Sentiments

I am not a particularly religious person. Like, I suspect, other people who were force-fed religion as a child (not that it was onerous; it really wasn't), I grew up feeling that it was an optional part of life. It didn't cause particular delight; it didn't bring particular pain. That it did give pleasure to others, I knew; I just wasn't one of them. I don't know if my mother knew this; if she did, I suspect she murmured and he was an altar boy, too!

But every so often, I hear a sermon that makes me stop, even for just a moment, and think a bit. Today's was one of them. It was given by the pastor. The odds are 50/50 on that, as our church has just two priests in residence; it works out to about 50% that the pastor will do it, about 40% that the other guy will, and about 10% that there will be some itinerant or visiting fellow up there. I tend to like the other guy better, mostly because he tends to have short sermons. But the pastor's not bad. He has a serious tendency to wander away from his topic, or to end, then think of another point he wanted to make, one which may or may not relate to what he just said. But he's almost always sincere when he talks. You don't get the feeling that he's just going through the motions. He means this stuff. I learned a while back that there are services which will offer up 'topic du jour' for priests and ministers, and sometimes you can tell that's where todays talk came from. But he doesn't do that. This stuff, he writes himself.

So when he stood up there today and earnestly said that he thought people should relax a bit during the holiday season, not get so tense about gotta get the Christmas cards out, gotta get the decorations up, gotta buy presents, gotta get the tree, and instead spend a little quiet time thinking about the motivation behind all of this -- the classic Christian reason for the season -- I listened.

And I thought about it.