My First Experience with Organized Religion

My first experiences with organized religion happened in the home of my mother’s mother in Alberta, Virginia. Grandmother Dot was a short, plump powdered woman who always managed to smell of talc and perfume instead of the cigarettes she smoked on the front porch in the evenings. She kept a house as clean as imaginable, decked in the linens and crystal of old southern culture. Sunday mornings were hurried. We were expected to attend church on time. I was scrubbed, primped, and otherwise made ready to be presented to the community at the Bethel Methodist Church. At a quarter to 9:00 a.m. the church bell tower would sound echoing through the community and we would pile into Dot’s car to drive the two or three blocks to the church on the same street as my grandmother’s house. Hats with netting, pearls, dresses, suits, oriental paper fans, and soapy clean floral smells all blended to compose the atmosphere of the Bethel First Methodist Church. Southern politeness, rich accents, nodding, knowing glances, greetings, hurrying to a hard wooden pew, Randy and I were the treasures Grandma Dot brought to share with all the country folk who came to church for just such a surprise. Their culture consisted of clean houses, consistent journeys, weekly routines, visiting, cooking, drinking ice tea from tall chilled glasses with silver spoons for stirring the added sugar, and taking occasional trips to Richmond. Glad they were to hole up in their safe quiet world where children were the silver they polished. Charitable, devoid of sandal or lasciviousness, they immersed themselves in the rich sweetness of southern hospitality, blended with long summer nights, fireflies and humidity. Their hospitality was born of a desire to please and be of service. Church meetings were long, so long on those hard wooden benches. Paper fans would cool the surrounding corseted powdered women while the preacher smiled and convinced us to be more like the beatitudes and other lessons taught in Christian churches. But they knew and worshipped Jesus, working hard to be more like Him in all their actions and words. As a child, I didn’t connect with Jesus. But attending church with my grandparents was the beginning of a questioning attitude toward Christianity. They made Christianity very attractive and I wanted to understand my relationship to the Savior because of watching them. I will always be grateful for their community service and devotion in their Methodist Church.