Peace be with you...and you...and you

I've been a real slacker on the fieldwork front. When I got here last fall, I was all raring to go and essentially had the basic research set up in 2 weeks flat. These days, I seem to spend a lot of time futzing around on the puter (having wireless broadband doesn't help), and before I know it, it's time to take the dogs for a walk, and then it's practically dinner time and the day is over.

My other issue is that I cannot set foot into church here. Granted, I never truly enjoyed sitting in a hard wooden pew for 90 minutes to listen to a service I didn't really understand, but there were always fun moments, like when the old ladies pulled out the candy for the entire pew, and when the minister would suddenly switch to English to drive home his point and say things like "Independent thought is at the root of all evil". If nothing else, I always said these services taught me how to sit through really boring seminars without fidgeting too much.

Now the idea of sitting somewhere for an hour and a half without anything to keep my mind of things is plain dreadful. I suppose I could go to the English service so at least I'd understand what they were talking about, but I don't find much comfort in Calvinism. I don't think you're supposed to. Plus, the whole thing is so glum and passive, no matter what language the sermon is in. After the service is over, people practically push you out of the way to get home. You can't tell me they're having much fun either.

Still, going to church is a basic social requirement here. It humanizes you. It also makes you morally trustworthy. It shows you care about what's important in this community. It's basic to doing research with people here. No pressure, right?

So it was against this backdrop that I decided to bite at least some bullet and go to church with the people who are renting the cottage to me. They're Anglicans, but at least I didn't need to lie if people asked me if I went to church on Sunday. So I went. And thought I'd fallen into a cult.

The Anglican church serving this district is in a former tobacconist shop a few villages over. It's small. The altar is in the corner, and three rows of comfortable chairs are arranged around it. The atmosphere is light and pleasant. There are flowers.

People come wearing nice-ish clothes that are not tweed and not just brown and gray. Some of the women even wear -gasp!- pants and NO HATS. Of the three clergy-people there, two were women. They also wore colorful garb.

The service followed an outline printed in a little handbook. You didn't need your own Bible cause the readings were printed out for you (no embarassing shuffle on my part trying to figure out if something is even in the Old or the New testament). There was audience participation and musical accompaniment of hymns. There was no shouting or stern lecturing.

It was short (an hour flat, even with communion). Afterwards, they served tea and biscuits and people were friendly and chatted.

It was so different from the usual Calvinist Presbyterian experience, I was fully expecting some sort of cult-ish brainwashing to get me to sign up and find 10 new members and promise to feed my children only raw vegetables so the devil wouldn't get to them in the form of cooked carrots.

Personally, I still get nothing out of religion (must be a genetic defect I have), but at least I didn't sink into a big black hole of depression from all the contemplation one is forced to do by the Calvinists. Thank God.