Today (Sunday), I visited E's church for their service. This is notable for me. I haven't willingly gone to a church service in over a decade.

I left the Baptist church when I was 12-13 years old. I dropped out of choir and stopped going to services when I realized the hipocrasy of things that were being spouted at me. I was galled that a Preacher, an ordained Man of God, was telling me that honesty and fidelity were important only to find out that he was having an affair.  I questioned Christianity and started researching Wicca and Paganism. Mom had a shit-fit when she went looking through my belongings and found a book by Wiccan author Silver Ravenwolf. To Ride A Silver Broomstick, if I recall. Anyways, she and I butted heads about religion, which only sealed my opinion further.

I dabbled in Shamanism for 4-5 years and recently settled on just being tied to the elements. My personal belief system is similar to that of a Shaman, but I don't follow that exact path anymore. To give a brief explanation, I believe there is a Creator and that Creator has a committee composed of the Elements and the Fates that help them keep balance in Life. Humans are plopped on a sliding scale of Positive and Negative rather than good or bad. When we're born, we start at 0 - Neutral - but events in our lives and our upbringing shifts that one way or the other. I believe heavily in Karma and the concept of Paying it Forward. I don't need to subscribe to a specific doctrine to know that this is what's right for me; in fact, I detest organized religion.

Which is why going to church with E today was notable. For the most part, I enjoyed the service. I loved that there was a lot of music, both hymn and instrumental, and that all of the hymns sung by the congregation were promoting the concept of "Be awesome to each other and the environment". I even dug the fact that they had an organization that they did an offering for in addition to just one for the church. The church itself is open and accepting of all benevolent ideologies, which I grok. The one thing that made me wince is the concept of God. See above paragraph. I simply don't subscribe to the concept of one solo entity being in charge of everything. But that's my opinion and I do realize that my mileage may vary. Still, while it's highly unlikely that I'll become a full-blown member of E's church, visiting was a pleasant enough experience that I would go again if invited.

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The whole reason I ended up at church with him to begin with is because we were going to go to the Barn Dance today at Fermi Lab, but didn't quite get there. After the service, there was a LGBT organization planning meeting that he wanted to attend, so we did. The meeting ran until just after 2pm, which is when the dance started. Instead, we wandered AmSci, then went back to his apartment (with me falling asleep in the car on the way back) and watched most of the first season of The Walking Dead. I'm not as hooked as Mestopho is, but it was good to watch and the zombies are hella cool to look at. I made it back to DeKalb roughly an hour ago and am now contemplating sleep soon.