whatever passes for god reaches us in surprisingly diverse ways...

[Michael Eisenstadt]

You don't need Latin.

Memorable church services I have attended:

2 churches in Mississippi one Sunday where we sang
from the shaped note hymnal and ate dismal church
dinner spaghetti in plastic trays. But the sermon...oh
that sermon. Preach was a guest seminary student
from New Orleans who preached on the covenant
(I should have typed Covenant). That if the rainbow
and the covenant were not acceded to by the self,
there was no salvation.  And on and on and more and
more excited. And all in a Brooklyn type accent as
he was a working class New Orleans white who have
Brooklyn accents (actually originally Irish).

and as for burying friends, Cynthia Alexander was
buried from a funeral parlor in East Austin where
the preacher knew her and knew all about her.

He said when he talked to her mother, he would
ask "How's Glamor?" <-his personal name for her.
Those who knew Cynthia knew how right on he was.

Always the worst part of attending Protestant white
bread services for me was dodging the minister 
standing at the door after the service. Those guys
are always desperately trolling for newbies.

Our friend Michelle Mason who used to be a pillar
of her black church in East Austin knows and I 
know too that the best Christian church services
are black Protestant services. Watching it on TV is
way inferior to actually being there in your seat 
surrounded by blacks.