Churchifying

 I make it a point to attend at least a dozen services at my church, the Falls Church Episcopal, each year.  At each service I sit alone, listen to the scripture readings and pay attention to the sermon, which usually touches upon either the old testament or new testament reading or both, have a cup of coffee afterwards in the rectory and leave.  I have been attending services there for about fifteen years, after being away from the church for decades; I mainly went back when the congregation was reduced to a rump group of steadfast congregationalists who believed in the principles of inclusion and tolerance (forgiveness) who had their church stolen out from under them by the chicanery and wickedness of the former high priest there the charismatic Reverend John Yates who couldn't abide by the fact that the church elevated an openly gay man to bishop and the church started ordaining female priests.  After purging the church membership rolls of undesirables and figuratively having a midnight vote to leave the Anglican ministry and follow some homophobic bishop in Nigeria who reportedly was in favor of executing homosexuals, he squatted in the church property for seven years with his breakaway flock until the slow-moving Virginia court system finally threw him out.  The rump group of astonished, excluded true Episcopalians started meeting in the loft of the Presbyterian Church across the street after the secret vote, a forlorn, welcoming group of maybe a dozen congregants each week, to conduct services accompanied by a single piano recital while the church body slowly grew back in numbers.  I went to support them and just never left.  And God bless the Presbyterian Church which rented them the space for a dollar a year and were always gracious and accommodating for those long years while the true Episcopalians were wandering through the wilderness.  (TFC-E.)

I also like to attend a service each year at nearby St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Arlington because I like their service, it reminds me of the services I remember at St. Paul's in St. George on Staten Island sixty years ago, with their swinging smoke lamps and high board priest hats and I like the priest there, a former philosophy professor at an Ivy League school; I find him interesting.  (St. Peters.)

I also attend a service each year at a different Episcopal Church, and a service at a different denomination church (any protestant church will do, even close-minded evangelical ones, except that I don't feel welcome at Catholic Church services, where they don't allow anyone to take communion in honor and affirmation of our belief in Christ except for Catholics "in good standing" and they have other transgressions against the basic beliefs of Christians also, in my opinion).  And that is the extent of what I call my churchifying.  To paraphrase Yogi Berra, you can learn a lot by listening and by listening to a dozen or more scripture readings a year and considering their import and interpretation in the following sermons, I believe I have acquired a much greater understanding of the bible and the teachings of Christ than I had all of my life heretofore.  (JJ&D circa 1996.)

 It has also greatly helped me to accept the unfair and grievous loss of all three of my children, my flesh-and-blood, by cruel extra-judicial means (PAS).  Christ's teachings as revealed to St. Peter about forgiveness, and St. Paul's writings about character, have especially helped me to suffer through my loss pf all of my children through a better understanding of the travails I have been presented with, which are unfair but, well, life.  Then, after these fifteen attendances at church each year, I slack off because otherwise I'm pretty secular.  But this is the discipline I exert upon myself at the minimum.  Sometimes I'll pick up a few additional church services each year when I'm traveling or particularly troubled, such as when I attended a service at a centuries old Episcopal Church in Cambridge last year and I attended a further service at my church late last year to pray for several ailing people I know and also for our ailing country, and for some divine enlightenment to come to our megalomaniacal, utterly inept president.  (The Church of Trump.)

This year as has been my wont ever since I retired, I went to a dozen services at my church in a row and doubled up on services at other churches some Sundays until I attended a service on Ash Wednesday as my twelfth service of the year.  And then the pandemic December Seventhed u s and all (sane) churches closed in-house services.  But I got my perquisite number of services in, barely, so I didn't go crazy and do something uncharacteristic like attend a virtual service.  And I even attended a service of sorts this month, sort of, on the Mall earlier this month.  When I was doing my Christmas Tree viewing downtown on a past Sunday I passed by a pathetic band of a few dozen Trumpites with their MAGA hats and stupid Trump 2020 flags on the Mall with the US Capitol as a backdrop attending a Stop The Steal rally and open-air service conducted by a couple of evangelical preachers with a chorus of gospel singers at a Church of Trump on the stage set up there.  I listened to the proselytizing and politicizing for awhile on the outskirts of this gaggle of wretched true believers, watched them raise their hands to the sky in delirium and listened to the singing, and moved on.  I wasn't converted, anything but, but I suddenly realized I had attended a service, so I put it down on my internal list as church service number 16 for the year, one above the bare minimum I strive to attend each year.  Shallow, vapid and more than other-worldly but informative of sorts nonetheless and revealing to a depressing degree.  I mostly or somewhat detailed my other other-church service visits this year, January through early March, in my former blog.  (The National Cathedral.)

  The notable services I attended this year, beyond the comfortable services at the Falls Church and St. Peters, were an Episcopal service at the National Cathedral in DC with a friend who is a member there, and the full-blown mega-evangelical Anglican church that has arisen in Fairfax from the activities of the band of exclusionists that stole the Falls Church Episcopal property for seven years in an act of astounding hubris and despicable chicanery.  That service didn't even have Communion and was a self-absorbed hour of writhing frenzy by the congregation as soft rock Christian music played, the priests spoke to the masses with their hallowed discourse flashed in transcript form above them on two giant overhead screens and the successor to the now-retired Reverend Yates gave a sermon that was very charismatic and even included a reference to Tolstoy's Anna Karina.  All the flash and dazzle didn't move me though and I won't be back for more of that particular brand of self-centered and revenue-seeking spiritual inspiration.  (Falls Church Anglican.)