Baby Dedications and Sunday School Drop Outs

Sunday I went to a church service and hell did not freeze over although it was touch and go there for a while. It was so cold in the sanctuary that I thought I’d turn into a Popsicle before the pastor finally wrapped up his sermon about Jesus talking to the Samaritan woman at the well. In some churches she’s St. Photini, a Great Martyr and equal-to-the-apostles and is celebrated in places like Mexico by handing out free drinks on the fourth Friday of Lint. In this Baptist church, however, she had no name and didn’t seem to be an apostle-in-the-making. He asked her for a drink. He wanted to give her a drink. His 'water' is eternal and symbolic, hers was just ordinary water. Everything I know about Photini I learned from studying art history so forgive me if what I’m about to say sounds irreverent or offensive, but if the conversation went like this pastor portrayed it then Jesus sounded like an con-man trying to trade magic beans for a steak dinner. “If you knew who I am you wouldn’t deny me a drink!” he reportedly told the nameless woman. The bottom line of the sermon was that I am going to hell forever because I don’t/won’t accept that salvation is only available through faith in Jesus as the son of God. No escape clause. I’m doomed. 

It was May 17^th, 2000 the last time I’d been to a church for something other than a funeral or wedding and Easter 1968 the time before that and circa 1952 when I became a Sunday school dropout. So what was I doing in a country Baptist Church at a god-awful hour in the morning, all showered and dressed in my finest? I even bought a new necklace of black beads for the occasion. My great-nephew and his wife were getting their baby dedicated which I gather is meant to cleanse her of the Original Sins passed down from Adam. (They save baptisms until a person is old enough to understand what sin is all about.) I wanted to support the parents and see the rest of my family at the brunch afterward. The parents are the nicest kids who have been best friends and sweethearts from day one of their interest in the opposite sex. When they spoke at the service they talked about how they wanted to raise their baby in the church the way they both were and after reading the church bulletin I can see why. They offer a lot of summer fun for kids. And while I’m sure my nephew, great-nephew and their wives have no idea that I’m a heathen in the eyes of their church, I respect anyone who walks their own talk. The beaded necklace, by the way, was a good idea because the baby thought it was a teething ring. 

When my brother and I were alone I asked him when was the last time he’d been to a church service and I was shocked when he told me he’s been going a couple of times a month since spring---with his girlfriend---to different church denominations all over town to hear choirs and sermons. He said he finds it interesting and he’s “trying to figure it all out.” Growing up we didn’t go to church nor did he go in the years in between then and now. Our parents (non-church goers) sent us to Sunday school and church day camps for a few years in our pre-teen days but after we got caught spending our ‘church time’ wandering around the Indian Mounts near-by all pretense of us going to Sunday school were dropped and we were deemed old enough to decide for ourselves. We decided collecting arrow heads was more fun.

We have a bonafided church lady in the family---not the Dana Carver, Saturday Night Live kind of church lady. My cousin is truly a woman with a pure heart that pitches in and works hard for all her church’s do-good projects. She cooks for funeral lunches, goes to Bible study meetings, collects food for the poor, visits the sick, writes inspirational articles for the church bulletin, sings in the choir and never, ever says a bad word about other people or preachifies to non-believers. Like me, she was not brought up with a church family but her husband was and she took Ruth 1:16 as her own motto: “…whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

Looking at how my cousin's life turned out, I know without a doubt that I would have followed the same path if I had married right out of high school like she did. All the guys I dated back in those days were church goers and I was a chameleon. Heck, I took tennis lessons for the guy I dated before Don, golf lessons for the guy before him and skiing lessons for my first serious boyfriend. After I broke up with my 1967/68 guy, come hell or high water I finally learned to be me, the girl who took comparative religion classes in college and knew I’d never ignore my inner voice again. I hated sports and I would never join a church that requires me to agree to a doctrine that narrows the pathways to God down to one and only one. ©