this is interesting! i have been doing the Big Coward thing on here of casually mentioning "going to church" but not really talking about it at all, partially because we've barely gone and also I'm not sure it's not just me having an emotional crisis https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/millennials-are-leaving-religion-and-not-coming-back/

I don’t believe in God and don’t believe that going to church is necessary for Izzy and Addie to be good people, but there’s an Episcopal church near us that has a liturgically-complete service for kids and both pastors are women and we just decided to go

I don’t know. I had Exceedingly Not Great experiences with religion as a kid and nothing has changed with my personal relationship with God (none), and I am conflicted about the morality of exposing my kids to something that...was extremely bad for me

But thinking about, like, what I want the kids to get out of it, and I feel like... hope, maybe? A sense that things could be better?

oh I should say - we went to an Episcopal church because it’s LGBTQ-affirming and has women and LGBTQ pastors, which was a theological necessity for us, and this specific church has an emphasis on homelessness issues

OKAY so I am going to tweet -occasionally - about church stuff in this thread and with the hashtag let’s see here #markgoestochurch , please mute this if you don’t want to hear about it! Thank you!!!

After church this morning when everyone was drinking coffee in the basement I took Izzy to the bathroom and when I came back one of the Mothers was talking to Kristin and another parent about why Neil Peart was such a good drummer #markgoestochurch

apparently it was because he was a lyricist first and a drummer second #markgoestochurch

a kid was selling Girl Scout cookies and she upsold me into the damn lemon-ups #markgoestochurch

I actually met with the Mothers earlier this week to talk to them about where I am spiritually and had to literally say “so through the process of looking for a faith community I realized I’m an atheist...which probably isn’t what you love to hear” #markgoestochurch

Paraphrasing but one said that in its best form the church is a space for people to ask questions about faith and be mystified by it, and that includes whether or not there is a god #markgoestochurch

Growing up fundamentalist there was a real sense that you could get into Big Trouble asking questions or even just thinking the wrong thing, and I think maybe one of the reasons I recoiled from religious belief was I was so tired of being afraid #markgoestochurch

Last in this but they suggested I read Rowan Williams’s “Being Christian” - Williams is the former archbishop of Canterbury - and it is really good and kind of mind blowing in parts. Okay thank you! #markgoestochurch

nice #markgoestochurch

So the Epsicopal church has a daily reading thing called the Daily Office that I was uh listening to in podcast form for a little bit and I had the huge misfortune of listening during the usual Old Testament random murder AND 1st Corinthians 6 #markgoestochurch

as a kid I hated the Old Testament because there didn’t actually seem to be any real moral code, just commandments, and sometimes people broke those on purpose and were fine and sometimes they broke them on accident and got screwed #markgoestochurch

And 1 Corinthians 6 was...as a teenager it felt like that was the THING that I couldn’t get passed. I couldn’t believe in a tradition that was homophobic, and I couldn’t pretend that homophobia was relegated to the Old Testament #markgoestochurch

So standing on the train and listening to a very nice lady read those verses, it just made me feel like, what am I even DOING? Why am I even considering this again, when I haven't found a way around the moral problems I had with this religion when I was 13 #markgoestochurch

So I've stopped doing the Daily Office. I remembered the bit from 1 Corinthians 3 about needing milk before solid food, and we're just going to church when we can get there, because that is at least something that doesn't give me the same old despair #markgoestochurch

Anyway I'm actually writing about this now instead of two weeks ago because the Mothers suggested I check out a book, which has this in the introduction #markgoestochurch

It feels weird and selfish to say but this all feels a little silly for me to be putting forward this effort when... I'm not getting an ineffable glimpse of the sublime during prayer. I don’t feel like I’m accessing a power greater than myself #markgoestochurch

and, like, if I’m not transcending something - to some degree- if I’m just fumbling around with texts that I disagree with and don’t believe in, then again why am I doing this? Why try to recover meaning when I could just as well not do this #markgoestochurch

my hope is that maybe I’m too far in my own head to be able to access anything; the church I go to volunteers at a soup kitchen and I'm going to go as often as I can given my own family the next few months #markgoestochurch

you know god used to just talk to people. saul of Tarsus was a real asshole and he got the whole laser light show and everything. would absolutely LOVE to be striken by visions right now #markgoestochurch

Oh the book is No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments by Ana Levy-Lyons and it's good! #markgoestochurch