I've missed this. I've missed the church being a family, instead of a throng. PLMC is trying so hard to be professional and high-tech but they remain so /not/, and in that they are so sweet and so sincere a thick mist of nostalgia rises and fills my lungs. The children in the church choir playing with their robes and putting their hands in the air and waving them on cue. The terrible interpretive dances during the songs with giant cloth flags and big skirts and a lot of people. The twelve people leading worship with all the songs I somehow still know despite not having gone here for five years. The one pastor with a big fringe and a red shirt under his suit going absolutely crazy dancing on the stage. The video alternating between shots where one camera wobbles and another zooms out of control, sometimes toggling like an epileptic seizure when the song gets intense. The moment between songs when the backstage intercom gets broadcasted over the speakers. The picture slideshows of the church's 80-year history with all those too-familiar acronyms like B2B and HOPE, the walls and the pews I've more than memorised, the circles of members praying over one of their own. It's so organic, so human, I can't help but smile and I'm nearly crying.
At this point I think, maybe it's ok, to believe only because you want to believe, look at all these people, this spirit, it's got to be something. It would be so easy, right now, to sing along again, to go along with everything.
To go along and not think. To not really know. Not really know for sure. No, it can't be that simple. The choir sits down and the pastor ascends to the plastic pulpit and I feel strangely violated.
At this point I think, maybe it's ok, to believe only because you want to believe, look at all these people, this spirit, it's got to be something. It would be so easy, right now, to sing along again, to go along with everything.
To go along and not think. To not really know. Not really know for sure. No, it can't be that simple. The choir sits down and the pastor ascends to the plastic pulpit and I feel strangely violated.