She says she talks to Angels

Well, I have started a journal regarding work occurrences, but because I still work at my work, I can't post anything. So, for now, I will talk about other things. I went to Birmingham over the weekend to visit one of my girl friends. I talk a lot about how I miss having girl friends. I had a lot of girl friends in L.A., but I don't have many in Memphis who are in a similar stage of life as me because most of my girl friends got married when they were 20. Which is to say that they have husbands and families so when I talk about singleness and $1,000 insurance deductibles and all of that crap, they can usually offer some kind words of advice, but they don't relate.. So, I have this girl friend who lives in Birmingham, and she's HILARIOUS, and I decided to drive down and visit her on Friday.

We didn't engage in any craziness all weekend, and I loved every second of it. I was relaxed and happy and calm. I laughed so hard I just about cried.

And then we went to church.

I've gone to church almost every Sunday of my whole life with the exceptions of near-death illness and being out of town. I just pretty much always go. And even when I don't physically go, I watch it on TV. I miss it when I don't go. I don't go because I've been pressured into it or it's cultural or whatever, I just enjoy it, so I go.

So, my best girl friend is an Episcopalian, and I never knew very much the Episcopalians, other than they are sort of like Catholics and they are usually very academic and "junior league" and rich and polished and classy. Pretty much out of all of the Christian denominations, the Episcopalians seem to me like they'd win the awards for writing a thank you note in black ink within two weeks of the deserving circumstance and they definitely would NOT wear white shoes after Labor Day. Other than that, I don't know much about them, because I am not one, and I do not know very many.

I go to this very counter-cultural Christian church in Memphis that used to be really, really cool, because we had a staff of musicians who came straight off of Beale Street and there was a heavy blues influence on the music, and we had a large number of black people who attended the church. I liked that. I liked it because I grew up in a "you have to wear your three piece suit" type of church that was very vanilla. There was no ethnic, racial, cultural, or very much socioeconomic diversity, and so I always felt sort of bored and stiff at the church where I grew up. I moved away for a few years and my current church has really been influenced by the white Bible belt, private Christian school, khaki pants culture. My preacher is a rock star, and I love him, and he's really smart. The demographic of our congregation has changed substantially, though. I'm pretty much back at an all white church. Also, the music is totally different. I guess Beale Street when back to Beale, because now we have all of these white girl star-warbling divas who do that Christina Aguillera thing with their hand that sort of looks like the Mr. Miyagi "Paint the Fence" move, and they sound like a bunch of cats being skinned, warbling and screaming, trying to sound like Lauryn Hill. I guess.

ANYWAY.

So, the all-white people churches usually make me feel sort of nervous, even though I'm a white person. I may have some sort of cultural identity issues. I think it's good to be around different people. That's one thing that I'm really grateful for regarding part of my upbringing.. My parents made sure we traveled and met all kinds of different people. I remember this lady named Alyce made my family some chai tea in Africa and she stirred it around in a metal pot with a goat femur. We were all sitting in her dung hut in Africa. We were totally grossed out because we were little kids and we had to drink chai that had a goat bone in it. But thinking back on that, I can appreciate how cool it was for my parents to let us experience cultural difference and what it meant to be uncomfortable and all of that.

WAIT!

One more thought.

I had another encounter with the Episcopalians. I was invited by a girl friend of mine in L.A. who was from South Carolina to go to her Episcopal Christmas dinner thing with her church because her husband was working on his Ph.D. in Mexico or something. I am anticipating some sort of churchy potluck function where everyone wears a Christmas sweater with little pom poms all over it and some big fat lady in a floral print dress and Mary Kay make up plunking out carols on the piano. Oh, quite contraire. We go to this amazing house in Beverly Hills, and her pastor is a woman who lives in this unbelievable house, and apparently the Episcopalians own the parish or whatever for the lady pastor to live in. Now, please be mindful that I grew up in an ultra conservative Southern Baptist church and had never really met a lady priest/pastor. When we got inside the party, I met a few different gay couples. Keep in mind that I'd never seen openly gay men at a church function, because that isn't exactly Southern Baptist kosher. That was my other Episcopalian experience.

Ok, so I went to the Episcopal church with my girl friend, and it was so gorgeous inside. It made me think about a few times when I was just trying to figure my life out at Loyola, and I'd go up to the Catholic chapel and sit on one of those hard wooden pews and just be quiet and stare at the stained glass windows and massive crucifix at the front and I could physically feel the quiet.

Here's the part I really want to talk about, though. Communion sometimes makes me nervous. I leave during communion at my church a lot because we do it every week and it takes a good solid half hour, and my AD/HD can only take about an hour and a half of church and cat-skinned-screaming divas before I lose it. So, communion makes me nervous when they pass it around because I'm always nervous that I'm going to spill grape juice all over someone's white pants, and I HATE it when everyone drinks out of the same cup. I hate foreign germs so much that I always Purell my hands right after we do that meet and greet hand shaking thing. I always hope to come in late enough that I miss the screaming cat "worship" team and the hand shaking, but I never actually reach that goal.

So, we all get summoned for communion, and we have to walk in a single file line all the way up the aisle, onto the platform, through the choir members, to the kneeling bench thing. And here's what I want to talk about:

I FELT LIKE I WAS IN HEAVEN.

All of the choir members were wearing these white robes and they were signing so angelically, that I seriously looked from side to side and thought, "Man, this must be what Heaven is like." and it was absolutely beautiful.

Then all of the stuff about only white people at church and Beale Street blues worship and stuff sort of left my mind, because I felt so peaceful and angelic and nice.