Good memories?

[Ramblin' Jack]

.

[Ashes]

I always love singing hymns. Florida College has been the most positive experience in my life, and saved me from becoming a bitter person. I also enjoyed attending the "mega churches" in Tampa.

My dad and I used to wake up at 6 am on Sunday morning to eat a pancake breakfast before church.

At my high school, we had to wear ugly uniforms, so Sunday church was the only time of the week I could wear feminine clothes.

[bnot]

I'll have to go back to my teenage years. When my family went to black churches, the singings were fun because different groups would perform and they were good. They also served a full meal. I remember looking forward to them, especially when they were at my home congregation. It was entertainment! We were being entertained! We left and joined a white church which had singings but with no groups, and only served stuff like cookies and kool-aid. But what was great about that church was getting out on time! Service started at 10:45 and by 12 o'clock we were saying closing prayer! At the black churches we had long winded preachers and would be there from 11am until 1, sometimes 1:30. I remember being super happy getting out at 12

[agricola]

Oh, I just loved it until I was probably about 8 or 10. After that, I started getting bored, and then anxious because there was beginning to be (or I perceived there to be) some pressure or expectation that we would get baptized. I started worrying more and more about going to hell.

But as a little kid, I enjoyed it a lot. We saw all our friends (because all our friends were church friends) and Sunday school was mostly fun (hey, I LIKED filling out those fill in the blank forms) and we did crafts sometimes and story time - what's not to like?

VBS was fun - it was different, and there was koolaid and snacks, and we made things with popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners, or we made pictures with construction paper and cotton balls.

'Dinner on the grounds' (we didn't call it a 'potluck') didn't happen often, but it was okay when it did, because we were pretty much free to run around, and there would always be some of my favorite things, like deviled eggs and banana pudding. Except mother would lecture me after we left because I would eat so much that I made it 'look like I don't feed you anything!'
I was really skinny as a kid, so maybe she thought people DID think she didn't feed me. But at that age I could eat tons and never gain a bit. Sigh.

I liked singing.

Honestly though, by the time I was ten or twelve I was rarely paying much attention to the sermons - heard them all before. When I did listen, it was usually anxiety producing.

Look, I really TRIED. I thought it was true that the coc was the only place that was completely right - I just didn't like the 'right' because it was awfully mean and stifling - but I thought it WAS right. I thought that I was the one who was the problem.

In my teens I was sent to summer camp, and that just reinforced everything, except in a nice place with plenty of things to do that I liked (horseback riding and hiking).

So - I did like the singing. I just didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to the WORDS, most of the time. I think it didn't bother me that they weren't always 'doctrinally correct', because what the H** was 'doctrinally correct' anyway? It was exactly like the 'doctrine' was logically consistent, and it tended to change at will, so shoot, maybe the songs WERE 'doctrinally correct'. How should I know? Thinking about such things just got a person into trouble anyway, right? Certainly I had no authority - I was a girl.

(GOD I wish my parents had been bright enough to get us out of that group before we were old enough to think about it).

[Turtle]

The only time I was really comfortable and happy in the church is when I was in my 30's. We were at a fairly liberal congregation with lots of women my age who also had young children. We did lots of fun things together. The singing there was phenomenal, with hand clapping.

When my husband retired from the military and got another job, we started attending somewhere else a little closer to our new home, which was an hour away. Nobody said good bye, we were treated like deserters. To this day it makes me sad. But it was nice while it lasted.

[margin overa]

I'll bet most of us have pretty good memories of the singing. I sure do, and my wife and I will often sing those songs for a few hours on a long road trip, much to our kids' annoyance, as they haven't been raised in a CofC. The singing and the occasional dinner on the grounds is about the extent of my fond memories, although there certainly were some people I still think of fondly from that time. I didn't attend closely to the doctrine and such like until I was older, and that was the start of my long slide out the door.

Like a lot of kids in the CofC of that time, I greatly disliked the Sunday and Wednesday evening requirements, which cut into all kinds of activities. I missed more than a few baseball games or other fun things because of having to be at the building for a reheated version of the Sunday morning ritual. What a waste of time that was! It took me some years to get over the melancholy feeling I would get on Sunday afternoons in particular. Sundays are now usually my favorite days of the week.

Church camp was far worse than church itself, IME. I think there were a lot of parents who sent their kids there and saw it more as indoctrination camp; the program was crammed full of exhortations and classes on getting baptized and not using instruments and devotionals 3 times a day, and was just so very tiresome. I hated it with a passion. Not to mention that the kids there were up to all the sorts of things kids get up to at camps everywhere!

[NeverAgain]

I enjoyed other kids my age and playing out in front of the church after Sunday and Wednesday night services while the folks talked. Otherwise, I always chafed in this denomination and longed to get away. Which I did, thank goodness, 30-plus years ago.

Unlike most of you, I always just hated the singing. Caterwauling is more like it. Off key, tempo sometimes unpredictable, screeching and scratchy and just awful group singing, some biddies who thought they belonged in the opera and some bubbas who thought they were doing bass backup for Elvis. Most of us just mumbling, half-heartedly, and half assedly. The dreary, slow ones were the worst. The fast ones were better, but not much. I knew when I was just a kid that we desperately needed a piano or an organ or just something to make the music right, to get us on key, to keep it moving at the right pace.

[margin overa]

The congregation I grew up in had some really good singers, and some good songleaders - better than average midrange tenor voices, and a very decent sense of time and pacing. When my family would visit my aunts and uncles, their congregational singing was absolutely terrible - tone-deaf leaders and congregation, and a strong tendency to make every tempo drag. Oy.

[margin overa]

Florida College has been the most positive experience in my life, and saved me from becoming a bitter person.

I think you're the first person I've ever heard say that. The FC graduates I've met were pretty dismissive or even scathing in their opinions of their alma mater.

[Ashes]

Florida College has been the most positive experience in my life, and saved me from becoming a bitter person.

I think you're the first person I've ever heard say that. The FC graduates I've met were pretty dismissive or even scathing in their opinions of their alma mater.

After 4 long years of attending an angry, dysfunctional high school where 90% of the students probably thought that Moby Dick is an STD (Not surprisingly, most of them didn't graduate.), FC felt like Heaven! It also felt good to get away from several years of drama from my parents' divorce.