Church: Baptism of the Lord Sunday
Warning: Horrible misuse of commas and underuse of semicolons ahead. :-P
Well, I spent 61 hours in a car doing road trips over the Christmas furlough + university closing (I'm a temp, so I wasn't allowed to work during any of that; miraculously, money was not terribly tight for January). My family drove to Dallas, where I had my first white Christmas (wtf Dallas?) and did a lot of sleeping in late and taking naps, and then we drove back. Then my brother and I drove to New Jersey, while I wibbled via text message at my friend A., who is a New Yorker and laughs at me for being afraid of snow. We had an excellent week with arwenaria18 and her husband. We did things like: buy snow boots, eat chicken marsala, leave the lights on in my car for two days and kill the battery, revive the battery while my car alarm was going off and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off because I am a dumbass, drive my car to New York, shiver under blankets while the boys played video games, take pictures outside the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company while it was closed, give my brother illegal alcohol in restaurants. Twice.
I discovered that while I do still hate Manhattan, and would be quite happy to sink Manhattan right under the sea, I don't actually passionately hate New York, as previously thought. I just hate Manhattan. I love love love Brooklyn, though, judging from one afternoon of wandering around the streets and a bit of Prospect Park. This doesn't count, you say? I will submit to you that I have always been able to tell after one hour in Manhattan that it causes stabby stabby HAAAAAAAAATE, merely from walking around in the cold and crowds and tall buildings and no trees and no sky, and I can tell in one hour that Brooklyn, with its neat architecture, and fewer touristy hordes, and sky and spindly trees, that it ROCKS. :D
Anyway. Church.
I went back to St. John's Lutheran today, kind of dry and upset after all the traveling, which had both moments of grace and moments of grief-anger-doubt-depression*. I saw the bulletin and my first thought was, "Did I know Baptism of Jesus Sunday comes right after Epiphany?" My second thought was, "Ooh, I can't wait to hear about hermionesviolin's sermon!" and subsequently, "I bet she already preached it," because Elizabeth gets up at stupid o'clock in the morning (well, at least from my point of view, as a night owl with flexible hours who gets up at about 9:30 for work). But I prayed for you, Elizabeth, even if it was after the fact! :-P
I did my usual ex-Welcoming-Team-Leader thing and said to a random person, "Hi, I'm new, can I sit with you?" Sat with a rather lovely lady named Laura, although I cannot for the life of me remember what we talked about now.
Negatives:
-After attending an Episcopal church last summer for a month, the male language really bums me out. Is it that hard to say "I believe in one God, Father/Mother Almighty"?
-The beginning of Pastor Bradley's sermon did strange things, probably unintentionally, with the Trinity, both making it sound like Jesus wasn't God and that Jesus wasn't sinless. I don't think that's what PB meant, I think it was meant to be a note on Jesus being fully human in a specific place and time, a part of a specific culture, with human doubts and fears, but it kinda threw me out of the sermon for the first half or so.
-Wtf was up with that second reading? I need to do some investigating, because the whole baptized-by-water-but-not-yet-received-the-Spirit thing that the passage talked about has always confused me.
-Still skeptical of putting the responses for the Prayers of Intercession in Spanish, but perhaps there is a Hispanic population that I'm not immediately identifying or some other genuine connection, and it's not just a culturally appropriative diversity thing.
-I asked the...assistant presider? I have no clue what the job title is in the Lutheran church for the person who holds the book and says some of the blessings and stuff...about how different liturgical functions, and it turned into a meet-the-volunteer-coordinator oh-we'd-love-to-have-you-volunteer thing. I mean, I am 95% sure I will stay at this church and I am 90% sure I would like to lector someday, but maybe in, you know, March, after I've been to this church more than twice. Oy.
Positives: (OMG SO MANY! SQUEE!!!1ELEVENTYONE)
-In the first reading, when the lector read, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you" baptism and death and God all connected together in my head, and I thought "so that's how dying works."
-Badass liturgy of awesome in which the congregation can take direction from the bulletin to split high and low voices for different verses without verbal cues. The seamlessness of that was a neat experience for me; rethinking it now, I feel like that's a bit of an accessibility!fail for people with reading problems/without a bulletin if they already know the lyrics or otherwise want to sing.
-SUPER-AWESOME baptismal tradition (two babies baptized today) where during the laying on of hands, the whole congregation comes forward and lays hands on the person in front of them, so everyone is connected and ultimately laying hands on the babies/godparents. That was a lovely family moment for me, as everyone around me seemed comfortable and there was lots of ogling the babies and laughing at their squirmy faces. Not sure what I would have done if I was a touch-negative person, though.
