January 10, 1965
It's snowing like anything! I hope school's closed tomorrow. It probably won't be, though. At times I think we have an Eskimo for a superintendent of schools. Last year during a blizzard we were the only school opened in Connecticut. I finished Dad's vest. Boy, am I proud of it. I was supposed to go to a pizza party for Young People's Fellowship, but I couldn't - no transportation. Next week we are going skating, I hope. It might not freeze then. It sure is cold now, though.
January 10, 2006
YPF! That was the youth group at my church, St. John's Episcopal. It was lots of fun; we had a cool young curate, Father Crews, who planned the activities and hardly ever talked about religion. It was at a YPF meeting at Father Crew's tiny apartment I saw the Beatles' first appearance on Ed Sullivan. I discovered on the internet that he recently retired as rector of the nearby Marbledale church.
Here is the mystery: by the time I graduated from high school, my family was no longer attending St. John's. Instead, we went to the local Lutheran Church, which had a three-person youth group and a very uncool minister. I imagine Mom made the decision, as she was pretty much the religious arbiter of the family. I do recall some sharp comments she made later about other of the other ministers at St. John's, who blamed her chronic illness for dad's drinking and their marital troubles. Ah, the good old pre-women's liberation days; another reason I have little use for nostalgia.
At any rate, I do not remember being consulted about the change of churches, nor caring about it. My mother would probably not appreciate knowing that her decision to "go Lutheran" helped accelerate my eventual crisis of faith. The second tenant of the Lutheran faith is justification by faith, or the belief that "salvation is through faith alone -- we only need to believe that our sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who died to redeem us". The Episcopal church leaves room for doubt and encourages questioning; Lutherans view doubt as evidence of Satanic temptation. At least, that's how I interpreted the difference.
The reference to ice skating evokes pleasant memories. We skated on ponds, not at ice rinks. There was something about the nighttime pond-skating experience, with its mixture of danger, discomfort and romance, that was very dear to my teenaged soul.
January 10, 2023
I am not sure I was being fair to my Lutheran forebears and religious educators in my 2006 response. Not having learned much of anything about Lutheranism since middle school, my description was based on the long ago impressions of a disenchanted teenager.
I drifted away from organized religion in college and married an equally lapsed Catholic. We drifted along, worshipping in our own ways on Sunday mornings. (Me: baking bread. Him: German football on tv.) Then we had a baby, and like many young adults, started looking for a religious community to help us with the challenges of parenting. I began where I left off, with a Lutheran church near the campus where I worked. Lovely people, great coffee, good music, but the theology was a total mismatch. I considered the Friends Meeting nearby, but music being essential to my spirituality, that was a no-go. Then, on my way to a local library to do research, I drove past a Unitarian Universalist Church and a playground conversation from sixth grade replayed in my head. My friend Ronnie, the first Unitarian I ever knew, defined their theology thusly:
“We don’t believe in the Trinity, we don’t believe Jesus was God, and we think that John was drunk when he wrote Revelations.”
So on September 26, 1982, I checked it out. And of course I wrote about it in my journal!
“Today I went to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Silver Spring. It was very interesting. There were familiar things (the tunes, the Bible reading, the offering) and new things (no cross, no liturgy, no prayer). It was interesting and comfortable. I’ve never heard the congregation in a church laugh. Or applaud. It was very friendly. It was also elitist and liberal. It’s a very intellectual church and maybe a but like Mensa — self-consciously intelligent. I found it interesting that nearly everyone I met was a former something else. The minister was raised in a small evangelical group. His wife was Catholic. I met a former Lutheran in the coffee line; a Jewish man named Kermit was running the preschool. Fascinating.”
Lovely people, good coffee (still working on that), great music. Room for me to explore my own theology. Bingo. I’ve been a member of UUCSS for forty years.