Kristina tries church

The title makes it sound like I’ve never been to church before!  I was raised in a Presbyterian church, which was a bright spot in a generally difficult childhood.  Then when my own kids were growing up, we regularly attended a Quaker meeting (quick explanatory note – despite the old-fashioned sounding name, Quakers are liberal progressives who champion civil rights for the underprivileged in our society, and their meetings are similar to a Buddhist meditation service).

But since I met John, I haven’t regularly attended anywhere.  He doesn’t like to attend any kind of service, and I really value our weekends together. But…I’m now working from home in a rural area, and I really need to be connected to my community.  Placitas has two churches, the Las Placitas Presbyterian Church, and the San Antonio Catholic Mission.  So the Presbyterian church is my obvious choice (unless John wanted to go back to his Catholic roots, which would be fine with me, but he doesn’t.)

I’m not a stickler for creed or denomination.  My own religion is “Why would we imagine that we could somehow understand the vast workings of the universe?”  Every religion out there is wrong.  But “no religion” is probably not an accurate or useful answer either.  My opinion is; the more we try to define it, the more wrong we are.  Accuracy decreases as precision is increased. Right?  Ok, that’s getting a little geeky and I’m trying to keep these posts short.

Anyway, I really liked the service yesterday.  The theme was Earth Day (in particular, the importance of bees).  Apparently the pastor is also a bee keeper. Being an environmental scientist, the earth day theme really resonated with me.

The other thing I liked about it was the frequent use of Spanish in the service.  The service was conducted in English, but we sang two songs in Spanish and also did two readings in Spanish.  Given that most of us were middle-aged or older white English speakers, I could imagine that someone could criticize it by saying it was contrived.  But it is in keeping with this church’s heritage, est. 1893 by José Gurulé and Rev. José Ynés Perea. I thought the inclusion of the Spanish language was done respectfully, and I appreciated it.

Oh, and I almost forgot. They just bought a bunch of solar panels for their roof, and yesterday was the “Dedication of the Solar Array.”  The church is now “Net Zero.”  Way to go!

Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre. Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad, así en la tierra como en el cielo. El pan nuestro de cada día, dánoslo hoy. Y perdónanos nuestras deudas, así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores. Y no nos dejes caer en la tentación, mas líbranos del mal. Porque tuyo es el reino, el poder, y la gloria, ahora y por siempre. Amén.

In case you’re wondering why there are NO PEOPLE IN THE PICTURES, I took the photos on Monday (today), when I went back to buy a book I saw advertised last night on their website.

They have beautiful quilt art currently displaying in the large hall outside the sanctuary.

  

I love how there’s a recycling box casually set in front of this historic kiva, and folding chairs piled behind it.  Everyone’s got kivas around here, no big deal!