-Oh, man, how much do I love the invitation to communion? As best as I can remember: "We invite you now to come to the table. This is not the table of any one tradition; it is Christ's table. Come, those of you with great faith and those of you who would like more; come, those of you who have tried to follow Jesus and those of you who have failed; come, those of you for whom this sacrament is your source of life and those for whom it is new and strange. Come and eat, for it is Christ Himself who invites you." Open communion FTW. \o/
-Our closing hymn was "You Are Mine" by David Haas, which is a Catholic hymn. It was like a care package from home arriving at your hostel in a foreign country.
-Although PB obviously didn't remember my name and my nametag (nametags! another thing of great church joy!) was hidden by my coat, he gave me a hug and said "Glad you're back!"
-I met two people who had really useful advice about my "but what if I don't want to work in a lab for the next five years?" current meltdown, one of whom invited me to a diocese young adult women's group on discerning your calling. It felt like a gift from the Holy Spirit (whom I probably would have said didn't exist before church this morning, just that kind of mood, so it was kind of like "Oh, err, hi, you're real? And here? Uhh, nice to see you").
-The assistant presider, P., and I talked about how serving at St. John's works. Aside from the awkward bit I talked about in "Negatives," he said, "We don't have many rules here" (referencing the fact that you don't have to be a member to help with anything and can basically just sign up for any position). I said, "I noticed. I like it" and laughed. He asked what I wanted from a church and ended up sharing with me the history of St. John's in the ELCA's movement towards full inclusion for GLBT Christians. P. called St. John's "not only inclusive; but sort of the poster child" which made me headdesk, but it was otherwise good to hear the full story.
In conclusion: B+ would visit again. :-P
--
*The context here is that my grandmother died in August, plus a host of other events in which 2009 kneed me in the metaphorical balls, and since then I have been running the spiritual gamut from not believing God exists, to wanting to stab God in the eye with a chopstick and run the damn universe myself, to feeling like God is terribly far away, to feeling like God is taking care of me and is pretty damn awesome and terribly awfully good. And I am not exaggerating to say that in a usual day, I will feel about three out of four.
(This entry was originally posted on my Dreamwidth.
have posted comments there.)
Well, I spent 61 hours in a car doing road trips over the Christmas furlough + university closing (I'm a temp, so I wasn't allowed to work during any of that; miraculously, money was not terribly tight for January). My family drove to Dallas, where I had my first white Christmas (wtf Dallas?) and did a lot of sleeping in late and taking naps, and then we drove back. Then my brother and I drove to New Jersey, while I wibbled via text message at my friend A., who is a New Yorker and laughs at me for being afraid of snow. We had an excellent week with arwenaria18 and her husband. We did things like: buy snow boots, eat chicken marsala, leave the lights on in my car for two days and kill the battery, revive the battery while my car alarm was going off and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off because I am a dumbass, drive my car to New York, shiver under blankets while the boys played video games, take pictures outside the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company while it was closed, give my brother illegal alcohol in restaurants. Twice.
I discovered that while I do still hate Manhattan, and would be quite happy to sink Manhattan right under the sea, I don't actually passionately hate New York, as previously thought. I just hate Manhattan. I love love love Brooklyn, though, judging from one afternoon of wandering around the streets and a bit of Prospect Park. This doesn't count, you say? I will submit to you that I have always been able to tell after one hour in Manhattan that it causes stabby stabby HAAAAAAAAATE, merely from walking around in the cold and crowds and tall buildings and no trees and no sky, and I can tell in one hour that Brooklyn, with its neat architecture, and fewer touristy hordes, and sky and spindly trees, that it ROCKS. :D
Anyway. Church.
I went back to St. John's Lutheran today, kind of dry and upset after all the traveling, which had both moments of grace and moments of grief-anger-doubt-depression*. I saw the bulletin and my first thought was, "Did I know Baptism of Jesus Sunday comes right after Epiphany?" My second thought was, "Ooh, I can't wait to hear about hermionesviolin's sermon!" and subsequently, "I bet she already preached it," because Elizabeth gets up at stupid o'clock in the morning (well, at least from my point of view, as a night owl with flexible hours who gets up at about 9:30 for work). But I prayed for you, Elizabeth, even if it was after the fact! :-P
I did my usual ex-Welcoming-Team-Leader thing and said to a random person, "Hi, I'm new, can I sit with you?" Sat with a rather lovely lady named Laura, although I cannot for the life of me remember what we talked about now.
