Mar 17, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, But Through Me
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, But Through Me
I know there are some Christians that think pop culture is bad, evil, maybe even demonic, and I know that they are very vocal, but most of the Christians I have known in my life have been more open. They are able to see the value of the secular alongside the spiritual. Me, I think I’m more on the radical side of things. I don’t believe anything is secular. I see Jesus all over the place.
Speaking of the Beatles, I remember when my dad slipped into a coma and I thought he was going to die. I was in California and he was in Maine, and it would be at least 24 hours before I’d be able to get to him. The only comfort I could get that day was in the George Harrison-penned Beatles song “Within You Without You.” It had long been my least favorite song on that album, but for some reason it popped up now and wouldn’t let go. It was so simple and emotionless, and I heard George intone, “You’re really only very small and life goes on within you and without you.” Should that have comforted me? I don’t know, but it did. I heard Jesus in that song that day.
I got back to Maine, and he stayed in that coma for a couple more days. Windchill made it 30 degrees below zero, and I was driving back and forth from his house to the hospital, and it was George Harrison again, this time singing, “All Things Must Pass.” I did not know if my Dad was going to live or die, but I heard this long-haired British Hindu Hippie tell me this is the way of things and I believed him. And I heard Jesus that day.
Mar 10, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Conversions - Part 2
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Conversions - Part 2
I was 41, standing in my kitchen with my hand in a bowl full of flour and water and salt, and I did not hear God talk to me. I didn’t hear much of anything, other than the same Ella Fitzgerald album on endless repeat from the speaker on the kitchen counter. I was about 5 months into leading our church in a pandemic. I felt isolated and stir crazy and very tired of my beautiful family. I was insecure about the future of our church, which felt small compared to the fact that I was scared for the future of our country. On top of that, In the last month our dog had died, and we had moved into a smaller house. I was confused and exhausted and heartbroken.
For whatever reason, COVID-19 did not bring about a crisis of belief for me. That is not a brag, just a strange statement of fact. It had been 21 years since the moment on the hillside when I heard God’s voice and realized I believed. 21 years later, and I was pretty sure I believed in God at least once a day every day. But I was in despair because I wasn’t sure I believed in people anymore. I mean, I knew people existed, I just wasn’t sure why, or what we were doing with this gift of life. A lot of despair there.
And though I believed in God, I did not hear their voice. So, I did what many sensible White men did during the pandemic: I started making sourdough bread.
Mar 03, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Conversions - Part 1
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Conversions - Part 1
I had been raised Christian but had left my church as a teenager with no intention of returning to organized religion. I had not been traumatized and did not leave angrily. But I increasingly did not see a place for myself in it. In the intervening time, I self-described as Christian, but spent a lot of time really wondering if I believed God was real at all. It really bothered me that I couldn’t prove God’s existence. I mean, really bothered me. Somehow, in my childhood, I had assumed God was obvious, and when God became anything but obvious, and the church could no longer guilt or scare me into saying I believed, God shifted to an idea or a concept more than a divine being. I was even slightly embarrassed that any of the God stuff mattered to me. It did not seem very cool to care. But I did. I always did. I had no idea what to do with God. And then God spoke.
Feb 24, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Better Not Easier
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Better Not Easier
Earlier this week, I looked dozens of people in the eyes and told them they were going to die. And nobody got mad at me for it. Some of them even said Amen. It’s a day in the life of the church we call Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of Lent – a Christian season of fasting and penitence that leads up to Easter. The whole focus of the day is our mortality, and we spend our time together reflecting on the part death plays in our understanding of life.
Halfway through the service, people come forward and kneel at the altar rail. This is the place where we usually give them communion – that spiritual food and drink that connects them to their eternal life with God. But on this strange day, as they kneel at that same rail, I dip my thumb into a little jar and coat it with ashes, then smudge those ashes in the sign of a cross in the middle of their foreheads. While I do it, I say directly to them, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I do it over and over again. I get good at it – good at getting the right amount of ash on my thumb, on not getting ash all over my vestments, on saying the words as if I mean them, on making eye contact with those who want it. It becomes automatic. But one thing I am realizing each year I do this: It is not getting easier.
