This is a rough draft, but I'm interested in people's opinions, whether or not I'm getting across what I'm trying to.


I find God in church.


I find God in church. I know it’s an odd place to look, for as Whitman and Emerson taught us God is romantic, found only in surprise, offering flowers on a wooded walk, perhaps.

But I find her in church as the formulaic repetition of lyrics with its copyright entrails flowing out on the giant screen is read and I stand mothering my child, swaying her in my arms and she lays her head on my shoulder for this lullaby.

I find God here when without instruction the whole congregation sits at once, and I squat to a mass-produced stacking chair mysteriously placed yesterday morning in this line of lines specifically for me and removed immediately after I leave.

I find God in this tabernacle that screams a dearth of imagination and romance: a rectangular gym, medium quality surface, with out-of-bounds lines and a three-point arch. On one side, where stands should be, is the entrance and on the other is a stage, flanked by artistically deprived banners that enshrine mere words.

She meets me here, mostly in the sermon, since up til then the children demand. But after my offertory of delivering my kids to the nursery, I sit and breathe. The can is opened and the words flow out from the stage and hover above, and I find peace, beneath them, in my own mind finally allowed to wander. Occasionally a phrase falls from the sky re-directing my ambling, but mostly I am left to my mental movements, where God often walks with me and talks with me.

Then at the end of the service, this first week of the month, I commune God. A table at the front, portable and made of faux glass, ignoring Jesus’ words “this is my body, this is my blood,” centers the experience on “do this in remembrance.” Sterile elements passed, salted crackers cracked and amassed on a silver colored, red carpeted plate and bulk-bought grape juice in non-degradable plastic shot cups.

I feel centered, I ask forgiveness in preparation, I eat Christ, I drink Christ, I attack Christ with acids and break down Christ and redistribute Christ in unseen forms to dying cells throughout my body, a distribution which occurs as I, with three kids, shop for Sunday dinner's groceries.