Sunday

I brought Frank to church this morning, for the first time since he was maybe nine months old. Considering that, and that he's two, it wasn't that bad, I guess. I was utterly exhausted by the end, though! They had no child care today because it was Family Sunday, what the church i grew up in called Youth Sunday. This means all the kids go to the entire church service, and the sermon is a children's sermon- the priest calls all the kids to come up front, and she preaches to them, on their level. I carried Frank up front and sat down with him for the sermon, but he was up and about again within a couple of minutes. So much for that!

This is a new church I am going to, too. The church I have been a member of for the last ten years or so has changed a great deal the last couple of years, as have I, and I no longer really feel like a part of things there. I've been going very sporadically basically since Frank was born. So, since we moved, and there's another Episcopal church about five minutes closer, I decided to check them out.

They are a very friendly congregation, which took me a bit off-guard! The first Sunday I went, the assistant priest was preaching, and, after church, when I greeted her in the reception line, she asked me my name and chatted for a couple of minutes. Then she flagged her husband down, and he introduced me around at coffee hour. Today was the second time I've been there, and I had a few people come to me and introduce themselves, including the senior warden. (The wardens are, for those who don't know, part of the Vestry, which is the governing body of an Episcopal church. The Senior Warden is essentially the president of the Vestry.) The senior warden made sure he told me that he thought I handled Frank very well (taking him out of church when he got too loud and coming back in), and that small children were absolutely welcome in this church. However, there might be a few older people who might say something about the antics of a small child, and, "...if anyone says anything to you about it, come and tell me, and I will take care of it." Wow. I guess they've had issues with this before!

There are a few things about this church that are different from any church I've been a member of before. In the Episcopal church, you can generally divide churches into High and Low. High is more formal, more traditional music, and people generally dress very formally for church- men will wear suits, for example. Low means the service tends to be less traditional- modern forms of prayers, for example- different types of songs and hymns, and the people dress more casually. I have always gone to High churches. This church is definitely Low. I mean, many people wore jeans, both Sundays I've gone! To me, the only time you wear jeans to church is when you're, say, doing yardwork on the church property immediately after coffee hour or something. So, it's different, but the people are very open and friendly, which is nice. I am already on the list of people going to the luncheon after church on January 4th, for Epiphany!

Anyway, I think I am going to switch to this church, which means I'll need to get a letter of transfer from my other church. It's not a big deal, except the priest there is an interim, and she'll probably want to sit down and find out why exactly I'm leaving, a conversation I really don't really want to have.