Feb 17, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, All The Things We Do Not See
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, All The Things We Do Not See
Some of my beliefs stayed put, some shifted. But my notion of the Democrat as enemy or misguided bleeding heart was forever obliterated. More assumptions shattered. More certainty undermined. I knew less and less what I believed about these people. I was too busy loving them.
Perhaps the best way to maintain strong opinions about people is by not engaging with them. If we can just keep them at a distance, we will know exactly what we think about them. We will not have to question our knowledge. All the things we do not see will keep us safe.
Our lives are mostly set up to reinforce our assumptions and buttress our prejudices. We know what we know first and then create little worlds that support that knowledge. We try to keep the people and things that will make us understand more and know less as far out of sight as possible. Think for a moment about who is not in your neighborhood, who you do not see in your day-to-day life. How does that construct your understanding of what is normal, what is lovely, what is good? Think for a moment about whom your church is set up to serve. Who is left out of that vision? Whose presence would be too inconvenient to the way you understand your faith?
Feb 10, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Just Words
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Just Words
When I was a bully, I didn’t think of myself as a bully. I was just a kid. I was not tall or physically imposing. I did not threaten the boy in any traditional sense. I did not touch his things or steal from him, gaslight or hit him. I was just mean. He showed up to my school in 7th grade and we were together for two years and I was just pointlessly, relentlessly unkind.
I was 12 and I didn’t like him. And I could tell you that I was trying to survive the disintegration of my parents’ marriage, the sale of my childhood home, an alcoholic family system, and my own adolescent hormones and feelings. And all those things would be true. But it didn’t change the fact that I wasn’t kind. That I made some other kid’s life immeasurably worse instead of better.
I was a good kid too, by almost anyone’s standards. I didn’t break rules, smoke, drink, or do drugs. I was on Student Council and Honor Roll. I went to church every Sunday, and was deeply involved in Youth Group. I told jokes and had friends and got along with my teachers – most of whom I genuinely liked. I was honest. If you asked me if I was unkind, I wouldn’t have denied it. I would’ve said, well yeah to people who deserve it – but I’m not hurting anyone, just putting them in their place, knocking ‘em down a peg. Plus if it’s a joke and people are laughing, everyone should just lighten up, right? So I would say withering, mean things to some kid I didn’t like and I would say them directly to his face and people would laugh and I would think it was justified and that I wasn’t really hurting him because it was just words.
Just words!
Feb 03, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, That God of the Old Testament
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, That God of the Old Testament
When we differentiate, we are furthering the idea either that there really are two Gods, or that the one God had some sort of identity crisis or change of heart. Christians do not believe there are two Gods, and we do not believe that somewhere between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, God had a midlife crisis, had a kid named Jesus, got a therapist, bought a sports car and got a new outlook on life. In fact, one of the major recurring themes of the New Testament is the emphasis on continuity – how Jesus serves as a fulfillment of the hopes, dreams, and plans of God. Jesus is not seen as a course corrective or a constitutional amendment to God’s plan but as the human embodiment of the same God we have come to know in what we call the Old Testament.
The term “The God of the Old Testament” is antisemitic.
I understand that is strong language and that if you’ve used the term before you probably had no intention of being antisemitic. So I’m not saying this to shame you – I’m saying it to help solidify in your mind the damage this language causes and help you move past it so that we can begin to adopt new language and with it a better understanding of the God in whom we say we believe.
Jan 20, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Giving Up
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Giving Up
One of the best things about New Year’s resolutions is when you give up on them. I don’t mean when you miss a day, or start to slack: I mean when you just throw in the towel and say, ok this isn’t happening in 2023. 2024 will be my year.
I am ready to do that today.
You might remember in a previous blog I said that I was not going to try to be a better person this year. New Year Same Me, I said. That was essentially my New Year’s resolution: to be myself and not try to get better. But I keep wanting to try to be a better person anyway. I keep slacking and accidentally wanting to be less terrible. Friends, how do I win the fight against self-improvement? I think I’m throwing in the towel. I think I want to be better, whether I like it or not.
