Sunday School

I always hated going to church; it was boring, listening to the sermons and the pastor read the cryptic words of the bible to the congregation. But I loved the people I was surrounded by there. The pastor, John Paterson, was a good man, and at least he tried to make the sermons interesting. Halfway through church, he would call all the children of the congregation forward and talk to us, ask us questions, encourage us to answer them how we pleased; and our answers were never wrong. He encouraged us to think on our answers, to reflect on why we answered those questions the way we did.   He encouraged us to think freely.

After he called us forward, his wife Katherine would lead us back down the aisle and downstairs, where we would have Sunday school. We all sat around the table and did arts and crafts, cutting bits of construction paper as we saw fit and pasting them to white paper, drawing outside the lines, chewing on the erases of pencils. Sometimes she would have us do a project around a passage from the Bible, but sometimes she would let our minds roam and find their peace in those simple projects. 

Katherine Paterson, the famous author of children's and young adult's books. She led then and still leads a low-key life, and she was always a reminder of the kindness found in the dusty corners of old churches, a reminder of the kindness we may find in strangers. At the time, I didn't even realize that she was an author; I didn't realize how truly blessed I was to have her to guide me. By the time I realized this, I had stopped going to church; and I didn't appreciate her sedentary teachings until much later in life. 

I stopped going to church because she stopped teaching Sunday school and her husband John retired as the pastor of the church. I stopped going to church because the new Sunday school teacher once told me that my beliefs were wrong, when I asked if it were wrong that I believed in something other than a final death; if it were wrong that I believed in reincarnation. I felt betrayed, but it was not the church or even the people in the church that betrayed me; it was one person alone who betrayed my trust in the church.

My father always said that church didn't have to be only a place for religious people; it could be a place to reflect, or meditate, or simply listen to the stories of an ancient people. It could be a place to learn people, to know your community, to find solace in the kindness of that community. I stopped going to church because of one person, and it has been so long that I do not feel like I can go back. Not only that, but I feel I have found a church within myself, and that it is no longer truly necessary for me to go to a place of worship to reflect on myself, my life, the things I have done or haven't done. I can do that on my own time. I do, however, miss the guidance of my first Sunday school teacher, and the guidance of the other elders in the church. 

I find guidance in myself though, although much of the time I have to dig for it, and I have to dig deep to find it. I find guidance in myself when I begin to fall asleep at night; when I write; when I am with my peers; when I listen to music; when I spend time with my friends and family. Life is not always as simple as finding something where it should be. Sometimes finding those things takes a little work, a little creative thinking. Sometimes life requires a little thinking outside of the box.