Day 76
sunday
My father worked for churches while I was growing up. He directed choirs, played his guitar, and was a pastor. For that reason, my siblings and I were up early on Sunday, foam rollers pulled quickly from our hair after fitfully donning tights, dresses and patent leather shoes. We ate donuts, Danishes or coffee cake before rushing off to church to stand around for thirty minutes or so while mom and dad prepared to make Sunday morning service happen. I recall big (well, big to a five-year-old anyway) churches with wood pews and scratchy cushions, a small church in a small town surrounded by tough grass cut short and lots of pavement, school auditoriums and a brief stint where church happened in someone’s home.
Regardless of where, Sunday was church, the center of our life and the center of our livelihood. For this reason, I never considered that people did anything else on Sunday besides religion. It was many years before I understood the irony of having a “day of rest” that was, for my family at least, a day of hard work in the most uncomfortable outfit of the week.
I haven’t regularly attended church in my adulthood. The culture of Sunday Morning Service is so familiar to me, but having been behind the scenes for so many years, having struggled to maintain my faith through my adult years; I find that when I do go I am mostly distracted by memories, frustration with the lack of authenticity and most of all, the lack of vulnerability. Getting up early to drive to church also makes me feel that Sunday is not actually a day of true rest, but a day where a different kind of “work” must be done for a different kind of “earning.” I have had enough of work and earning in my life.
Thankfully, I have made my piece with the fact that I will likely remain a practitioner of my faith, even if I never come to a place where Sunday morning services make sense. I do recognize that resting once a week is one of the most sage and useful teachings of my faith (and many others, to be sure.) I do appreciate that when I am organizing my week, I have a natural inclination to keep Sundays free of work, even housework, and am able to simply walk out my back door to enter my preferred sanctuary. The altar is a distant mountain landscape, the altar rail is my deck rail, which right now is sporting some flowers. I am not the first to recognize that trees and sky provide a more than sufficient cathedral in which to contemplate the movement of the Divine.
