It’s the first of December.  Don’t forget that the December Book Club Selection is not a book but an assignment.  Catch up on some reading, read something light and easy, visit friends and family.  We will have a new book selection for January.  I’m enjoying a Thanksgiving vacation with my family in North Carolina.  Yesterday I took Zach and Hannah to church which, if you don’t know us, is a new and exciting adventure. We’ve never been into sitting, being inside, group singing, praying, group reading, or sinning.  All of these things seem to be synonymous to church goers.  This is merely a personal observation.  Our adventurous spirits did enjoy this outing; plus we got to see my dad sing and it was his church. We got a bit lost when the group would chant something that they all seemed to know or when they would start singing from a book that we found in a book holder in front of us.  God  spoke to them about what they were going to sing and they all knew which page to be on .  No; that’s not it.  You had to follow along in the program which was your cheat sheet for the Hymnal and the Bible. The minister was very good, kept our attention, and had a nice speaking voice.  His sermon was about Luke.  But in reality Luke was never mentioned.  This was a story about Zach and Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was a failure because she was barren and now a burden to Zach who had to feed her.  It was like she was a lame horse and should be shot.  I’m pretty sure that was not the lesson to the story.  I don’t want to give the plot away because that is never the intention at Wild Women Book Club.  Zach went into this secret room because he was a higher up priest. It was such a holy room that only one person at a time could go in and they tied a rope to his leg in case he died in there and they had to drag him out.  A big, ugly, scary angel came to visit him in the secret room. ( This is all starting to sound Mormon to me, but we were in a Presbyterian Church. ) Luckily for Elizabeth, the angel told Zach that Elizabeth would be done with her suffering and humiliation of being barren and he would make sure that she would conceive even though she was old,which was also   going to happen to  the unmarried teenager Mary. And Zach would now be mute.  What?….was Zach saying things to Elizabeth that were not romantic “hey Liz, that robe makes your ass look fat”. Maybe if he kept his mouth shut she would have a better chance of conceiving?  The end.  The minister kept mine and Zach’s attention and we were both feeling pretty bad about Elizabeth’s self worth and suppression as a woman in this story.  We lost Hannah right off the bat.  She chose to read the Bible starting with page one, just like you would do with most books.  I believe her words were  “…this is some scary, intimidating shit…”.  The rest of our day was much dialog about our church adventure, religion, other religions and god.  Is God a thing to fear or a loving, accepting entity? Do we worship Jesus or was he meant to be an example to follow?  Both Zach and Hannah said they would like to read the Bible; but maybe a children’s version.

Going to add a gallery of pictures for you.

This is my church in Montana:

Hiking to Boulder Falls

Boulder Falls

Boulder Falls

Boulder Falls

Boulder Falls

Bear Grass