Each year, on or around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I re-read King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. This is a letter he wrote while incarcerated for marching against racial segregation in Alabama in 1963. I read to be inspired and challenged of course – but also to be convicted. Let me explain.
Jan 13, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Dumpuary
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Dumpuary
Dumpuary is a term coined by the now defunct pop-culture website Grantland. This movie season runs through January and February, basically post-holiday, pre-Oscar time. It’s during this time that studios dump the movies they wonder why they made, their least promising works. It’s a strange mix of smaller, cheaper movies that might just make some money during a dry moviegoing season, and larger movies that should’ve been a big deal but turned out poorly, and the studio has to release them anyway. Hence Dumpuary. It is just an awful time to go to the movies.
In case you were wondering if we are currently in Dumpuary, the movies that are being released in theaters this week look like this: The Devil Conspiracy, in which a biotech company made up of secret satanists uses the Shroud of Turin to try to clone Jesus and offer him up to the Devil. No, I am not kidding. Also opening is a reboot of the 90’s hip-hop comedy House Party, and an action movie about a plane called, well, “Plane.” This, my friends is Dumpuary.
But I’m a priest, not a movie critic, so we should talk about Jesus – and not the cloned one from that Devil Conspiracy movie.
Jan 06, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, New Year Same Me
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, New Year Same Me
This is a good time to say that Christmas cards are not for everyone, and they are not a status symbol or a sign of particular popularity. It’s like some odd club one gets into. Maybe you decide you’re going to send out cards just this one year. But it’s like the mafia – there’s no escape. Just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in. Mostly we send cards specifically to the people who have sent cards to us. And for the people in our little Christmas card cult, sometimes that’s the only time we all check in with each other all year. If you don’t get a Christmas card from me and you want one, just tell me. That’s how you get on the list.
Anyway, 8 days later we returned home to a big stack of new cards. And it hit me: It was not that a large group of friends had written us off, it’s that this year they just happened to be as overwhelmed and behind as we usually are!
And I have to tell you this was a great comfort to me. There is such joy in finding out I’m not the only mess I know.
Every time the calendar flips from December to January, I hear the refrain “New Year New Me.” This is what follows Christmas. I am supposed to conclude my celebration of hope and salvation by deciding to become a different person, or failing that, a marginally better person. New Year New You. The assumption being that you are constantly in need of improvement. And, hey, maybe you are. But I keep thinking about the ways we measure ourselves and the ways we fall short of our own expectations.
Dec 30, 2022 |
Rector's Blog Throwback Series, The More You Love
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog Throwback Series, The More You Love
As part of our When Love Shows Up Throwback Series we are re-posting this podcast which was originally posted on August 25, 2022
Of course, I loved music, but somehow the number, the size of the CD collection became just as important as actually listening and enjoying the music. I assumed CDs, which supplanted both vinyl records and cassette tapes, would last forever, and that my collection would grow along with me and last me a lifetime. And then, of course, the iPod happened. And then streaming services, and everything changed. Up until very recently I was incredibly resistant to the new ways of listening to music. I still have a CD player in my car – and I still use it! I still love CDs to an unreasonable degree. And my daughter recently got a Discman (I have no idea how) and has been dipping into my collection.
But something has shifted in me in the last couple years. I don’t think about the numbers anymore. I don’t think about collecting. I just listen. In some ways this digital development has freed me to be obsessed not with CDs, but with music itself. As a result, my palate has expanded, and I’m branching out and trying new things – allowing new kinds of music into my ears and heart. I find myself appreciating genres and artists I wouldn’t have given a chance before.
There’s a book on my shelf that says on the cover, “The more you love music, the more music you love.” I have found that to be truer and truer since letting go of the numbers game.
