Presbyterians are rather an alien breed to me. Their worship music is different, their services are different, their theology is different, the whole feel is different. Their sermons weren't that different, but everything surrounding them was.

Stephen went to a Presbyterian church before we got married. His family also went to a Presbyterian church, although a different one. I visited a few times. The liturgy of their services was very strange to me.

The music was what was the strangest to me. They have their own particular songs they like to sing and use their own particular instruments. It's been a while since I've been to the church, but what I remember is just four people up there, and no one up there just to sing. There was a guitar and probably a piano or a keyboard. Maybe there were both... No drums that I can recall; what was the fourth person playing? I wish I remembered.

The music was repetitive in melody. Nobody seemed to sing harmony and there were no harmonic parts printed in the booklet they gave us. (I suppose it's called a worship guide.) The songs seemed to all be sung in minor key, and the strangest part: the songs did not resolve.

I believe very strongly in music resolving. I don't mind dissonance in music (I sang jazz, for goodness' sake), but I would really prefer that songs resolve at the end. (In fact, it's incredibly beautiful when a jazz ballad is dissonant clear up to the next-to-the-last note, and then on the last note everything suddenly falls into place!) I do not like to feel as if I've been left hanging in church. It's just...weird. Incomplete.

Anyway, unresolving music seems to be a consistent theme in the Presbyterian churches I've visited.

Other things that are strange... They don't clap. EVER. But I actually understand and appreciate that.

They're very serious--about EVERYTHING about God. I guess I can understand that, but sometimes lighthearted remarks are the only way I can deal on the outside with difficult God questions on the inside. But then again, I can understand that people would handle God questions differently than I do. Stephen's family seems to hit God questions head-on, come hell or high water, and trudge through until they get to the end, no HOW inconvenient the timing. Whereas I try to avoid the hell and high water as much as I can and tiptoe around my questions and poke them a little at a time instead of plowing right into the thick of them.

...Then there are times when they actually throw themselves onto me when I'm not even really looking for them and I'm forced to deal with them RIGHT THERE. I hate that, though; it's usually disastrous, as most of you have seen.

There's something honorable, though--no question!--in facing God questions head on, without fear. Well, maybe with fear, but at least with bravery. Bravery is not something I have ever mastered.

Anyway, no deep, dark questions here, just ponderings, thoughts and observations. Presbyterians are such an interesting bunch.

-Stephanie

Disclaimer: If you're Presbyterian, please don't take offense. They are the only religious tradition other than my own that I have come into close contact with, and I am not trying to accuse you of doing things "wrong," merely observing the very large differences between the traditions. In short, I'm trying to make sense of it.

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