Presbyterians

Today I gave the God in the Movies talk on About a Boy to a Sunday School class at my friend from work Pat's church at First Presbyterian. Afterwards I went to their worship service.

The whole experience was very rich and meaningful to me. The Sunday School group was very receptive. They didn't even care that I couldn't get the profanities edited out. They're pretty liberal, which is good from a profanity editing standpoint.

The worship was absolutely magnificant. The only liturgical services I've ever really experienced were the once a semester shot at liturgy we had in chapel at ETBU. It was good and all, but felt more like forcing rednecks to read abstract poetry- and enjoy it. But this here was the real deal. It started off with the pastor, from the back of the sanctuary, calling the congregation to a time of silence. He marches up with the kid carrying the cross behind him. Well, I won't get started on telling the whole service, because there was just too much.

There was a funny thing though that happened that made me realize how Baptist I really am. There is a time in the liturgy where the pastor reads a section about forgiveness of sins. After that there is a moment of silent prayer where we confess our sins and ask forgiveness. So he has us bow our heads, I begin to think of my sins and confess them, then like 5 seconds later he says "Amen." That kind of shocked me. I wanted to raise my hand and say "Excuse me, sir, I'm not sure about everyone else here, but I'm Baptist... I need a little more time here to confess my sins."

It really made me think about how truly nuanced the differences between certain practices actually are. They offer a class to youth called "How to be a Presbyterian in the Bible Belt," which addresses such questions as what to say when someone asks you if you are saved or if you are going to heaven. It would probably be good for non Presbyterians to attend that as well.

The Tribe

I started reading this amazing book last night called "Urban Tribes" by Ethan Watters. It's about the lives of people in my situation... what he calls people who are between families, or the post college/pre marriage time. He explores how truly rich these "Urban Tribes" are and how, far from being a hotbed of individualism, is really just a modern day family. It's really good.