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Okay, here's a post that's not about wastefulness in America.

Not that this part is relevant to anything that I'm going to talk about, but I think that I might of seen my political archnemesis today at a Starbucks. I had to go downtown for an interview today. I panicked and tried to get out the door as soon as I could, and I sped down the highway so that I could avoid the rush-hour traffic. As a consequence, I was there about forty minutes too early. So, I decided to stroll down the Sixteenth Street Mall in Downtown Denver. As I was looking for ways to kill time, I waltzed into a Starbucks. I saw a man in line in front of me who was an exact clone image of Tom Tancredo. Still, I'm not quite sure if it was him because his voice wasn't like his and, for another fact, he was actually very polite, so it couldn't have been him.

Anyway, that's just a little side note.

This evening, I tagged along with my father to go to a church men's event. My father purchased all of the food and made his way over to prepare it all. As he was doing so, I began to wander around the church that I grew up and pretty much spent my entire life in. As I was wandering around, I began to recollect about the old times in the church that I had spent. Really, there were a lot of people missing. I remembered all of the old friends, adolescent crushes and distant relatives that I no longer see because they no longer go to the church. Sure, there are plenty of people who are still there who I've known forever, and they do indeed know me. Still, it just doesn't feel the same anymore. It feels… incomplete.

Do you know the feeling when you walk into a church that isn't your own? I'm not talking about going into a quant little chapel. Most American churches are considerably-sized complexes that have the offices, the Sunday-school classrooms, the youth room always tucked away in the basement, the gymnasium, the kitchen (or, in some cases, three or four kitchens)… For some reason or another, when I walked into my church of twenty-one years this evening, it really didn't seem like it was my church. I felt like I was a stranger in a strange land in a world that was as foreign to me as your old aunt's house that you don't remember whatsoever, but it all seems too familiar anyway.

While I was wandering around the church, I remembered all of the wonderful memories that I had made there: the New-Year's-Eve hide-and-seek games that I lived for every year, that first time I experienced love “medically speaking” (according to Hobbes) and the time that Mason… threw me into a wall.

I was also reminded of why I really don't like my church anymore. On a bulletin board, placed among the items explaining the values and beliefs of our church was a copy of the Pledge of Allegiance. It just boggles my mind how people can connect faith with patriotism. Really, I'm just confused how much faith has become connected with issues that really don't affect our faith: “All good Christians oppose socialism.”, “All good Christians keep their children out of public schools.”, “All good Christians advocate for the United States to become a religious nation.” Really, whatever side one takes on these issues isn't going to make a person better or worse, but it's somehow become connected today, and I seem to be on the loosing end.

I'm torn between staying or leaving. If I stay, I'll be dealing with all of the features that really don't make a good match for me anymore; my beliefs seem to tend more liberal than most in the church. However, I still know people there, and it's never fun going somewhere where nobody knows your name, and you don't know a single soul. Regardless, it doesn't seem likely that I'll be staying in the area for long. If I end up moving, I'll probably need to find a new congregation somewhere.

Tonight, as I was wondering around, I happened to look in the old, gutted sound-system box in the youth room. However, in the bottom of the rack was a diskette. What was significant was that the handwriting on the diskette was mine. Indeed, it was a diskette that I had lost years ago that contained an old puppet-show script of mine from back when I was in middle-school and I assisted in the children's church. When I got home, I was able to transfer the files, and I was surprised that the disk still worked perfectly after eight years. Again, it just reminded me of the old times when the entire group of people who I would have considered friends was there, and when it felt… complete.

It also reminded me of how much of a better writer I've become. Those things sucked!