This is actually in response to reverend mommy's recent post about her chicken salad. Read it.

First of all, the recipe sounds delicious.

And she spoke to them in parables...

A friend of mine tells me that she served a church in which the Presbyterian Women put on a luncheon. The dessert was to be an ice-cream concoction that they had been having for years. They delegated the making of the dessert to the young women's circle, who made it perfectly well, but not quite like it was usually made. One of the little old ladies spent 8 hours "fixing" it prior to the luncheon.

PWs do amazing work. They are the backbone of the church in many ways. And yet when people talk about what's killing the mainline church, it's not secularism, it's not cultural relativism, it's not the rise of non-denominational churches, it's not the internal squabbles, it's that. That, that, that.

I am one of the 7%. That's the percentage of Presbyterian clergy under the age of 40. Let me be clear. When the church can't celebrate a person's offering, when the church can't affirm the giving of of one's gifts even when they are different than the church might expect, when doing it right means more than doing it in joyful gratitude, the church is already dead, scattered like so many dry bones, and I don't know what's gonna make those bones live.

I don't suppose my visceral reaction to rev mommy's story has anything to do with the fact that I just spent the lunch hour at a table filled with a group of older folks from various churches, and when I bid them good afternoon as I got up to leave, they looked up when I spoke, so I know they heard me--but they did not speak, they did not smile, they did not nod, they did not wave, they did not do anything whatsoever to acknowledge my existence as a human being. Not a single one.

No, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with that. No, I don't have any issues! Move along. Nothing to see here. These aren't the droids you're looking for.