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Cathédrale Saint-Sauveur d'Aix

I watched the online feed from my Hubby's church this morning, and the strangest thing happened.  Part way through the sermon, they broke for a commercial.  I was so stunned I can't even remember what the product was, but it was a 30 second video advertising some product.  You couldn't click though it, you just had to put up with it.  It started me thinking about how church is considered the last bastion of purity where you would not dare to use commercial advertising.  The raising of money is done with good old-fashioned guilt tripping, and use of the phrase "tithes & offerings".  Well I guess, with the exception of TV church where anything goes, all the time.

I am a decided outsider in the Church community.  You wouldn't think so.  I look the part, female, heterosexual, married for 20+ years, 2 children, husband who volunteers and is a nice guy.  I look like the perfect church pew filler, but I am not.  Here's the low down on why I don't fit in.

First of all, I am an extreme introvert.  I don't like idle chit chat.  I can't stand pop psychology sermons and fluff "improve yourself by being nice" topics.  I am a meat and potatoes theologian.  It's got to be something I can use to make a difference in my neighborhood, my block, my yard, today.  The theoretical stuff I will debate for a little while, but if it starts to waste our real time.  I have a big problem with insincerity.  You know when people are nice to your face and then stab you in the back.  Or when you council people with serious needs using platitudes, or even worse, you choose to pray for them with trite and saccharin words.  I can't imagine that God is really happy with that.  Treating his people that way, rep-resenting Him that way.

There's another way I don't fit in.  I don't think that God is just male.  If we as human beings are created as a representation, an image of God, and we are created male and female, then God must be more than just one sex as well.  Maybe God is all sexes.  Maybe he (as a pronoun not indication of gender) is the only one who can truly understand all of us as we were created in our own individual gender, and sexuality?  Maybe homosexuality is not a sinful act of the will, but a biological evolution of the gender structure of the brain.  Uh oh, that one is gonna get me kicked out of middle aged women having coffee and gossiping while doing something charitable club (you know,  the MAWHC&GWDSC Club)

Yet another square peg for the round hole of tradition round hole of Christianity.  I am a Christian Evolutionist.  I don't believe that God created the universe in 6 days, not because She can't, but because She is a complex being, who delights in the development of secrets, and unfolding of mysteries.  Why the rush?  Was there a press deadline for the printing of Genesis?  Had the gold edged paper been purchased, was in transit and had no place to be stored, so the show must proceed as planned.