Get Her Words Out

The sound of my head exploding

I've made some comments about the church that I've been attending and about how their liturgy is not my style.  I've tried to keep an open mind, because I know there are many different ways to worship God, and that my liking one style doesn't make other styles invalid.

But today was just too much.

The liturgy doesn't include a call to worship or a prayer of confession or a statement of faith. However, near the beginning of the service there is usually a short unison prayer printed in the bulletin.

Here's today's "prayer:"

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time.  I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.  Amen.
                                                                                                                    --Annie Dillard

1) How is that a prayer? Meditation maybe, but not a prayer.

2) What is a "prayer" that speaks of worshiping other gods doing in the middle of a Christian worship service?

I had a lively discussion about it with the minister after the service, he says that it isn't about multiple gods, that she's just being poetic, she probably should have capitalized something, but that's all.  He also said that we have to interpret these things like we interpret the Bible, we can't take the words literally.  And finally he told me that I was free to not say the prayer if I disagreed with it.

I say that there's no way to interpret "I worship each god" as referring to just one God.   I say that we interpret particular parts of the Bible in the context of the whole Bible, and that I can't interpret this "verse" without knowing much more about the whole Annie Dillard canon (my mother also pointed out that in the context of a worship service, the congregation doesn't have time to study and interpret a two sentence prayer.).  I also think that because this "prayer"   is in the first person, it becomes, effectively, a statement of faith, the congregation is saying, "I feel this way."

I'm going to be in Atlanta next weekend and I'm going to be able to go to both Friday Chapel at Columbia and Sunday worship at my home church.  It's a good thing, because I really need to get away for a while.

                        

               

The best kind of car trouble

It only cost $1.08 to fix, the truck runs better than it did before and I get a good story out of it.

So, there I was driving home from the grocery store Monday afternoon and my gas pedal falls off.

The bracket that holds the pedal is attached to the firewall by three rivets, and I guess the last one finally gave way.  All it took to fix it was to drill out the rivets and run bolts through the holes in the firewall.

The truck runs better now because now the bracket doesn't move like it must have with only one rivet holding it in place and the accelerator cable actually moves the amount that I want it to move.

3D

Depressed, disheartened, disillusioned.

While there are lots of things that contribute to all that there are two equations that come first to mind:

No job = no insurance = no anti-depressants + no therapy.

Colorado = no friends = no three hour trips to Starbucks just to talk.

Colorado also seems to equal no church home.  I’ve been going to my mother’s church, which is a great church, but not what I want in a church.  It’s partly because I don’t really have a connection with anyone there, they’re my mother’s friends.  But it is mostly about their liturgy, which strikes me as sloppy and thrown together at the last moment, which frustrates me and doesn’t put me in a worshipful mood.  I haven’t worked up the courage to go somewhere else, because they have been very good to me through the years, but I really want a home of my own.