Since I am on a Rant

I got an email today filled with lots of church humor and this joke in particular spoke to me:
Show and Tell
A kindergarten teacher gave her class a "show and tell" assignment. Each
student was instructed to bring in an object to share with the class
that represented their religion.
The first student got up in front of the class and said, "My name is Benjamin and I am Jewish and this is a Star of David."
The second student got up in front of the class and said, "My name is Mary. I'm a Catholic and this is a Rosary."
The third student got in up front of the class and said, "My name is Tommy. I am Methodist, and this is a casserole."

If you read the previous blog, all about change in the church, you will see why I found this joke funny. This used to be truly the symbol for a good Methodist. I know, I can hear you all clamoring now, every denomination brings casseroles to pot luck suppers. I am not disputing this but for the last twelve years I have been a Methodist and I can tell you that we were very big into casseroles. We took them to everything. Even things we didn't stay for we delivered casseroles of some kind of another. This too is changing and the casserole bringing brigade has diminished over the years. Even our seniors, those who were the real cooks of the church are no longer interested in bringing casseroles as they once did. We just had a senior planning meeting and several of them piped up and said, we are tired of bringing food to lunches. Can't we just chip in?! Well, of course they can! We thought they didn't want to!!!

I have been thinking about this food shift and I believe we aren't cooking so much anymore. I think we have discovered it is much easier to pick it up or eat it somewhere else than it is the buy it, haul it home, cook it up and serve it to people who wrinkle their noses and say, what is this? I had a meeting this afternoon with a group of ladies. We had pizza (I did bake it but it was definitely already assembled when I took it out of the box) and brownies (okay, all I did with those was cut them) and there was some left over. I was sending left overs home when one of the ladies said she didn't need any, she was actually going to cook tonight. Another lady turned to her and said, do you have company in from out of town? All of us thought that was a natural question. Turns out no, all of her family just happened to be home for the day. Ah, we all said, that never happens at our house.

And it doesn't. We are hardly ever all home at my house together any more. This has significantly cut back in the number of arguments, except for those terse notes left on the refrigerator. We communicate all day long of course. The cell phones in my family stay lit up all the time, tracking each other's progress through the day, but visual contact is definitely diminishing. We try very hard to remind each other of who is supposed to be where when, especially who is suppose to be in charge of Sam. The school wishes we could work this particular problem out better as either all of us show up to pick up Sam or no one does. I am not alone in this mess as several of my friends have gone home from church leaving one of their children behind. In all cases one parent thought the other had the child. This is becoming less of a problem, not because they are paying more attention, but because the kids are now old enough to walk home.

A meal is prepared often at dinner time and who ever is here eats it and the rest eat it when they get in. We often eat standing over the bar in the kitchen, having a 'pay attention to tomorrow's schedule' meeting. This is also where we ask probing questions about the location of our favorite jeans, missing keys and the current check book balance. Who on earth has time to make a casserole anyway?

Instead, our people would much rather come to the church, throw in a few dollars and have food waiting for them. Often the food is just as good as we make at home and the aggravation is greatly reduced. This goes for our seniors who are retired as well. We live entirely differently than we once did, as we adapt our worship we also have to adapt our programming.

I wonder what our new symbol will be. Maybe a drive thru carton or a frozen pizza box. Whatever it is, I bet it will be edible.