Holy Week

As you may or may not know (depending on how religiously you follow my life here or IRL), last fall I started attending church with the kids. Miss Z actually stays in the church nursery where, big surprise, she's the belle of the ball and a clear favorite of one of the paid caregivers (who went so far as to say she would name a daughter Miss Z if she had one). I digress. The primary reason we started going to church is that The Mr. works almost every Sunday. I got tired of looking out the window at families out having fun together doing family things. Self-pity is never a pretty thing. Church seemed like a good solution--a place to go, purpose and design to the day.

Of course that wasn't the only reason. I also felt ready for religion, somehow. I was raised in a Baptist family by parents who had stopped attending church before I was born. My mother says she "feels closer to God in my garden" than at church. And there's a distinct possibility that my father turned into a non-believer somewhere along the way. So the spiritual guideposts of my childhood were something like EST called Iamathon (ponder the solipsism of that for a moment) and transcendental meditation (or TM).

The Mr., on the other hand, got enough religion for himself, me and a few friends--chapel at religious school daily, and a Catholic mass or two on Sundays.

So with almost zero church-going experience, I gave the whole thing a try in September and was really pleasantly surprised at how great it is. I think we got very lucky by choosing the closest Episcopalian church--it turned out to be a fantastic place. The rector is great--wonderful sermons. His wife leads the children's liturgy--which the X-Man really enjoys. The community is welcoming, not overbearing, but filled with really nice people. It just feels right.

Now, coming into this with almost no background, I'm not always sure what I'm doing. I figure these are muscles that haven't been worked before. In some spots I go through the motions and figure it will all sort itself out. And of course, X being who he is, he has lots of questions. I don't think I always do a good job answering them, but I give it the old college try. The evidence of his religious experience can be pretty interesting. I give you the following:

Scene--the bathtub, both kids getting bathed by ME (a job I find incredibly tedious and off-load onto The Mr. whenever I can).

Miss Z (with a pitcher of bath water): bwahahahaha (crazy new laugh she's developed) and a little splashy splashy.

X-Man: (filling an empty shampoo bottle and pouring it into Miss Z's pitcher) The body of mice, the blood of mice.