Question:
First and Lasting Impression What’s your first memory of church?
(Snip!) I was five. I attended Good Friday service at a Roman Catholic chapel attached to a convent: I rememeber the "Stabat Mater" sung by the nuns and the Passion According to St. Matthew read as a drama with the parts of the people read by the congregation. ("Let his blood be upon us and our children.") Then the passion was again re-enacted as the Stations of the Cross. Rather a heady experience for a pre-schooler.
Response:
What’s your first memory of church? Cold water poured on your head during infant baptism?
Oddly enough, I had always been a bit puzzled because I had a memory of being baptized predating my more distinct memory of my younger brother and sister being baptized. Having had to pry the date of my baptism out for some church paperwork of late, I finally found out why: I was not baptized until I was three, which explains why I could remember it being done. C. Wingate
Response:
First and Lasting Impression What’s your first memory of church? Cold water poured on your head during infant baptism? Mommy yelling at daddy to wake up during the sermon? A Christmas concert where someone yelled "Santa has arrived, his reindeers are parked outside" and the jolly one waddled down the aisle to the sound of bells, and kissed various ladies.. Here’s what I remembers back when I was four years old. Image of Church stained glass window – The Good Shepherd At the back of my simple country church was a stained glass window. The picture’s vivid blues and reds depicted Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Somehow, in my theological naivete, I managed to pick up I was the tender lamb, and Jesus was was the Good Shepherd. I didn’t particularly feel lost but I did understand that Jesus gently cared for me and held me close. Kind of amazing knee high to a grasshopper and one little scan of a stained glass window told me one of the great lessons of the faith – Jesus and God care greatly for me. Like the 23rd Psalm The Lord is my shepherd,… He makes me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters. All that was half a century ago. Still the bright image of the Good Shepherd lives strongly in memory and imparts great comfort as it did then the first day I met Jesus the Good Shepherd. An Episcopalian friend, Anglican, once told me she had attended a service in a sparsely appointed sectarian church. Hymn books, bench pews, and pulpit summed up the ecclesiastical decor. She quoted a book on psycho-analysis that said "’Jesus saves’ written in bold red letters on the arch over the pulpit does not hack it." Man the religious animal needs his creeds, Bible and altars. He also needs pictures and symbols to lift his soul heavenward. Images in blazing color of unforgettable beauty that will live with him a lifetime.
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