LTDL--Kawa Czy Herbata (Coffee or Tea)?

The train just stopped across from an adult bookstore. I’ve been away for sometime and I can tell you such places don’t suffer the same business fortunes and failures that other places do.

Do frogs have teeth? That sentence was competing for my first.

I said that the other lesson it took me a long time to learn was that of the importance of church attendance. This is one lesson that can’t be justified by experience—it must just be accepted as necessary. Just do it.

When I first arrived in Elk, Poland, I started sleeping more than two hours a night more than I required in Arizona and I really needed it. Working in the evening and staying up late I found it impossible to get up for a 10:00 church service Sunday morning. (That was the most artistically productive evening time I’ve ever had: I sometimes wrote a [real] letter every night, keeping up with penpals all over the world; I drew and colored; I wrote in my journal nightly.)

I started to attend a Pentecostal service that didn’t start till 1:30 p.m. Unfortunately it was in Polish, without an interpreter, and featured really long sermons. Then I started attending Catholic services—they usually have services all day on Sunday—about once a month. I did that for abt five years. But I thought like a protestant the whole time, even fantasized about telling the minister of the local Baptist church I would tithe to his church—I made a relatively good wage—if he would just have a late service. (Tithing—giving 10% to the church—is a whole other blog entry, for the future.) I also watched Catholic masses online. St. Ann’s of New York, I think it was.

Then one foggy Christmas eve, after Ricky had been born, I was lying on the couch having a beer in a frame of mind of thinking about the church thing, and the thought, “it’s only one day a week” occurred to me. It wasn’t a condemning thought. Just a true one. . I was also thinking abt what kind of example I presented to Ricky by not going to church—not a good one. With those, I found the motivation to get up and go to church one day a week and sleep in the others.

When I went to Catholic mass, I liked it except for the sign of peace, the point in the mass when people turn and greet each other. I found most people in Poland wouldn’t even make eye contact, would merely nod their heads toward you. If you extended your hand for a shake, you got a glance askew. I once saw a half a row of obvious tourists turn around to shake hands and get a shock when those behind them weren’t ready to greet them. Religion in Poland is connected with suffering: Jesus suffered for you—now come on, do your part and suffer for him.

Baptist is not my denomination of choice as a protestant, but in Elk, they were the best game in town. The first day I attended the Baptist church the pastor asked us to greet one another, and a pretty teenage girl gave me a very warm handshake and a smile. I was sold on the place.

It was hell getting up for church from out of my long winter’s nap. First I had to miss some of the week’s only good late night TV get to bed in time Saturday night. Then of course I had a hard time falling asleep so much earlier than normal. I think in two years of attending I had one good night of sleep Saturday night. Then it was up early, abt 8:30, to get ready. I rode my bike if it weren’t snowing or raining. Viola stayed home and watched Kawa Czy Herbata—the Polish morning show.

Church at just about any time interrupts my morning coffee, so after a breakfast, I took my thermos cup and a candy bar—I ate chocolate every day then—to church with me. I sat in the back and filled up the latecomer’s cove with the smell of the best coffee in Elk and tried to not let the other congregants know I was eating chocolate as well.

I kept telling my friend Andy I couldn’t wait until Ricky could come with me to church.
Finally he was old enough to accompany me. I had to set the alarm back to accompany him. It made it even more difficult. But we did it. On many mornings, I would make ham timbales and get some protein in my stomach before heading out. I often couldn’t get Ricky to eat, so I had to bring a snack and juice for him.

It was not easy steering his stroller and holding my coffee cup. On my list of things to do and bring for church, there is still a note to allow ½ hour if I was pulling him by sled.

My mom told me once that you miss a lot of church when you have kids. True. Abt all he would regularly put up with was the worship and singing before the sermon. I got to hear a sermon about once every eight weeks or so. After the music the few kids who were too young for Sunday school classes would go upstairs to play with toys and I would read a Christian book. On warm days the kids played outside in the sandbox.

That’s my experience with deciding on church and doing it. I told you it wouldn’t prove the necessity of going to church or even the usefulness of it. I know if I had been going to church at the time we met, I probably wouldn’t have married a girl who wasn’t going at all. Church corrects you, even if you never hear a word about the area in which you need correcting.
But that's all hypothetical assuming. I know that at least I got someone to go with me out of the deal.