my church community when i was a kid was a very supporting, kind and forgiving community in contrast to public school or my town.
At 13 i jumped at the chance to be custodian after school and weekends. They ran a non religious preschool 5 days of the week and rented out the halls for Indian marriages and other religious groups to meet. They did a lot of community work and as did i.
So in that building 7 days a week from age 13-18 for 1-3 hours a day with keys to every room except one, i overheard and saw a lot of things, good and bad.
As far as their religious message, it was vague and unclear to me.
do good and be good, step outside of yourself and your group is how the gist of it came through to me.
i didn’t do much in the worship services except lighting candles or the occasional reading but i helped out a lot in Sunday school teaching younger kids the mythology of the bible or having age appropriate discussions about “deep thoughts” type topics.
i was trusted with a lot and so i did a lot, more than was asked.
value of prayer i understood. say thanks. talk about problems. help me get through this thanks etc. as i believed in inner child stuff (child adult parent) and knew about mythology it was all interchangeable to me.
so that’s where i came from.
i never understood faith belief spirit etc. beyond some synonyms so i just put those aside and saw generally nice people trying to learn to be better than that are.
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