Nice one!
A bit off topic I know Robert, but why do you go to church as an agnostic? Anything to do with your wife's influence at work here?
I have told this story a few times on the forum, but am happy to do so again:
Susan is a Baptist. I am an Agnostic.
Despite this difference, we met, fell deeply in love, and got married.
When we lived in the Los Angeles area, Susan regulary attended a First Baptist church there.
Although she asked me many times to attend church with her, I almost always declined, only atteding with her on special occasions, such as her baptism, and when her church's choir (of which she was a member) gave a concert.
Her "church family" meant an awful lot to her, and were very supportive of her, especially when I was hospitalized after my stroke.
When we moved up here to Salem, Oregon after I was discharged back home from the hospital, I could tell that she greaty missed her "church family", and urged her to find one here.
She did a little "church shopping", but none of the local churches she visited felt like "home" to her as the one back in California had, from her very first visit there.
She finally gave up her hunt for a church here, in part because she felt badly about leaving me alone for a few hours each Sunday. (I was even less mobile then than I am now, and she worried what I would do if there were some household emergency while she was at church for those hours).
A few weeks after she abandoned her search, I was putting together a schedule of the things I did daily and weekly (meals, meds, exercises, doctor and therapist visits, etc).
When I showed Susan the schedule, she was quite surprised to read, under Sundays, "attend church with Susan".
She asked "why?", and I told her that there were several reasons, including:
1. I knew how much strength and comfort she had derived from her "church family" back in California.
2. I felt very badly that I was one of the main reasons she had not been able to find one locally.
3. Attending a church together would be a good way for us to finally make friends and develop a social life - something we had yet to do here.
4. If the church had a decent choir, I could join it and start working on recovering my singing voice, lost to the stroke.
Susan said that she appreciated the thought, but was afraid it would not work, saying "You will just be a Smart Alec during the sermons".
(well, let's
pretend that she said "Alec", anyway...)
I assured her that I would Be A Good Boy, and she hesitantly agreed to resume looking.
She picked out a church online, and we attended there the very next Sunday.
Susan felt "at home" there right away, and nothing there creeped me out - no snake-handling, no rolling in the aisles "spaking in tongues", or anything like that.
And the pastor struck me as an intelligent and reasonable man, perhaps someone who would not be adverse to discussing religion with a non-believer.
That was in June of 2011, and we have attended there every Sunday ever since, missing a couple when ill or out of town (at TAM).
We joined the choir, and my singing voice is - slowly - coming back.
We have made many, many friends there, and have actually develooped a social life.
And I have developed a nice rapport with the pastor, with whom I have had many respectful discussions about faith, and my lack thereof.
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So yes, Susan indeed had something to do with it.
