I found some shade and set my chair down at the picnic get-together.    The guy sitting next to me is several years older than me, well educated and very nice.  Well into the conversation, he said he was confirmed as a Catholic but was now an atheist. It was my turn to speak, this is pretty much what I said.

As a kid, most of my friends were Catholic.  I was confirmed at Falcon Heights Congregational Church. The chapel was relatively new, not huge, brick structure. I remember it had small stained glass windows in the front but long, narrow stained glass windows on the left side. The Sunday school wing had about five or six block-wall classrooms. 

I went to Sunday school until the middle of 5th grade when I was kicked out.  Apparently they had enough of my questions and comments. I made numerous and repeated statements like: nobody could be swallowed by a whale and live to tell the story.  After he slayed the giant, were there other giants? You get the idea. I was an inquisitive kid with a mind of my own.  

Mom got a call saying it was best for me to be in the church rather than Sunday school.  So from then until I was confirmed, mom and I sat about two-thirds of the way back, next to the wall, on the left side of the sanctuary.  I actually liked church. 

Once I was in seventh grade, I attended Wednesday night confirmation lessons.  All of the confirmands were required to attend church. I was no longer different than the other kids. My first real kiss was with a girl named LuAnne at a church camp, confirmation New Year’s Eve overnight party.    

About a week from confirmation.  Each confirmand, including me, was scheduled to meet individually with the pastor for 15 minutes. The pastor was in his late 50’s, Yale-educated, a little full of himself, a little straight-laced, but caring and generally kind.  

He asked if I believed in God.  I said I was on the fence. We discussed it.  For the next 45 minutes, I held my own as we discussed whether there was a God and my suitability to join the church.  I pointed out some of his sermons were inconsistent with what he said in other sermons. He got defensive. I sensed it and pointed out, obviously, he was also confused. You get the idea.  

He called my mom saying unless I answer the question, “Do you believe in God?” with a simple, “Yes”, he would not sign off on me being confirmed.  

Mom and I had a chat.  Not so much about religion, more about embarrassment and learning to go with the flow. We came to an agreement.  If I said, “Yes, I believed in God without reservation, ” she would not insist I go to church thereafter. Seemed fair.  In my head, I would say “yes”, outloud, in unison with a group of about 20 other eighth-graders, eat a wafer, drink a little grape juice and walk out the door never to look back. 

A week later, the ceremony started and almost immediately I was individually called up to the front of the church and baptized.  I was not told beforehand that I had not been previously baptized nor that I was about to be, at age 12, baptized in front of a church load of people.  I was embarrassed.

Mom said, “Sorry, I thought you knew”.  I would have negotiated a private baptism. 

So here we are 55 years later.  Linda and I had the kids baptized when they were infants. We brought them to Sunday school. They got confirmed.  In short, we did the family at church thing. I even did a stint on the church council. 

I am still on the fence about God.  Since then I came to realize my reality is more about what I believe and less about verifiable proof.  It is my choice as to what I believe. I choose to be on the fence.  

As for the church.  For me, churches are social organizations.  They are like a club. Like-minded people join and socialize with each other.  Humans are social beings and churches filled the need to belong, for some of us. 

As time has passed my faith has deepened.  I deeply believe we should all work to make tomorrow better than today because I have faith that tomorrow can be better.  I believe strongly that even when the odds are stacked against us, to our last breath, we should all have faith and hope for the future.

As I matured I realized virtually all religions and all non-religious people pretty much agree, it is morally best to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Treating others as we wish to be treated is not just a religion thing. 

So, I had an emotional reaction when recalling the story of my confirmation.  That was a long time ago. My reaction surprised me.  

I cannot help but wonder. Church attendance worldwide is decreasing.  One explanation, people are finding more, non-church, ways to feel they belong.  Maybe another explanation is the church is paying the price for rejecting those who are unsure of what they believe.

 

The closer you look the more you see

www.scaleandperception.com

We drove 3,400 miles over 11 days from St Paul MN to where the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico and back again.  The Great River Road route is a designated zig-zag of mostly two-lane state or county roads going through rural mid-America.  Very little freeway. Some town roads. Thirteen miles was a very narrow, harrowing one-lane gravel road.  

This trip was about the journey, not the destination.  We saw some cool destinations, the World War II Museum in New Orleans is awesome.  The National Military Park in Vicksburg Mississippi is great. Mostly we discovered that rural life outside of the big city and off of the is freeway sad and lacking in hope or good news.

Maybe I will post more some other time but I wanted to share one story now.

Day three, the two-plus hour drive through St Louis Missouri was frustrating and took much longer than it should.  Saw the Arch but the area around it was under construction. So we stopped, looked up, and then drove on.  

About 60 miles south of St. Louis we needed to use the facilities.  As we approached the small town we were no longer surprised how rundown many small towns looked.  The bigger cities we had driven through were growing and busy. However, most of the small towns were in various stages of disrepair.  Most small towns we had driven through looked years into hard times.

In a bigger city, we would never have stopped at this rundown convenience store/gas station to use the restroom.  But we were not in a bigger city. We knew by then this was likely as good as we will see. Half of the store was empty/dark and the rest was only marginally stocked.  The very friendly clerk greeted us with a Hi y’all. She pointed us to the restrooms with a smile on her face.

At these stops, we made it a practice to purchase, at least something for providing for our needs.  It just seems fair. As the clerk rang up my bottle of soda, I asked her about the town. She responded that she had only been in town less than a week so she did not know much about the town. 

Linda responded with something like, “Oh really, less than a week”.  The clerk then explained, less than a week earlier she decided that living in St Louis was too dangerous.  So she grabbed her two kids and drove away. She added, be careful who you make friends with. Making friends can be dangerous. Very dangerous.

She said she did not know where to go, she just headed south.   She stopped here for some gas. As she walked in to pay for the gas, the previous clerk was screaming at the owner and quit.  So she told the owner she needed a job. He hired her on the spot.

She said she found a room and the next day, enrolled the two kids in school.  She said she was ready for a new life. She said she “ain’t never going back. This time I ain’t going to get to know anybody.  The kids are the only people I need to know. If I don’t know anybody, ain’t nobody going to cause us problems.”  

We wished her luck and we were on our way.  

On the front door of the store was two small clear plastic zip-lock bags filled with water and tied onto the door handle. One on each of the two doors.  Curiosity got the best of me. I turned to ask her about them. Her response was, “There are two pennies in each one. Everyone says they keep the flies away from the doors.”  All I could say was. “Really”. She just nodded reassuringly like you would to a young kid who was not sure if you were teasing. 

As we drove away, it was several minutes before either Linda or I had digested enough of what we just heard to even speak.  We lived in a different world from this young lady. I hope things turned out well for her.  

Everyone we interacted with on the whole trip was nice.  It is just that some of those people had a very different life than ours.

Pennies In Bags of Water Make Flies Flee

 

What we perceive often depends on how close we look.

Scaleandperception.com