Of course, I loved music, but somehow the number, the size of the CD collection became just as important as actually listening and enjoying the music. I assumed CDs, which supplanted both vinyl records and cassette tapes, would last forever, and that my collection would grow along with me and last me a lifetime. And then, of course, the iPod happened. And then streaming services, and everything changed. Up until very recently I was incredibly resistant to the new ways of listening to music. I still have a CD player in my car – and I still use it! I still love CDs to an unreasonable degree. And my daughter recently got a Discman (I have no idea how) and has been dipping into my collection.
But something has shifted in me in the last couple years. I don’t think about the numbers anymore. I don’t think about collecting. I just listen. In some ways this digital development has freed me to be obsessed not with CDs, but with music itself. As a result, my palate has expanded, and I’m branching out and trying new things – allowing new kinds of music into my ears and heart. I find myself appreciating genres and artists I wouldn’t have given a chance before.
There’s a book on my shelf that says on the cover, “The more you love music, the more music you love.” I have found that to be truer and truer since letting go of the numbers game.
Dec 23, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, Your Perfect Christmas
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Your Perfect Christmas
As you are reading this, Christmas is about to happen. And you are probably anxious about at least one thing, probably several. Some of your anxiety is obvious and conscious and articulable: You still have shopping to do, your house is a mess, people are coming over, what will you wear, how will you cook everything and wrap everything? Some of what you’re feeling is inexpressible but just as palpable: Sheer anxiety shooting through your subconscious, silently running the numbers on all the ways things could go wrong.
I wish you could see the cards hanging in my Dining Room. I wish you could hold in your heart just how beautiful things can be on the day that things go wrong, when they are chaotic beyond imagination.
I am giving you permission to screw up this Christmas. I am giving you permission to overcook something. Or undercook it. Or both. Break a plate. Stain something irreparably. Bring up politics even though everyone knows you should NOT BRING UP POLITICS. You can be too cranky or get the wrong gift. You can disappoint yourself, and you can even disappoint someone else. I know you don’t want any of these things. I know this. It’s not like you’re trying to screw up. You want to get it right and I want you to get it right. And also, even if you do all the wrong things, God is showing up.
I want to invite you to make love the center of your Christmas. Not flawlessness: Love. Not met expectations: Love. Not simplicity: Love. Not idealism: Love.
Dec 16, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, When We Are Talking
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, When We Are Talking
Do I always know what I believe or why? No. No I don’t. I have made a decision to be a religious Christian. Sometimes it makes sense to me and sometimes it doesn’t. For me, religion is similar to marriage in that, I don’t get to be all in only when it makes sense to me or when I feel like it. One day a long time ago I realized I believed in God and that I needed to take that seriously, and I have spent much of my life since then trying to do just that, however imperfectly. And here we are.
I remember one skeptical ex-Christian friend of mine asking me, “But how do you know for sure that you’re right?” And I surprised him by quickly answering, “Oh, I’m not sure at all.” I could be wrong about Jesus. I could be wrong about all of this. But I have decided and am still deciding to try to live my life as if there is a God and that God is Love and that Love has something to do with me. This is the best I can do.
Dec 09, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, When You Have Enough Faith
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, When You Have Enough Faith
I feel like I’m missing some deep sense of certainty. I mentioned this last week, as I opined about how I wish God had given us more certainty. I expressed annoyance that faith, by definition, apparently requires uncertainty – otherwise it wouldn’t be faith. When I was writing that I was thinking mostly about my frustration with God for not making things more obvious.
And, hey, it’s all well and good to blame God for things. But I often find that when I am blaming others or feeling resentful, I’m really just deflecting feelings about my own shortcomings. And I probably do that with God. So today I want to give God a break and turn attention toward myself and my own faith inferiority complex. Which is to say, somehow when the conversation comes to faith, I think I can be doing better. But I don’t really know what better looks like.
Maybe you experience this: the feeling that somehow, you’re supposed to be doing something you’re not, or you’re supposed to be “better” at something without actually knowing what “better” is. That nebulous ideal, better.
