Confessions of a Church-Hopper

As I've mentioned before (see the post entitled "Wait for the Rain" in the April archives), there are no UCC churches in the state of Mississippi. So I have become a bit of a spiritual wanderer seeking sustenance and fellowship where I may, whether that's in the high-liturgy Episcopal church I attend on Sundays, or with the black Missionary Baptist congregations where I go for Wednesday night prayer services, or in the occasional Methodist or otherwise Protestant locale. This adds to my spiritual smorgasboarding a year and a half ago in New Orleans, where there were enough UCC churches that I could pick a new location each Sunday without visiting the same congregation twice; my denominational schizophrenia in southern France, where I was both a member of the local Catholic cathedral choir and a regular attendee at a Madagascar-influenced Reformed Protestant Church; and my exploration of Hindu temples & guru wisdom in India.

All this exposure to the myriad ways in which we worship God has given me a rather potluck taste for liturgical practices--for example, I have a fondness for the familiarity and symbolic weight of centuries-old ritual in the pre-Reformation church, but I also crave the dynamism and creativity of the ever-changing participatory prayers in Protestant churches. I find taking communion each Sunday at the Episcopal church to be very fulfilling and I take strange delight in using kneelers--somehow I feel more devout & focused if I'm kneeling when I pray--but boy could they use some more melodious hymns. We never take communion at Wednesday night prayer services, but the verbal theatrics and pure passion of the evening message will set your soul on fire. I'm not even ALLOWED to take communion in Catholic services (let's not go there...it's a sore spot) and I can't understand the finer points of the homily at Spanish-language mass, but the sudden three-dimensionality of one of the mariachi players singing harmony during a folk hymn is pure bliss. (Plus I love seeing little old Mexican ladies in habits responding to every statement with "Gracias a Dios"--as in, "Isn't it a beautiful day out, Sister?" "Yes, thanks be to God." "The choir was in tune most of the service!" "Yes, thanks be to God." "Are you teaching catechism next week, Sister?" "No, thanks be to God!")

The contrasts amongst this great variety of worship styles and credos have helped me to refine what it is, exactly, that I believe; conversely, the commonalities which tie them together have served to affirm the validity of my core beliefs. It's certainly an enriching process, one which stirs up the proverbial religious pot and makes me put on my theological thinking cap.

P.S. Check out my earlier post for today's flavor on the church-hopping front: Latin(o) Mass!