Refusing to Choose

I went to church today. For the first time in ages. Two of them, actually. It really was quite enjoyable.

My primary church of membership, a United Church of Christ church, recently began having two services - one at 8:30am and one at 11:00am. The content is mostly identical - the membership has just grown so much, that they had to create a second service in order to make it easier for everyone to fit.

Interestingly, the themes for the services mirrored things I've had on my mind lately, including the subject of focus in my previous blog post.

At the first service I attended, the theme focused on was "Hurry Up and Wait", and being patient. Something I always struggle with.

After the service, I attended the Religious Education class, which is held between the 8:30 and 11:00 service. Interestingly enough, they began a DVD discussion series by author Kathleen Norris. Kathleen was raised Christian, left the faith for a period of time, and then re-converted with a new understanding of the faith. The topic of today's session was "Belief". She made a point that I hadn't thought about before - how belief is a daily process, rather than static, and is not the same thing as "thinking". Our beliefs constantly change and are being evaluated. They drive everything about us in some way or another. We talked about our beliefs which give our lives meaning, and it was even asked of us, what aspects from other faith traditions have inspired us?

After that, I went a couple of blocks over to the Unitarian church and attended their 11:00am service. The focus was on Robert Ingersoll's writings, and the importance of being "happy" as being the Only Good, the ultimate goal in life, no matter what your religious belief is. Which resonates with me, because happiness, I think, really is the ultimate goal, as even if we subscribe to a faith which focuses on helping others and self-sacrifice, if we didn't get some kind of pleasure from it, we wouldn't do it.

As I'm in a phase of reassessing where I am spiritually (which, after what I learned in Religious Ed today, is kind of a lifelong process I suppose), I highly enjoyed attending both the UCC and Unitarian churches. For the moment, I think I'll try to make it a regular activity.  Between church(es) and getting back into my daily spiritual readings (which I'll perhaps elaborate on over the next few blog posts), maybe I can get a spiritual focus back into my life.

Book Review: The Circular Church

My most recent completed book is The Circular Church: Three Centuries of Charleston History, by Joanne Calhoun, one of the members of the church I attend. The church truly has experienced a lot in its lifetime. It was begun in 1681, and has been housed in four different buildings, which have at various times been decimated due to:

-The Revolutionary War
-The Civil War
- a fire that was pretty much Charleston's equivalent of the Great Chicago Fire
-a major earthquake in the mid-1800s.

The church has always been the equivalent of a "liberal church" throughout the various eras it has been functioning in. While most of its members were slaveowners, slavery was an issue they constantly struggled with. They were the first church that allowed blacks into their services in slave days, and black churchmembers were given a great deal of responsibility within church operations compared to others in the day. It is even speculated that at least one minister may have been involved in helping slaves to read, which of course was a big issue of the day. Several other churches in the area are splits from Circular, including the local French Hugenot church and the Unitarian church(there is actually still a lot of interaction between my church and the Unitarian church today - the current minister at the Unitarian church is a member of Circular, and the former Unitarian minister has visited Circular on occasion since his resignation). During the Civil Rights movement, they were one of the first(if not the first) church to openly invite blacks to visit the church, when other churches were actually posting guards at the doors to keep blacks out. Today, they advertise their welcoming attitudes towards LGBTs as part of the UCC's "Open and Affirming" campaign, and have a "green" addition to Lance Hall(their "Sunday School" building, which was built to house the  congregation during one of the renovations made to a previous churchbuilding) which is one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in the South(if I remember correctly), and was made by one of the top eco-friendly  architects in the country.

Overall, a good read about a good church, which also gives a lot of insight into the local history of one of the oldest cities in the country.