Dec 02, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, When I Don't Want to Believe
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, When I Don't Want to Believe
There’s a line in Scriptures that says faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. I just cannot tell you how much I don’t want this to be true. I don’t want to hope for things, and I don’t want to have conviction in unseen things.
For many years this was a big stumbling block for any kind of religious pursuit for me. I believed in God, but I didn’t want to believe in God: I wanted to prove God’s existence and get it over with. At that time it seemed pretty clear to me that loving my enemy and praying for those who persecute me and turning the other cheek and giving money away without any desire for reimbursement, and forgiving without reservation and loving without condition would all be much more doable if I knew without a doubt that there was a God and that God unquestionably wanted me to do these things. I was prepared to be obedient if God was prepared to convince me.
Nov 25, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, Why I'm Religious and Mostly Ok with it
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Why I'm Religious and Mostly Ok with it
Let’s get the obvious reason out on the table first: I am religious because I grew up religious and it feels very natural to me. I left church for a while and stopped being religious. This happened when I decided I could not be part of an organization that wasn’t gay-friendly (which is the language we used at the time). But when I recommitted myself to the Christian faith and found a church compatible with my values, becoming religious again seemed very natural. I was raised with the understanding that believing in God meant making specific and regular time for that relationship a basic part of my life. It was easy not to be religious when I wasn’t sure I believed in God, but once, as an adult, I realized I believed – finding practical ways to practice that belief just made sense to me.
I want to be clear that this is not the same as saying religion is comforting. I hear people say that religion is comforting, and I guess if your goal is to have something that reinforces the notion of life after death and a benevolent force in the universe, then yes that is comforting. It actually is. But my experience of being religious has often been very inconvenient. It is demanding. Being religious has forced me to confront ideas that challenge and upset me, that push and confuse me. Religion means having to deal with and be invested in other people even when I don’t want to.
Another reason I am religious is that I cannot always be spiritual. As I said, I used to be spiritual but not religious. I had a spiritual awakening in my younger days, and it was not in a church – it was on a cliffside trail overlooking a beautiful body of water and it was deeply mystical and a moment of deep spiritual awe.
Nov 18, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, Why I Believe in Jesus for Now
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Why I Believe in Jesus for Now
I want to begin with the easiest, most obvious, truth about my belief in Jesus – and it’s also the one that is the easiest to dismiss. I was raised Christian. My parents were Christians who baptized me as an infant and raised me in a church community. I don’t remember a time in my life when God wasn’t part of the equation. And I don’t remember a time when I took seriously the possibility of being another religion.
I think it’s better to be honest about that. I know saying it out loud opens me up to the observation that if I’d been raised Muslim I’d be a Muslim, if I’d been raised Sikh I’d be Sikh, if I’d been raised Jewish I’d be Jewish, and so on. And that is very likely. It would be really impressive if I could say I studied every single religion in depth and then chose Christianity, but that is not what happened. I did not choose Christianity. I did not find Jesus. Christianity chose me. Jesus found me. This is indefensible, and I believe it. Jesus found me.
This, by the way, is called indoctrination. I would like to write more about indoctrination in the future – I think it is misunderstood and gets a bad rap. But for now I’ll just say, I don’t believe it’s possible not to indoctrinate our children. The question is into what shall we indoctrinate them? I am choosing love. Specifically, I am choosing the magnificent, faithful, gracious, sacrificial love of God that I see present in Jesus.
If I was ever going to be anything other than Christian, I would have been an atheist. For much of my life I have been tempted by atheism. Because many times God seems so implausible. But instead of ever really being an atheist, I keep believing in Jesus...
Nov 11, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, God and Terrible Things
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, God and Terrible Things
Let me say the hardest thing first, so that you can check out early if you want to: I don’t believe God is weak or powerless. And that means I believe God allows terrible things to happen. And I believe that I will never fully understand this reality. That may seem like a copout to you, and if so, that’s fair enough. But let me say this: I find it odd that we think that we should be able to understand God, God’s decisions, and God’s actions fully in order to believe in God. I don’t understand my wife and I sure believe in her. I don’t even understand myself most of the time, but I believe in me too.
