M. Suzanne Terry

First, meet Quincy, my cute, new chair.  He came home this Saturday and is fitting in quite nicely in the reading nook.

I pried myself away from him long enough on Sunday to go to church.

I was a holiday churchgoer this weekend.  I was one of Those People.

Growing up, Those People were looked on with thinly veiled disdain.  They were the ones who clearly only loved God when it was convenient or popular.

Yesterday, I was one of them.  And I can attest firsthand that my faith and love for God is neither convenient nor popular.  I can attest that people do things for their own reasons, which might be very different from the reason that we imagine we might have if we were to do that exact same thing.

A friend wanted to go to one of the mega-churches in the Metroplex and invited me to go with her.  I said yes.  Insert a few days of fear and trembling here.

Then it was Easter morning.

Snippets of the morning:

– Eating a very bland breakfast so that the combination of my fair-weather-friend stomach and nervous energy didn’t end in disaster.

– Fun one-on-one time driving there and back with a good friend.

– Uniformed parking police directing traffic at the church.  Benches in the middle of the parking lot, presumably for people to wait for the golf carts that come around and give those who need it a ride to the door.  I can’t…even…

– Thankful to be with someone who also finds that equal parts strange and practical.

– They have a choir.  I miss choir.  They were my favorite part of the service.  The choir director was a woman, and she was fantastic.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

– Standard Easter sermon.  Well-organized, thought-provoking, adequate passion/enthusiasm.  Hard to turn off the speech teacher ears.  I might have lost my patience with sermons.  I might not think that’s a bad thing.

– We sang hymns.  I miss hymns.  I mean, I sing them at home (you’re welcome, neighbors).  But I miss singing them with others.

– There was a commercial break.  It was a series of videos about upcoming events at the church and different services they offer, and I suppose the snazzy video is the fun thing that old people assume the kids are into these days.  But it was a commercial break.  In a worship service.  Again, I understand the practicality of it.  But it was jarring.

– The preacher started the sermon with the Paschal greeting “Christ is risen!” to which we replied “He is risen indeed!”  He coached the crowd ahead of time.  I wonder how many would have known how to respond if he hadn’t.  It would have been interesting to see.  Hard to turn the social scientist head off as well.

– I bought a friend-of-a-friend’s book in the bookstore after the service.  I only thought about money-changers in the temple and table-tossing and how I don’t think I’m rich enough to really go there a little bit while I was in the store.  I really love books.

Overall, I had a good morning, and nothing terrible happened.  I expected Easter to make me miss going to church.  I am not sure that it did.