I went to church today for the last time. This is not to say that I will never set foot in a church again, or even that I will never again attend a religious service. But the chapter of my life that is somehow connected to Christianity is now over. I will never again attend a church as an "insider," not that I ever really felt like one to begin with.
The first church services I attended were with all with friends from school. This continued in college, with me asking anyone and everyone if they would take me to a religious service with them. Since I had friends of many different religious backgrounds, it wasn't exclusively churches I visited. I went to a buddhist meditation or two, a mosque, and even got invited to Friday night dinner at Hillel, discovering in the process that I already knew everyone there.
Sometimes, I think it's kind of a wonder I didn't try to convert in college. The friend who brought me to Hillel was named Julian. My senior year, I took a class on Jewish literature, and he was interested in what I was reading, so I would talk to him about the books, and he would expand on them from his personal experience. From Julian I learned about kashrut, Purim, and saying Kaddish. We also spent a lot of time bonding over Christopher Moore novels, Lamb in particular, and I even wrote him a poem based heavily on this text. To this day, I consider this poem, titled "The Way of the Jew," my love letter to Julian.
But as much time as a spent with Judiasm in college, I wasn't doesn't with Christianity. Or maybe it wasn't done with me. I typically trusted that my church hopping would eventually end when I found a church I wanted to settle into. And I did. At college, it was a Methodist church a few blocks from the university, and at home, it was the First United Methodist Church of Eureka Springs, which famously got kicked out of the city's "celebrate Jesus" parade for being too pro-LGBT. We got fanmail for that one. Julian never wrote a letter, but he shared his appreciation with me.
I continued to attend the FUMC after I graduated, and I feel sometimes that my presence at the church there was something of unfinished business. I joined the choir because I love to sing. Then, I volunteered as part of a "Parents Night Out" program. Once a month, parents could drop their kiddoes off at the church for a few hours, where we would feed them and play games with them, and they could go out without having to worry about a babysitter. After COVID struck, I volunteered to help deliver meals to people who were self-quarantining. This program has changed and expanded, but continues, now getting food to many of the people in our county who live in poverty and may not have steady meals otherwise. When my dad died in February 2021, I brought my mother to a widows group that was held at the church, which she still attends.
My journey into the church was slow and lazy. I just kept coming back for one more service until I realized I was meant to stay for a while. My journey out of the church was sudden. For all of last year, I lived with one foot in the Jewish world and one foot in the Christian world. I still went to church, sang in the choir, took part in both the Easter cantata and the Christmas cantata. But I also attended Friday night services, at Congregation Etz Chaim and then at Temple Shalom. My husband and I stumbled our way through a Passover seder and I fasted for Yom Kippor. Then, last week, I realized, my business was finished. Christianity was done with me. It was time to say goodbye.
So I went to church today to tell the choir. Despite having attended for a decade or so, I don't really feel like I know many other people there. I suppose I was always just "passing through," even if I didn't know it. I was a little nervous, though I knew I shouldn't be. After all, one of the choir ladies is married to a Jewish woman. She would be thrilled. She was. So was everyone else. They even wished me a Happy Chanukah, which starts tonight. Even if Christianity was never meant to be my home, it's clear I picked the right church to stay in during my visit.