We say we’re made in God’s image, and I’ve come to believe our unfailing inscrutability is one of the things that makes us like God. To say God is mysterious may sound trite, but I still believe it. Because I believe life and love are endlessly mysterious, and God is Love, and God made life. We want God to be the answer of so many things, but so often God is the question.
The second thing I want to say is that I believe God plays the long game. This may actually be my least favorite thing about God. But it’s also one of those areas where both Scripture and my personal experience are so consistent, that I have no choice but to believe it. I am writing this in the aftermath of another Election Day – a day that seemed to have enough disappointment in it for everyone. And I notice the yearning that bubbles up within myself each Election Day. Every time, regardless of previous experience, I feel myself wanting the outcome to be clear and definitive. I want justice in one fell swoop. I don’t just want my team to win – I want it to be 100%, as if we could all wake up one day on the same page. I don’t want to hear that line about the arc of the moral universe anymore. I’m tired of it. I want things to be made right – right now.
Nov 04, 2022 |
Rector's Blog Throwback Episode, When Jesus Votes
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog Throwback Episode, When Jesus Votes
As part of our When Love Shows Up Throwback Series we are re-posting this blog post which was originally posted on October 7, 2020
Maybe you tend towards a liberal or progressive worldview. Maybe you have more of a conservative understanding of things. How is Jesus influencing you? How are you allowing yourself to be influenced and shaped by the one to whom you’re tied for all eternity? I don't mean to suggest that a real Christian can’t be either conservative or liberal: we can. I also don’t mean to suggest a false equivalency, saying, “It doesn’t matter how you vote, so long as you go to church!” There are real issues before our country right now: How we get through this pandemic, how we address inequity, how we work for racial justice, just to name three that are already on your mind.
We are called the Body of Christ. This means that when we vote Jesus isn’t just in the booth with us looking over our shoulder: When we vote, we are representing Jesus in this world. If that makes you uncomfortable, good. Me too. We want to recognize this responsibility. We want to recognize our Christian identity fully in our words and in our deeds – and in our votes.
Maybe you tend towards a liberal or progressive worldview. Maybe you have more of a conservative understanding of things. How is Jesus influencing you? How are you allowing yourself to be influenced and shaped by the one to whom you’re tied for all eternity? I don't mean to suggest that a real Christian can’t be either conservative or liberal: we can. I also don’t mean to suggest a false equivalency, saying, “It doesn’t matter how you vote, so long as you go to church!” There are real issues before our country right now: How we get through this pandemic, how we address inequity, how we work for racial justice, just to name three that are already on your mind.
We are called the Body of Christ. This means that when we vote Jesus isn’t just in the booth with us looking over our shoulder: When we vote, we are representing Jesus in this world. If that makes you uncomfortable, good. Me too. We want to recognize this responsibility. We want to recognize our Christian identity fully in our words and in our deeds – and in our votes.
Oct 28, 2022 |
Rector's Blog, Compared To What?
| The Rev. Philip DeVaul
Rector's Blog, Compared To What?
For his entire career, Bob Dylan has sought to present himself as he currently is. And that simple reality frustrates people. Because they compare him to himself. They compare him to what he used to be. They compare him to their own memory of him. And they leave scratching their heads.
And how guilty are we of this? Not with Bob Dylan – but with life! Comparing our life now to what it used to be and then being disappointed that it has changed, even though changed is all it has ever been. Growth, aging, transformation, weathering, breaking down, building back up, being affected by your own life, showing your wrinkles. Your voice changes, your heart and your mind and your beliefs and your ideals and your faith all shift. But then you compare you now to you a few years ago. You scratch your head and say why. You just aren’t like you used to be.
Life keeps happening. And, to be honest, that’s what scares us. We want that singer to sound like he sounded 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago – like he sounded in our memories. We find some strange solace in that kind of comparison. How much ink has been spilled comparing our country now to what we once were?
The church is far from immune to this comparison. Here is how I remember church: why can’t it be like that?
