Church Was All About Love

Church is perfectly UN-missable, and of course, I nearly missed it. I mean by "un-missable" that the whole thing is always so worthwhile and not to be missed, but I resist anyway. And this morning was no exception as it was all about love and was really wonderful, but still it was not easy to get there.

I was having a religious wardrobe crisis, as it's cold again and I was just so NOT in the mood to go out in the freezing breezes in nice looking clothes (read: suit, with skirt, stockings, heels which I usually wear) because you end up having that nasty cold wind blowing up your skirt and we're not talking Marilyn and the subway grate on a hot day here, we're talking evil wind of freezing needles of cold going right through you like 100 dart guns triggering. So if I can't look sexy and suited up for going to church, I get kindof down about the whole holy enterprise and get cranky , as I am still way more of a Californian than I like to admit. I realized I have to wear those "hide me" clothes that most New England women swear by -- the baggy navy wool sweater, the white LL Bean turtle neck and the black wool trousers, black suede clogs. Boring boring boring. Ugly, ugly, ugly. But in fact that's JUST what I wore. And I didn't feel very pretty so I hid upstairs in the church balcony where the parents with noisy children who behave like baby baboons hang out, coloring elictedly in the hymnals and making their parents looks terribly embarrassed -- as if I could care -- I was happy to hide out there.

But some damned fool -- I can't believe I said that -- some nice parishoner, actually probably the minister, decided this should be a communion Sunday where we all came UP FRONT to share communion instead of having it served to us. Great, thinks I, I have to come up front looking like hell.

I sure sound like I care a lot about what I look like, don't I? How vain. Well, thought I'd just admit it, right here, it being a sin and all. So something kindof flipped and I realized, nobody cares what you look like. God certainly isn't concerned about you not being on the pages of Vogue. And then the minister, Judy Brain, reved up her sermon and it was all about love and it was so good. One of those, cut away everything, nothing else matters, remember what's real and what's not sermons.

And I started to see things a little differently, that I was there to love the people who where there, and let them love me back. Not bad, not bad at all. Good deal and it doesn't matter what you look like. And she said something great about love being brave and one of the quotes she read was "I'd rather not be living if I can not live with love" and that certainly got me thinking. And a friend there is having a memorial service for his dad and the time and date was printed in the bulletin and I'm glad I saw it, so I can tell him I'm sorry about his loss. It was a great day to go to church.