Great thoughts of Fleeting substance

CHURCH!

Church, church, church, church, church…

Some, many of you perhaps, may be aware that I’ve been on what I call a ‘church search’, because it’s fun when things rhyme. I’ve been to…um…three, I think, churches down here for varying numbers of weeks before deciding that the church just wasn’t for me. It’s not a problem with the religion, for me, not at all. Roman Catholicism works just great for me. Yay for it. It’s just, you know, the church. It’s been having some problems over the past few months, as I’m sure most of you are aware. If nothing else, it proves the fallibility of man, and the fact that just cause something has a cross on it, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good. I make this point just to drive home the idea, I want to make sure I’m going to a good church. A church with good people, good ideas, good leadership, good…y’know…stuff.

And I don’t want to jinx anything, but I may have finally found one.

Last week there was a fellow by the name of Chris Grisoffee (sp) up in Juneau, helping to put on an ACTS retreat. ACTS stands for something…or perhaps it doesn’t…either way, it’s a church retreat. Take some time, talk about churchy-things, renew faith, etc. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. And everyone is always hugging when they come back. If nothing else, you *have to* be pro-hug.

So Chris met my mother, they chatted for a while, and he said ‘hey, if you happen to be down in Southern California, look me up.’

Ding!

‘Well, actually, I have a son who lives in Southern California. Where do you live?’

‘Oh, I live in El Segundo’.

Ding!

‘Oh my stars and garters, my son works in El Segundo.’ Okay, she probably didn’t say ‘stars and garters’. ‘He’s been looking for a good church.’

‘Well then he should check out American Martyrs.’

Now, I’ll be honest with you, when my mom first told me about Chris and mentioned that the name of his church was ‘American Martyrs’, I was a little worried. I mean, martyrs? This sounds a touch sketchy. Turns out it’s just a weird name, it’s a great church.

I probably couldn’t list the things I look for in a church. And even if I could, they’d all be fuzzy things like ‘vibe’ and ‘aura’ and ‘feel’. But regardless (irregardless isn’t a word), I like it so far. The sermon was good, the people were friendly, if not a bit…ah…monocultural, perhaps, nice facilities, good…um…vibe, nice…aura…you get my drift. The priest even closed off mass with this line:

‘And all of you single, young adults out there, try and get together with each other so that we can enjoy a continued…influx of people as priests and nuns.’

Note how the second half of that sentence has absolutely nothing to do with the first half. Could it be that God took command of his words just for my benefit, being a young, single adult (who hates being single), and then left him hanging for the second half? I believe the answer is a resounding maybe! Heh. I’ve never been a particularly rabid seeker of ‘signs’, but you have to admit that any church that gives directions to get out and meet people should get some sort of gold star, eh?

I also managed to find/meet the aforementioned Chris, and he showed me around a bit and introduced me to some people. This church even has a ‘Young Adult’ group. *I’m* a young adult! I could go! I got invited to the ‘Lifeteen’ gathering after church by several people, and was forced to note that I’m…ah…not a teen. Heh.

There were some other ‘telling’ moments, too. I liked the homily. It was about finding our weaknesses and working to strengthen them. I think having gone to church only about 10 times in the last year counts as a weakness. For comparison, the last time I went to church back in SLO, the homily was about the financial state of the church. Not spiritually uplifting stuff.

So I’ll give the church some more nods in the coming weeks, but I think we’ve got a strong candidate for ‘my church’ here. This is good news, if you’re me.

Anyone else out there think I’m doing too many things all at once? Working and classes, and TKD and drumming and now church? Hope everything will fit. I may have to give up some of my other hobbies. Like browsing the Internet in search of naughty pictures. I think I can do that, though. :)

Mylinh’s party was pretty great. We went to Koji’s Restaurant. (No link because their site is busted.) I had Shabu shabu. Good stuff. We went to Highlands afterwards. There was a whole mess of us, but for some reason we had to do some obnoxious song-and-dance to get in. Not get in ‘special’ or anything. Just get in. This is why I hate Hollywood clubs. Pretentious snobbery is next to narcissism, which is next to ASS. The doorman reminded us of a hall monitor. Drunk with non-existent power. I guess that’s how you maintain a reputation around here, though. Guess I’ll be sticking to my dance-friendly techno clubs instead.

There was almost a fight in there too. Not any of us, of course. We’re all *entirely* too good-natured to be starting fights. I missed the drama, too. I just noticed everyone was looking in the same direction, and when I turned around there were a bunch of bouncers standing around looking…well…big, and some guys giving each other ‘the look’. Personally, I don’t have the energy to be that angry at anything that late at night. Perhaps if I drank more. Heh.

I wasn’t picking up on any of the ladies, quite, but at least I got some good conversations going with people I’ve never met before. That’s good practice. Perhaps I’ll go lady-hunting someday, perhaps not. It’s good to cultivate people-impressing skills either way.

All told, though, good times, good friends, good stuff.

Oh, and Sakina got busy today and couldn’t come over to learn how to swim. Her loss.

All right, enough of this tomfoolery. I’m going to go enjoy the last few hours of my mini-vacation. Ta!

-N