Church on Sunday

I left for Athens Sunday morning. Papa and Brandon were leaving for church, and Mom and Granny stayed at the house. With most of my friends, I knew it didn't really matter what day of the week I was in town. Fish and Michael live in Norcross and drive to Watkinsville every Sunday for church. Watkinsville is a lot closer to Athens than Norcross, and usually other folks I know are at the church, so I planned my trip such that I'd be able to be in town on a Sunday.

Last year, I managed to be drafted into choir service by Michael, but this time I was late. The choir turned out not to be singing that day, anyway. I took the first seat I could find and tried scoping out Fish and Michael. Michael got my attention, and as I worked my way around to them, I had to squeeze past a few folks I didn't know. Michael told me that I bowed at the people as I passed.

During the part of the service where you stand up and greet your neighbors, Michael gave me one of the huge hugs he's always given folks. I also noticed that Liz was there--a bonus!

Sermons used to bore me. (Why can't we be at home sleeping, Mom? It's Sunday.) Then they started to annoy me. (How can people believe in this? It's 400-year-old English translated from Greek, Hebrew, and Latin.) Then I stopped caring. (Why bother challenging them on it? It's a lost cause.) In the past few years, though, I've started paying more attention.

Disregarding the source material, I follow along with the stories the pastor tells, trying to find the moral of the stories. I appreciate the eloquence and intelligence of the speaker and his speaking, and applaud the way he makes the source material relevant to everyday life.

In my mind, I've begun placing his source material in the same group with other forms of mythology and Aesop's Fables: stories believed to be true by some. This neither elevates nor denigrates their beliefs, for, in principle, they all serve the same purpose: transmitting an understanding of the way the world works and the way we ought to behave in it.