Unrealistic Expectations
Unrealistic Expectations
My parents actually stayed at my house for a Sunday. This is very rare since Dad is hard-pressed to find a substitute for his failing NI church. So they want to go to a CoC near my house. My mother starts spazzing out about how it has to be 'conservative' and whatever. Too lazy to do their own research, they demand that I find them a suitable church. I don't give 2 craps about the CoCs down here but I have learned to judge the buildings. So I referred them to one on the West Pike. It turned out to be NI, which was good, but they had a different hymnal than the folks are accustomed to and Dad said the preacher seriously sucked. I do not believe it is my responsibility, as a dual credentialed Anglican priest and Lutheran pastor, to be up on what the local CoCs do.
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
Even the children of the debil can love their parents. 
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.----Karl Marx
!!
Before I let my parents figure out that I wasn't exactly a regular church attendee - that is, while I was away at grad school and no longer living at home - I was 'saved' once by the sheer ROUTINE of every typical CoC - because one Sunday morning, when I was still sleeping around 8 AM, MY PARENTS turned up knocking on my door (I had no phone and this was long before computers).
THEY HAD GOTTEN UP AT FOUR AM AND DRIVEN FROM NASHVILLE TO TUSCALOOSA ALA ON SUNDAY MORNING to 'SURPRISE ME' by JOINING ME FOR CHURCH!
THEY HAD GOTTEN UP AT FOUR AM AND DRIVEN FROM NASHVILLE TO TUSCALOOSA ALA ON SUNDAY MORNING to 'SURPRISE ME' by JOINING ME FOR CHURCH!
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
It was definitely a surprise (and I was buck naked too). There was my daddy in a suit and tie and mama in a church dress complete with (I think) her fox stole! (hey, it was the 70s).
Of course, I'd been in Tuscaloosa for several months by then - SEVERAL - but I had not attended church even ONCE.
However, I did at least know where the nearest CoC was located (University CoC) and I took a chance that...
Like every other CoC I knew of in my life to that point, they started services at 9 AM. ( I just checked - today they start at 8:45 and at 10)
Ta Da!
They did!
I passed off my general unfamiliarity with - literally anybody and everything there - by falling back on the known fact that I was rather socially SHY and very QUIET, and they never guessed I had never set foot in the building before.
But who does that?? Who DOES that??? My parents did that.
250 miles, at least 3 and a half hours. Good Lord. And they couldn't maybe WRITE or something first?
Of course, I'd been in Tuscaloosa for several months by then - SEVERAL - but I had not attended church even ONCE.
However, I did at least know where the nearest CoC was located (University CoC) and I took a chance that...
Like every other CoC I knew of in my life to that point, they started services at 9 AM. ( I just checked - today they start at 8:45 and at 10)
Ta Da!
They did!
I passed off my general unfamiliarity with - literally anybody and everything there - by falling back on the known fact that I was rather socially SHY and very QUIET, and they never guessed I had never set foot in the building before.
But who does that?? Who DOES that??? My parents did that.
250 miles, at least 3 and a half hours. Good Lord. And they couldn't maybe WRITE or something first?
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
Shy and Quiet. That was then. This is now. I got better.
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
(and I was buck naked too) were you cute Agricola?
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
Agricola is married sir!
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The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.----Karl Marx
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
You guys - it was about 50 years go - I was single, skinny, and a baby grad student without even a date in sight. Then.
Sigh - not my first apartment, really, but my first by myself. It was a converted single garage without heat or ac, or locks on the windows either, for that matter. But it was affordable (cheap).
That was the first time in my sheltered CoC life that I ever met and got to know people who didn't go to church, BUT were not SKIPPING church either - they didn't even belong to a church to stay home FROM!!
I was astonished. I thought literally EVERYBODY belonged to SOME church, just that some of them simply didn't always GO. But the couple of married students managing the little complex not only didn't go, they didn't even belong to any church at all! I didn't understand that. It was mind blowing. They seemed to be so normal....
Sigh - not my first apartment, really, but my first by myself. It was a converted single garage without heat or ac, or locks on the windows either, for that matter. But it was affordable (cheap).
That was the first time in my sheltered CoC life that I ever met and got to know people who didn't go to church, BUT were not SKIPPING church either - they didn't even belong to a church to stay home FROM!!
I was astonished. I thought literally EVERYBODY belonged to SOME church, just that some of them simply didn't always GO. But the couple of married students managing the little complex not only didn't go, they didn't even belong to any church at all! I didn't understand that. It was mind blowing. They seemed to be so normal....
History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
Re: Unrealistic Expectations
In my dreams I'm still about 28 or 29. Fairly handsome. Good weight. Then I wake up to go to the bathroom and see myself in the mirror and think: well, that was a while ago.