Negatives:
-After attending an Episcopal church last summer for a month, the male language really bums me out. Is it that hard to say "I believe in one God, Father/Mother Almighty"?
-The beginning of Pastor Bradley's sermon did strange things, probably unintentionally, with the Trinity, both making it sound like Jesus wasn't God and that Jesus wasn't sinless. I don't think that's what PB meant, I think it was meant to be a note on Jesus being fully human in a specific place and time, a part of a specific culture, with human doubts and fears, but it kinda threw me out of the sermon for the first half or so.
-Wtf was up with that second reading? I need to do some investigating, because the whole baptized-by-water-but-not-yet-received-the-Spirit thing that the passage talked about has always confused me.
-Still skeptical of putting the responses for the Prayers of Intercession in Spanish, but perhaps there is a Hispanic population that I'm not immediately identifying or some other genuine connection, and it's not just a culturally appropriative diversity thing.
-I asked the...assistant presider? I have no clue what the job title is in the Lutheran church for the person who holds the book and says some of the blessings and stuff...about how different liturgical functions, and it turned into a meet-the-volunteer-coordinator oh-we'd-love-to-have-you-volunteer thing. I mean, I am 95% sure I will stay at this church and I am 90% sure I would like to lector someday, but maybe in, you know, March, after I've been to this church more than twice. Oy.
Positives: (OMG SO MANY! SQUEE!!!1ELEVENTYONE)
-In the first reading, when the lector read, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you" baptism and death and God all connected together in my head, and I thought "so that's how dying works."
-Badass liturgy of awesome in which the congregation can take direction from the bulletin to split high and low voices for different verses without verbal cues. The seamlessness of that was a neat experience for me; rethinking it now, I feel like that's a bit of an accessibility!fail for people with reading problems/without a bulletin if they already know the lyrics or otherwise want to sing.
-SUPER-AWESOME baptismal tradition (two babies baptized today) where during the laying on of hands, the whole congregation comes forward and lays hands on the person in front of them, so everyone is connected and ultimately laying hands on the babies/godparents. That was a lovely family moment for me, as everyone around me seemed comfortable and there was lots of ogling the babies and laughing at their squirmy faces. Not sure what I would have done if I was a touch-negative person, though.
-Oh, man, how much do I love the invitation to communion? As best as I can remember: "We invite you now to come to the table. This is not the table of any one tradition; it is Christ's table. Come, those of you with great faith and those of you who would like more; come, those of you who have tried to follow Jesus and those of you who have failed; come, those of you for whom this sacrament is your source of life and those for whom it is new and strange. Come and eat, for it is Christ Himself who invites you." Open communion FTW. \o/
-Our closing hymn was "You Are Mine" by David Haas, which is a Catholic hymn. It was like a care package from home arriving at your hostel in a foreign country.
-Although PB obviously didn't remember my name and my nametag (nametags! another thing of great church joy!) was hidden by my coat, he gave me a hug and said "Glad you're back!"
-I met two people who had really useful advice about my "but what if I don't want to work in a lab for the next five years?" current meltdown, one of whom invited me to a diocese young adult women's group on discerning your calling. It felt like a gift from the Holy Spirit (whom I probably would have said didn't exist before church this morning, just that kind of mood, so it was kind of like "Oh, err, hi, you're real? And here? Uhh, nice to see you").
-The assistant presider, P., and I talked about how serving at St. John's works. Aside from the awkward bit I talked about in "Negatives," he said, "We don't have many rules here" (referencing the fact that you don't have to be a member to help with anything and can basically just sign up for any position). I said, "I noticed. I like it" and laughed. He asked what I wanted from a church and ended up sharing with me the history of St. John's in the ELCA's movement towards full inclusion for GLBT Christians. P. called St. John's "not only inclusive; but sort of the poster child" which made me headdesk, but it was otherwise good to hear the full story.
In conclusion: B+ would visit again. :-P
--
*The context here is that my grandmother died in August, plus a host of other events in which 2009 kneed me in the metaphorical balls, and since then I have been running the spiritual gamut from not believing God exists, to wanting to stab God in the eye with a chopstick and run the damn universe myself, to feeling like God is terribly far away, to feeling like God is taking care of me and is pretty damn awesome and terribly awfully good. And I am not exaggerating to say that in a usual day, I will feel about three out of four.
(This entry was originally posted on my Dreamwidth.
have posted comments there.)