Out walking the dog this morning, I thought about the church across the street from our building and reflected on how totally absent church has become from my life — even as an absence. For a long time, probably longer than I like to admit, not going to church felt like a positive act, and Sunday morning still felt “different” somehow. I would often do something to mark it negatively, such as listening to a Requieum mass (God being the deceased). Now our Sunday routine is different from other days — we get the print NYT, My Esteemed Partner does cooking for the week, we normally have homemade pizza for dinner, and there are certain TV shows that feel more like Sunday shows for whatever reason — but it doesn’t seem like a replacement for church.
This process went faster with prayer before each meal. For a long time it felt weird not to do it — I had to pause somehow before eating, even after I’d forgotten why. Now it feels very strange if someone wants to do it, even if they don’t draw attention to it and silently pause before they start to eat. Obviously the fact that I eat multiple meals a day made it easier to get used to the absence.
In the most formalistic terms, neither of these things — regular community time with people who share our values or taking a moment of thoughtful gratitude before eating — is necessarily bad or harmful. In fact, both sound pretty good! Am I still letting my upbringing spoil both? Is the next step in the process that I figure out a way to reaffirm both in my own terms? Or — more likely — does it just not matter?
An und für sich 