Enlightenment.

I don't like Corporate Church; it seems more like a business than a community based on love and accountability.

Someone told me recently that he was more honest and outgoing during his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings than he had ever been during Church. This struck me as incredibly odd at first, but after a moment of thought, it made sense.

I decided, in all my wonderful haste to conclude very dense topics, that Church was fake. It was a place that people went for the comfort of having a place to call "Sanctuary." A place that when they enter, a divinity resides over them that makes all of their problems go away in an instant.

I decided that the people who went to Church for this one and only attribute were assholes, and moved on with my day.

A few weeks later I got a menial job offer at a local church. They needed a section tenor leader and were going to pay pretty well for the position, demanding only three hours throughout the entire week. I started two weeks ago and have been changed in some very important ways.

When I first entered the room full of forty-plus singers, I thought to myself, "Damn it. What did I get myself into? These people look infuriatingly old. *Sigh* Whatever, it's only an hour and a half Clay, only an hour an..." My thoughts were cut off by a swarm of high pitched "Hello!" sounds from Grandma A and B, Great Grandpa C and his son that was still old enough to be my grandpa. In the midst of me deciding whether or not killing myself was a viable option, I actually came to my senses when I noticed something: These people wanted to be here.

Call me crazy, but I didn't ever think about things like that. Church has always been a burden for everyone I talk to. When you ask, "What's up tonight?" people will answer, "Church..." This always made me laugh inside, wishing I could scream, "I don't go, bitches!"

But these people that welcomed me into their shitty choir were pumped as hell to sing. This reduced my apprehension and I actually learned more in that hour and a half than I could have ever imagined. I will never forget my initial reaction when I looked down and saw the next song on our list, "Thy Word" by Michael W. Smith.

When all the older women in the choir saw this, they obviously had orgasmic reactions to the very thought of Michael. I, however, imagined shoving a pencil through his throat so he wouldn't be able to plague my ears any longer.

I hate this song people, I mean I really hate it. If I were allowed to burn and destroy all traces of any song that ever existed, I would embrace Sonseed(Look at 1:10, I almost pissed when I saw her) and kill this one instead. When we started singing it, however, I actually grew up a little bit. The people around me weren't pumped because Michael wrote this song, they were pumped because of what the song had to say.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

It is a shame that those words hold a cliche feeling for most people. Those words are powerful as hell when you apply them to your life, and that is exactly what the people sitting around me were doing. It was sincerely one of the most beautiful songs I had ever heard to this day, and I doubt many others will top it.

Passion that can be found and embraced through a song that I have hated my entire life is an amazing thing. I just never took the time to look past my childish hatred of such a beautiful idea. This is how I feel about Church now.

While I don't exactly like the idea of Corporate Church, there can be enough beauty in its people that make it worthwhile. It just goes back to the idea of being there for God and not for yourself.

I have concluded that I'll never be satisfied when it comes to Church because I'll never fully know how I feel about it. I know that as of today, I have a wonderful group of oldies that love God and want me to sing about it with them every Sunday. I'm going to enjoy this a lot.

I've already learned more than I thought possible.