Applesauce During the Service

I’ve been attending a weekly community service for the past several weeks. No, I haven’t been sentenced to “community service”. I’ve been going to “church”. This is a major move for me for two reasons. The first is that I have had a distaste for organized religion for many years. The second is that I have a pesky habit of staying up too late on Saturday nights to be able to function at a reasonable hour on Sunday morning.

This morning’s experience proves that I still need to work on the latter.

Last night, or maybe technically this morning, I wrote off the idea of going to the service today. After all, I haven’t joined yet and no one would miss me. I’ve been rather low-key about my involvement since I’m still struggling a little with the whole organized thing.

But, this morning, I decided that attending the service would help me get a good start to my week by forcing me to “focus on the forest” for an hour or so. (Good stuff, this welcoming community gathering.) So, I woke up and took a nice long shower to get perked up and headed for the coffee shop.

I made it to the meeting place with a bit of time to spare. (It’s worth mentioning that, in my mind, this meeting place isn’t a church because it’s not Christian.) This is a very nametag driven event. Members each have their own nametag and visitors are encouraged to the use “Hello. My name is:” stickers in the social hall. On past visits, I’ve been able to pick up a bulletin from the usher and quietly take a seat. This morning, I was stopped at the door to the sanctuary and was asked to get a nametag from the welcome desk. (I still didn’t introduce myself as a guest. Ha!)

After writing my name on the tag, I picked up the latest newsletter and made a beeline for a seat. The usher gave me a big smile and a “Good morning, MJ!” on our second meeting of the morning. As any good (recovering) Catholic might, I got comfortable near the back of the house and began reading.

Reading a tidbit titled “Applesauce During the Service”, I wondered what I’d been missing. I knew about the coffee hour, but I hadn’t heard anything about the applesauce. Maybe this was a tradition that was skipped over in the orientation. After all, there is a green congregation program. Nature… Applesauce… Recycling… It would be different, but it could be possible.

It wasn’t until I read “Please hold your applesauce for exceptional moments during the service.” and “Applesauce can also unintentionally create some painful comparisons for the recipients” did I realize that I still need to work on the Sunday morning thing.