Attending a Very Small Church

YESTERDAY, SUNDAY, I attended a Presbyterian church service, at the quaint little country brick church I have referenced before,the one nearly two hundred years old. I wonder whether there are any ghosts of congregants past watching over us. It would be a great place for ghosts to hang out, what with the old wood work in the floors and pews, the stained glass windows,the whole nineteenth century look of the place. The interior has been carefully, purposefully maintained in its 19h century look for decades. As the decades have gone by, generations of people have evidently all noticed and loved the perfect, quaint, rustic decor, and have over and over again through the decades, resolved not to touch it, not to change it even the tiniest amount. And so, two hundred years after its construction and founding as a formally registered Presbyterian congregation, ti remains as quaint and rustic as ever.We could all rent some nineteenth century clothing from a costume shop or something, all dress up accordingly, and look for all the world like a genuine Civil War era church congregation, in our little brick and wooden church down in the valley, in the woods. The minister, a friend of mine, delivers a progressive sounding sermon, with love and happiness rather than fire and brimstone, and I always leave the service uplifted and happy, ready for a big lunch. Isn't that what religion's all about, or should be? The only problem with going to church there is that it makes it nearly impossible to attend the Uniterian Universalist house of cosmic reverence some miles away, because in order to get there on time, I would have to leave the first church post haste,and drive like a maniac to the second, which I am unwilling to do. This past sunday, if my memory is accurate, there were nine people in the building, including the minister, organist, and "liturgist", who together constitute our version of "the clergy". I always hope for double digits in attendance; no go for this week. Better luck next time. Suddenly, the year two thousand and twenty eight is right around the corner, which'll be the two hundreth anniversary of the church. It must have been built by some of the earliest settlers in the region; avid, fervant Presbyterians who, above all else, above the need even for houses and stores and bars, knew in their hearts that they needed and would have to build a church, first. Of course, in nineteenth century American frontier culture, a single primitive building could and often did serve as church, school, and in many cases temporarly sleeping quarters for new arrivals in the community, while they got their log cabin built. My European friends seem amazed and amused at how recent our history is here in the American frontier 'west". For us, for me (and I am 71 years old) the late nineteenth century, when my grandparents were born, seems like a remote time deep in history; for my ninety two year old friend from Germany,it seems like nothing, like recent history, like just yesterday. She was a teenager in 1945 Germany, remembers Hitler, and warns us about Trump. I consider myself part Unitarian, part Presbyterian (a very small part), and, overwhemlingly, a pantheist, like Spinoza and Einstein. The Unitarian emphasis on the unity of all human religiosity impresses me, and inspires me to feel comfortable in churches of various denominations. I am inclined towards believing that once one has declared one's self a "panthieist", all things are possible, religiously. Our Presbyterian church has about a dozen actual members. I am not one of them. I have no intention of ever joining somebody else's church, but rather, remaining contentedly within mine,and visiting other churches for spiritual and mental growth. Goethe's admonition remains more vital to me than ever: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine;"