When I was seven, my sister and I, for reasons I'm not really sure of, decided we wanted to go to church. So our parents said, okay which church? We were like, i dunno, so we decided to try a bunch of different ones to see which we liked. Well first we went to St. Joseph the Worker Church. I remember mom showing us how to dip our fingers in the holy water and cross ourselves before we set foot in the sanctuary. We'd been here before with our babysitter MaryAnn, but all we did then was color. My grandmother sometimes went when she visited us. It was a lot of standing sitting kneeling, and dressing up, and my tights itched like hell. So we decided that Catholocism wasn't for us.

So then we went to the Kirk. We knew the Kirk because we went to the preschool attached to it. I learned how to ride a two wheeler at the Kirk (there is a pic of this somewhere). We knew some of the people already, like the Laskers and the Carringtons and the Pages. So of course we felt immediately comfortable there.

Eventually we were baptized, mom joined the choir, dad was a deacon and ran the sound, me and Ronni did sunday school and various christmas plays and kid's kwire. We watched the senior high youth group's production of Wizard of Oz, Ronni was Mary in one christmas play and I was the angel in another. We'd go camping every year to Carpenteria, then to Leo Carillo, doing our scarf ceremonies and silly thrown together skits for the talent shows (ala david and goliath). The senior high put on a new production, Little Shop of Horrors, complete with puppet plants. Then the church acquired a baritone soloist named Bill Haller, who volunteered to direct the teen choir e E E E E E e...we performed Aerosmith's Amazing in church with electric guitar and drum accompanyment. There were no males our age in the church, so me Heather and Beth often sang tenor as well as soprano. We went to Del Taco, next to the church, before during and after practices. We thought we were all that, and we were! So we decided to give this show thing a try. The old senior high had good shows, great costumes, but they lip synched. We had crappy cardboard sets and costumes, but we could belt the hats off the old people in the back! Youth Unplugged sent us to Sitka, Alaska to paint buildings Sheldon Jackson Brown and rake mud, and see a big glacier and gut fish. YU2, which I directed ^_^, sent Paulina to Kenya, Africa to see her sons. We did a joint concert with Bill's new church (yeah, Bill left us for Burbank =P), kind of a "the best of" thing, all our best songs from Sundays. Then Forrest took over our kwire and me and Beth dropped out cuz he was okay but dammit he wasn't Bill. So anyway, we used to doodle on the pew cards during the sermons, or just sneak out all together and sit on the playground and "worship God in Nature", which was partially true i like to believe. Then eventually I stopped going regularly, only for big musical events, like if they had the horns or strings accompanying the choir, or St. Andrews Day with bagpipes and dancers (and meat pies =)~). I think around then was when I thought to myself, maybe it's time for a change.

Wicca

to be continued...

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