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edenfalling1. I ended up wearing two hats at church this past Sunday. I'm signed up for coffee hour cleanup all four weeks that my hospitality team is working (which means the last is April 12), but I had previously told our DRE that I was available to do one-off fill-in jobs if she needed me, and she emailed me on Friday to ask if I could be the RE Host for April 5 since it was her week off. And since the two jobs didn't conflict temporally (the one being post-service, while the other is pre- and during-service), I said sure.
Which essentially meant that I stood around at the garden entrance, greeted people, and handed out pamphlets. And then I ended up helping adults make temporary nametags, since there wasn't a hospitality team greeter at that door for a significant percentage of the time, and when there was, said greeter kept getting sucked into conversation and thus missing the arrival of guests. I also ran around to the two workshop classrooms and took attendance, but that was stupidly simple since only seven kids came to church and they were all in one workshop. (Egg-dying and seed-planting beats learning to play the ukulele, apparently...) I guess everyone else was visiting relatives or preparing for Easter egg hunts somewhere else. *shrug* So it goes!
Easter is not really a go-to-church holiday for UUs, though Christmas still is. I am not entirely sure what makes the difference.
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2. Today I stayed an hour late at Not the IRS, since Hill Boss had car trouble and couldn't get to work for the afternoon and evening, and we need two people in the office during all official working hours. I may only be a receptionist, but that still counts as a person. *grin* Randomly, the final client of the evening was somebody I know from church; we were co-teachers a few years ago. I recognized her as soon as she walked in, but I couldn't place her -- I thought at first that she might have been a smoke shop regular -- until she mentioned church and thus gave me the right context.
I am working very nearly 35 hours this week, which is weird after being unemployed/underemployed for so long. I am out of practice at this!
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3. My second batch of peppers started sprouting on Monday. I was not expecting them to do anything until Wednesday, so that was a pleasant surprise. I will try to post pictures tomorrow.
(Okay. Technically later today, but it's still Tuesday until I go to bed. *nods firmly*)
Which essentially meant that I stood around at the garden entrance, greeted people, and handed out pamphlets. And then I ended up helping adults make temporary nametags, since there wasn't a hospitality team greeter at that door for a significant percentage of the time, and when there was, said greeter kept getting sucked into conversation and thus missing the arrival of guests. I also ran around to the two workshop classrooms and took attendance, but that was stupidly simple since only seven kids came to church and they were all in one workshop. (Egg-dying and seed-planting beats learning to play the ukulele, apparently...) I guess everyone else was visiting relatives or preparing for Easter egg hunts somewhere else. *shrug* So it goes!
Easter is not really a go-to-church holiday for UUs, though Christmas still is. I am not entirely sure what makes the difference.
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2. Today I stayed an hour late at Not the IRS, since Hill Boss had car trouble and couldn't get to work for the afternoon and evening, and we need two people in the office during all official working hours. I may only be a receptionist, but that still counts as a person. *grin* Randomly, the final client of the evening was somebody I know from church; we were co-teachers a few years ago. I recognized her as soon as she walked in, but I couldn't place her -- I thought at first that she might have been a smoke shop regular -- until she mentioned church and thus gave me the right context.
I am working very nearly 35 hours this week, which is weird after being unemployed/underemployed for so long. I am out of practice at this!
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3. My second batch of peppers started sprouting on Monday. I was not expecting them to do anything until Wednesday, so that was a pleasant surprise. I will try to post pictures tomorrow.
(Okay. Technically later today, but it's still Tuesday until I go to bed. *nods firmly*)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-08 11:14 pm (UTC)I used to live near a Greek Orthodox church and always liked midnight mass. Not that I went, I just liked watching people with candles streaming back to their cars in the dark. Pretty! Maybe that's what UU is missing; they need to give small children fire. Admittedly, I am seeing this from a spectator standpoint and not that of a parent trying to discourage small children from setting their sibblings alight during the service.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-04-09 04:19 am (UTC)I think it may be related to the different ways the two holidays have been secularized. Secular Christmas is still tied to religious Christmas; they are both centered on community and hope and light in the darkness. And both versions have LOTS of music that pretty much anyone raised in a majority-Christian country learns by osmosis; there isn't any hard and fast line between religious and secular Christmas songs. Secular Easter, on the other hand, has pretty much no relation to religious Easter. I mean, you can stretch a point and argue that both versions are about rebirth/renewal, but for practical purposes they are separate holidays that happen to share a calendar date.
I suspect it's easier to secularize/universalize "birth of a special child who will bring hope to a troubled world" than to secularize/universalize "this one specific dude rose from the dead to save you from your sins," particularly if people don't acknowledge sin as a concept. Pretty much everyone acknowledges that the world has troubles and could use more hope and peace.
Anyway, when we get around to making a big deal of spring, it's at Flower Communion, which is a homegrown UU thing that is very slowly accreting traditions and turning into an actual denominational holiday. :-)
(I am all about candles in the dark at Christmas. That is one of my favorite parts of any Christmas Eve service.)