Canada Moms Blog

It's Sunday. I'm Not at Church. Are You?

Cross-posted from our sister site, Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

The Future is Wild is playing from the next room, my spouse is reading the newspaper, I am drinking coffee in my jammies. Later we might go for a hike. It's Sunday and I'm not at church.

It's not that I'm adverse to church, or synagogue or any other form of religious faith. It's that I'm not sure how to steer my family toward a life that includes a faith-based day and uncertain that I have the drive to commit to it for the long haul. I keep telling myself, If one-quarter of Americans can do it, so can I, right?

An ongoing Gallup Poll research study suggests that about 40 percent of Americans attend some kind of religious services, while nearly 10 percent consider themselves faithful but rarely show up for services. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (a dang interesting resource for information) demonstrates that geography and type of faith guide how often people attend religious services and the more urban, the lower the percentage of attendees. Again, I find myself just a statistic.

Recently, the Catholic church has gone on a get-butts-in-seats media blitz asking its faithful to return to regular services.The problem is, ditching Church is not a sin. If it ain't a sin, I'm pretty certain my spouse would pick watching the Raiders get pummeled over a couple beers than go to Church.

Continue reading this post over at Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

I really don't want to die on the toilet

I peruse the headlines on CBC.ca, looking for stories that spark a reaction within me so I have something to write for Canada Moms Blog. And usually my thought is, "Man, Canada is so freakin' boring."

This morning my thought was, "How would I want to die?"

There are stories right now about murder, murder-suicide, car accidents, ATV accident, a beheading, and I realized... I'm not putting these on my Favourite Ways to Die list.  Does no one die from a nice restful sleep anymore?

Just in case God is taking notes... just in case he says to people who complain about the way they died, "Well, you didn't put in a special order. How was I to know you didn't want to die on the toilet?" (well, God would never say that because he's omniscient)... just in case, here is how I don't want to die and then how I wouldn't mind dying if I had to die, like if I did not live to see the Second Coming and then get transfigured in the twinkling of an eye or something.

How I don't particularly want to die:

• tied to a stake and then lit on fire
• drowning anywhere but particularly in the bathtub
• suffocating, including being buried alive
• being strangled
• dehydrating, especially in the middle of the desert
• starving, particularly in a concentration camp
• in a plane crash-- I don't need the suspense
• ghost or demon killing
• food poisoning (ouch)
• cancer (double ouch)
• being slowly dismembered
• a parasite eating me from the inside out
• flesh-eating disease
• lightening strike or any electrocution
• skydiving (would look so careless)
• on the toilet

I'm sure there are more ways in which I don't want to die but those are the major ones.

Telling them Poppa died

A few weeks ago, I read When Grandparents Are Sick (a fabulous post by Mary on DC Metro Moms) and bookmarked it, thinking I certainly understood. After all, my soldiering-on-but-beginning-to-fail Father-In-Law was reaching the point where...well, the point where it looked like things were going to change for him.

And then things did change. He died.

Last week was a kaleidoscope of emotions and things to do - going through grief with your spouse is hard enough, but explaining death to seven and four year olds? Not great, either. And tricky. We talked a lot about how people can be so broken that even doctors can't fix them, and how Poppa had been sick for so long that things like walking and breathing were very difficult.