Last night I took my elder daughter to her first basketball practice of 2006. She had taken at least a year off after a less-than-satisfying experience with a league at the nearby community college, where we’d spent a season of co-ed ball observing the coach’s silence regarding the one boy’s total ball hogging and the other boys’ refusal to pass to any girls. So when the parents of one of Kid A’s soccer teammates suggested joining her Upward team, girls only , and only one hour-long practice per week in the church gym less than a mile from our house, we thought—without checking the hotlink I just provided—it sounded good.
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Your friendly, lovable GoatBoy has a rather complicated relationship with churches. I grew up going to the low-key Disciples Of Christ church with my grandparents (who deserve more than half-credit for raising me) and sometimes my mom. My grandparents were Involved, my grandfather being a deacon and my grandmother teaching adult Sunday School classes and being all up in the middle of whatever-they-call-the old-ladies’-group. It epitomized the artificial extended family that I still commend and admire about smaller churches. Then my grandfather’s cousin (who was by now the pastor’s in-law; remember that) either discovered politics or had politics pushed onto him. Either way, all of a sudden in the mid-late ‘80s our little family church was Too Liberal. Why …
Let me preface by saying that I had the most basic Catholic education growing up: baptism, first communion, confirmation. Mom wanted to give us some religious education so that later we could make up our own minds about how we wanted to worship, if at all. I …
Let me start by saying that I always thought that Uncle H, my mom’s youngest brother, was a fun dude, athletic, good tennis player, etc., and as I got older, a good man and loving father. In …
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