Religious Experience Paper

Professor Dr. Ernst

Val Heike
NICC
16.08.2010 16:41:12

Being a lover of British Comedy I found the need to belong to a church that

would actually welcome me not for the money I either had or might come into or had

the prospects of giving to an organization that I belonged to but simply because I’m a

good hearted individual and see me as just that. The fact that I’m also Gay having

nothing at all to do with the fact that I know Jesus loves “Everyone”!

I was born and baptizes Methodist and raised such till we moved to Waukon,

Iowa and my family joined Saint John’s Lutheran Church, a building where I found

peace lacking. At twenty-six I struck out to find welcome in the people that loved

Jesus in the Catholic Church in Waukon. I was blessed with two older pals that

marked my life in ways that bring me joy and still on the whole I found the church not

the people putting me in mind of a brick empty walled home cold and benign in heart.

God and Jesus only a whisper heard and felt in the hearts of the parish elderly.

I found work at Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church but a ungodly like priest stoled

the thought of a place to love Jesus in from the coldness I found as I was immerging

from the cocoon as it were to the Gay woman I had known I was since I was 8 years

old. This man sewed fear and hate in those I worked with because he saw it for what it

wasn’t

With the last church most present in my mind that of Luray Virginia’s First

Espisical Church I sought out another Espisical church within the area and not to far

from Luther College it was a duel reason I wanted to sing again in a choir and being
lame after being struck for the second time in my life by a car, I needed a church

without a choir loft, and I missed human warmth gained from belonging to a

organization that like PFLAG

First I thought a UU (Universalized church they as well as the Quakers know

people and though I’m unsure don’t judge till they know who we are.) I went one

morning and never found it. The next week I went with a ex-friend to “Little Sheppard

Lutheran Church”, located on the back side of my future school.

I knew I was home even though the fact that the person who claiming to be

Christian chose to judge my friendship wanting and stated that we couldn’t be friends

because we didn’t clique. I felt as if I belonged. You know that warm fuzzy feeling of

just awakening after a long summer’s nap when you’re still sort of dopey and maybe a

bit of drool on your chin.

On IPTV, on Saturday night before “Red Green”, there is a comedy show with

French and Saunders. She plays a vicar. Well anyway they at Little Shepard haven’t

any Stained Glass. Only the beauty of the Iowa weather flows in and either warms or

chills our hearts and bones. Our or my new minister speaks 6 or 7 different languages

and she simply loves. It flows from her as the sun floods the church allowing us to lap

in Jesus within every pore. I have sat in churches that one beheld outrageous and

outlandish panes of splendor and in this day and age when things are outrageously so

expensive it sometimes seems lavish to eat a burger here is a church where the people

make even outsiders feel blessed and warm and at “HOME!”

The church also has a band that plays every other Sunday and I felt like I was

checking out a prospective future home the best or one of the best parts of the church
their isn’t an upstairs and the choir/band is right there on the same level as the

congregation. To place my feeings in a word used by my youngest nephew Craig Ryan

Mathis “Sweet!’

All the members celebrate: children to elderly all are able to receive

communion. I’m sure on the last supper Jesus who had said “Suffer the little children

to come unto the lord didn’t say except when we have wine!”

Sunday will be my first Sunday back in church and I’m glad really glad that I

didn’t locate the Decorah, Iowa Epistipalian before I first was blessed by having gone

to this church. It’s a wonderfully feeling to think Jesus cared enough to allow a place

for me even after my long absence from his presence.