Attending Church, Religiously

WRITING THIS ESSAY will have to serve as a sort of religious service for me this Memorial Day Weekend. I chose not to go to church yesterday. My excuse is that I felt unwell. A flare up of gout which I failed to quench with medication in time. I like going to shucrh, and miss it when I don't go, whether or not I belong there, theoogically. Not only that, but there is more than one single church that I enjoy going to, so, I rotate. I somehow strongly suspect that, it never would nor will it ever really matter to me what if any curch I attend, but I think I know which churh where I truly belong, the Uniterian Universalist (UU) Fellowship. Irmind myself to always keep in mind that there are no bad choices regarding churches, only good ones, excluding the so called Satanic "churches", whatever they are. Hell, I'd be happy to flip a coin, but for the sake of self identification, I call myself a "pantheistic Unitarian" The fact that I miss church when I don't go probably indicates that I should go. I think I would be and wil always be will ready and abel to attend church anywhere, at least once, for the learning experience. To me all churches seem like diferent versions os the same thing, no matter where. And, like everyone else, I pick and choose my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. For instance, I doubt that I would or will ever embrace crucifiction theology, so I choose to essentially ignore it. All of that stuff about Christ dying for my sins is not part of my religiosity. Christ died, it seems to me, because humans are petty, jealous, and fearful. And I accept the reality that the Christian Bible, like the Christian religion, has evolved over the centuries since its inception and inclusion in teh faith,and is still doing so today, like we all are.In a few hundred ore years, the Bible, adn the faith may both be barely recognizable. Supposedly there are several thousand organized religions in the world. Will there be millions more in the future, or only one, or, perhaps, none at all? Maybe future human theology will evolve with human culture into some sort of transcendant, universal religiosity. The one final, ultimate religion. Science seems to be replacing religion, but not without a fight, and maybe, just maybe, religion will never be totally replaced. Even the most enlightened form of religion will likely share with all previous reigons the same fatal flaw; that of having smugly, presumptiously fallen into the trap of declaring itself, in its current form, to be the true and only source of a comprehensive uderstanding and description of the universe. Beware of such claims. No religion on Earth has ever nor will likely ever succeed in doing that. But we humans do have the necessary tools, our collective brains, to understand, if not the entire universe, at least a large enough part of it to justifying our bragging to ourselves that, if nothing else, at least we have made a start on our grand adventure of universal exploration, beginning on a single planet. It will be up to our descandants, and their descandants, to carry on the quest. All we can and must do is bequeath to them as healthy a world and human civilization upon it as possible, and wish them well. This process, and our awarenes of it and participation in it, is worthy of admiration, which is what religion is all about; admiration of the amazing universe in whieh we live, appreciation of the lives we have, and reverence for the the eternal infinitely superior spirit which constructed it all.