Doubling Down On Church

I SET A PERSONAL RECORD, and perhaps at least tied a world record by attending church twice on a single Sunday, at two different churches, which is what matters. Certainly many millions of congregants have congregated at the same church multiple times in a single day. Fundamentalist Christians come to mind. They are likely as not to go back and forth several times in a twenty four hour period, on any given day, Sunday, Wednesday, you name it. In my one year plus of sampling, I have attended three churches I like, two of which made the cut as being places I might like to attend weekly. The service at the tiny Presbyterian church starts at nine thirty, and the one at the Unitarian church begins at eleven. The two buildings are about twenty miles apart, in different towns, so, if I walk out of the chapel of the first, without atending the after service social, skipping donuts and more coffee, I can make it, just in the nick of time. The Presbyterian church needs me, but I'm not sure whether its minister wants me there, even though he definitely needs me there to reach double digits, and the latter, whatever they might think of me, seems open to my coming. By driving about five to ten miles per hour over the speed limit and rolling through stop signs, I made it happen. The cops'll give you five; they won't give you ten. As to whether I actually attend both in the same day, on a regular basis,that, as we say,remains to be seen. Maybe I'll do it differently each and every Sunday. Since most folks belong to one church but not to more than one, I claim to have tied or maybe established a new world record for..diversity? Religious freedom and the free exercise thereof? Utter Confusion? I'm no more a Christian now than I ever was. The whole thing still seems primitive, barbaric, and factually baseless to me, as it did to Thomas Jefferson, who said so, and who called himself a "primitive Christian". By that I think he meant that he embraced the essential message of Christ, but rejected all claims to the supernatural, including walking on water, parting seas, and any tangible connections to Christ through the ritual of communion. Case Closed. I am a primitive Christian, while remaining, as I have been for more than four decades, a "pantheist", follower of Spinoza and Einstein. The Unitarians, who accept all comers, atheists and pantheists alike, talked about parenting skills this Sunday, and since I have no children, I alternated between nearly falling asleep in one of the big cushy chairs provided for all, and applying the sermon to my cats. This was yesterday, my first time in Unitarian attendance. They seem to like me, despite this. The Presbyterians had a substitute minister, whose sermon concerned the proper way to pray and the implications and complexities associated with it, and for that he referred to Luke, Chapter eleven. That's the part where Jesus teaches people how to pray, because somebody asked him to, and ever since we have had the surpassingly beautiful Lord's prayer. Isn't that sufficient unto the day? Apparently not, because the fill in minister went on to tell us how challenging and complicated the process of praying can be and often is. I didn't get that at all, and, a day later, still don't. When I pray, which is often, I do one thing: I give thanks, for everything, and leave it at that. For me, that's plenty simple, straight forward, easy to accomplish. But, church here or church there, as long as I know that the "Sermon On the Mount" aint goin' nowhere, I'm good to go, as we like to say. Besides, as a good friend of mine and excellent lyricist wrote in a song: "You can keep the cross, just give me Jesus".