The One Where I Eventually Talk About Religion But Not In A Creepy Tom Cruise Way

I saw Knocked Up last night and really liked it. It started out kind of slow and weird but got better. I haven't ever been a huge Katherine Heigl fan but watching her wiggledance to whatever hip hop song is playing during the opening DVD credits? Humma yumma yowza. I actually kinda liked the movie so much (Seth Rogen's character was so sweet!) that I thought about watching it again right after it ended but I didn't because it was 11:30 PM and it had already taken me, like, three hours to watch the movie because I kept hitting pause so I could go to other rooms of my apartment and clean up. Oh yes. You read that correctly. I paused ... a movie ... to scrub the sink. I was also furiously texting with my friend Phoenix and sometimes I couldn't both watch the movie and, well, spell. Shut it. Texting is, like, HARD.

By the way (this, in addition to the weirdness of me being consumed by the desire to scrub, Christina scrub!), if I start eating endive, voting Republican, and listening to country music, you'll definitely know the real Maxine was abducted by aliens and is likely being probed somewhere in outer space. Well. I mean probed where the sun don't shine while IN outer space. That was probably clear and now I sound silly. La la la look over there!

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I threw away the scary shit in my fridge. It was amazingly easy. I think the General Tso's that was sitting on top of, um, one of the pizza boxes (I'm great at collecting but then not actually eating leftovers) appeared to be fossilized. You'll be happy to know all the Fridge Evil is bagged up and ready to go to the dumpster. I probably would've trotted the trash off the back porch and out to the dumpster had it not been dark, the backyard (and by "backyard" I mean "small section of grass that could use a slap and a tickle from some Miracle-Gro") not covered in my neighbors' dog's poo, and *deep breath* if it wasn't winter. Which means the trash will be on my back porch until the spring thaw because today? It was FIVE FUCKING DEGREES. FIVE. With a high of 15 (woo!). There's not a whole lot I'm willing to do when it's five degrees outside, the zipper on my coat is broken, and I have to run a poo gauntlet, even if the pizza in the trash bag appears to be from the 1800s.

Last night was night #3 of Somewhat Crappy Sleep and I began thinking today that I need to purchase some OTC sleeping pills so I can get some damn rest, but have decided to try sleeping with two blankets instead of one. I think I might be just cold enough to not sleep well, which has happened before in my incredibly drafty bedroom that was responsible for the head and chest cold that wouldn't end last winter. So I'm going to give the double blanket thing a try before venturing to Valley of the Dolls where the sleep is sedated-baby solid and bunnies-procreating plentiful but the morning-after drowsiness so bad it's almost criminal.

I'm thinking about trying to find a church to attend. The idea has been swirling around in my head for some time. I was raised Episcopalian and attended church until I graduated from acolyte service as a high school senior, but never felt connected. I was really just there for the post-worship-service cookies. I stopped attending church after graduation and happily embraced the Sunday mornings I once again had to myself.

About five years later, after I'd come out, I attended various alternative churches around River City that were gay-friendly but, again, didn't ever feel like I'd found a place where I belonged. A couple years later, I was invited to my first Wiccan ritual and became a member, for several years, of the witch group that hosted the event. ("Witch group" sounds weird, but I don't really know how else to describe it. I suppose we could've called ourselves a coven but never did.) For the sake of not saying 'group' eightybillion times, I'll just refer to the gathering as The Wheel.

There were generally six to eight of us at a Wheel ritual, during which we would light more candles than I thought possible, sing, update each other on our lives, do a craft project related to the sabbat we were celebrating, and then we would chow down. The gatherings generally lasted a few hours on a weekend day and were often a really nice time. Sometimes I got teased for wanting or needing to bail early to work on school projects (I was still in college full-time then) and I never took it well. I've always had a violent aversion to teasing and it didn't help when the ribbing came from women I respected and admired. I was also the youngest member of The Wheel, which didn't help when everyone was sitting around discussing hot flashes or aches and pains that suddenly started appearing at age 35+. I would stare at my friends blankly (which, *sigh*, led to more teasing) and wonder what kind of hell getting older was going to bring. For the most part, though, I was cherished and loved and I felt, for the first time in my life, as though I'd found a place where I belonged.

Unfortunately, two members of The Wheel, one of whom was partnered with another Wheel member, had an affair and our small group of women (perhaps up to 10 women by that point) separated into two cliques. I tried to remain friends with women on both sides of the group, but it was extremely difficult. To add to the drama, some new people joined The Wheel and infected, if you will, the good-albeit-struggling energy with, well, craziness. Serious craziness. As in one-woman-had-been-committed-more-than-once craziness. Our already-fractured group ceased to meet. A couple rituals were scheduled where only a few people showed up and no other gatherings were planned after that. What had been my home, my church, just ceased to exist. No bang. Just a whimper.

I've been a solo practitioner of Wicca since then, which is lonely and not that fulfilling. I could surround myself in books and candles and incense and celebrate the sabbats as I once did, but remembering The Wheel as it once was makes me sad. Something about not being in a group and yet still trying to worship (I'm not really a fan of that word, but can't come up with anything better at the moment) feels inauthentic. Serena and I get together every once in a while -- by which I mean we've celebrated three sabbats together in the past several years -- but, again, I no longer have what I once did. I feel certain I'll find something suitable again, whether I learn to embrace being a free agent or I find myself in another coven somewhere down the road. I'm just not sure when I'm going to find that connection.

As a Wiccan, my faith is Goddess-based and I'm very wary or plain old don't like a lot of things about organized religion. As I mentioned, I never felt connected to the Episcopal church and cut them off entirely when I began hearing about all the trouble the church was having with accepting gays. I already had a tenuous connection with God (I didn't come into my Goddess consciousness until I was in my late 20s) and wanted something but wasn't sure a church with walls was where I belonged. That is, celebrating/worshiping/whatever you want to call it with my witch friends was my church. Sometimes we met in someone's living room and sometimes we were gathered under the trees in someone's backyard. I liked that nature was my sanctuary. No walls, no rules, no frowning, kneeling, genuflecting, or guilt.

It seems hard to believe that I would even consider going to an 'inside' church again, but I lost a lot of my social connections when I graduated from college and ceased, of course, to be a student leader. The past five years have been difficult, incubatory, full of joy, sorrow, and healing and I've been working hard to figure out who I am now that I'm not a hyper-involved college student living with her parents. Add to that process the natural changes that life brings, as well as turning 30 (which so wasn't horrifying and now, at 34, I can't believe how terrified I was) with changing friendships, relationships, deaths in the family, the feeling that my heart was being ripped out and shredded every time Mack Daddy Smooth headed home after one of his holiday trips to River City, and, well, it kind of makes sense that I shed my social butterfly persona and crawled back inside my proverbial cocoon. A whole lot of sense, really.

One of V & Co.'s clients is a Methodist church and I've been considering attending a service because the parishioners come from all walks of life: rich, poor, black, white, young, old, gay, straight, etc. That said, the church folk mention Christ a lot and I'm simply not and never have been a Christian. I've picked out three other churches in town to try: another Methodist church that is welcoming of The Gay, a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church, and one of the aforementioned 'alternative' churches that I went to several years ago. I'm considering going as early as Sunday. I'm still not sure, though, so I'm glad there's one Sunday a week. If I decide to stay within the walls of my warm apartment with my purring kitties nestled by me on Sunday (especially if it's as cold as it was today) instead of venturing on a faith journey, at least I won't have missed my only chance to find a new spiritual home.