like regular church, but without a reference to a particular god. We sang songs about our creator. We read responses. We had grape juice or wine. We had a moment of meditation.
- It was very different from my church growing up in these ways. People felt free to get up and refill their coffee during the service. People got up and lit a candle for any concerns/celebrations and shared them with the congregation during the service. After the speaker gave HER message (okay big one here, there was actually a woman minister) there was time for discussion and questions. It was a much more interactive feel than the I am sitting and hearing a message but I cannot contribute or question anything.
- People were talking about things that we talked about in graduate school- like social justice. And making the world a more tolerant accepting place. And once a month they give their entire tithe to a local charity.
- It definently did not have a "hippie" feel (not that I have a problem with hippies :). You could have taken the entire congregation and said they were Methodist church in the South (based on dress/apperance) and no one would have blinked.
