Fading Away

OUR CHURCH MEMBERSHIP is now down to five, I heard the minister say. We seem to have lost a few members recently. One elderly lady, a grand matriarch of the church, moved into assisted living in another state to be near her family, and the old married couple which sat close to me seems to have moved on. And so it goes. The minister, Brother Bruce, suggests convening a congregational meeting to discuss the situation. That seems reasonable. What might be reasonbale might be to combine our congregation with that of another, larger church of the same denomination, and to shut the doors of our church building, tragic though that seems, and tragic though that would be, in many ways. What the five members decide to do with their religious futures is of course up to them. Even though I have been attending this church every Sunday for nearly a year, a am not a member, and I doubt whether I will ever be a member of any church or organzed religion, seeing as how I am not religious. I'm just a chronic visitor to any church I might attend. Churches throughotu the area in which I live, the United States, are losing membership, including in m area, the southern U.S..Europe has become a secular society, and the United States seems destined to do the same, despite the recent upsurge i fundamentalist evangelical religious fervor in America, accompanying the Trump phenonemon. Or minister is a retired attorney and lay minister, near eighty years old, and is under contract to be our minister through april, at which point he might decide it isn't worth it. I will be seventy in April, and am either the youngest or nearly the youngest person who attends the church. I predicted, and still predict, that I will outlive the church. The building is more than a hundred and fifty years old, and is a real classic antique,a worthy tourist attraction of American history. Although it is way out in the countr in a tiny town, the surrounding area in general is growing in population; it would be nice if "we" could lure some new members in, enough to keep it going longer. As of now, that aint hapnin'. By the time I was nine I was pretty sure I would never be religious. Now, I have, I think, a better understanding of why religion exists than I ever did, but no more inclination to become religious. People invent religions all for the same reasons; for comfort and inspiration, and to help them understand the inscrutable universe in which they live in fear. For most of my life I have been predicting that within a few hundred years religion would no longer exist on Earth, and would have by then faded away from lack of interest, as humanity becomes increasingly educated about scientific reality. I still think that's going to happen, is happening now, but I may be wrong. It may be that religions exist as long as people exist. Specific religions, however, all religions, have a life span; tehy are born, they grow, age, grow old, and die, just like people and civilizations. Religions of teh future will doubtless be different from those of the past, jsut as our curent religions are far different than their predecessorss, and indeed different even from their previous selves, as religions evolve over time. I find it warmly ironic that I, towards the end of my life, am actually ivolved in a church, hoping that it stops shrinking and starts thriving, and am trying to make that happen. Life is full of irony, eh?