Gathering

Last night I went for the first time to the monthly young adults gathering that my church holds. The reason I’m only now getting around to it is that they are always on Tuesdays, which until this semester conflicted with the Hill House bible study.

There are many more “young adults” in my church than I realized. I only knew/recognized about a fifth of them, I estimate.

I had high hopes for this event. I thought I’d go and meet people and have a good time. As usual, it turned out to be harder than that.

I was also brought face to face for the first time with something kind of negative about my church. I don’t know if I’ve made this very plain elsewhere, but as churches go, it’s pretty literary and artsy. That’s intentional. Not everyone is directly involved in the Austin music/art/film scene, but quite a few people are, and they are encouraged and liked. That’s all well and good, but the downside is that there’s a palpable intellectualism and elitism. When I say intellectualism, I don’t mean pointy-headed scholasticism. People didn’t show up wearing pocket protectors and chalk dust. (That would be fine by me. That’s a crowd I can easily fit into.)

I’m struggling to put it into words. But, if you’ve seen the movie High Fidelity, I can give you an example. This gathering was like the party that Catherine Zeta Jones’ character invites John Cusack’s character to. Pretentious, stylishly dressed, thinly polite people with lots of opinions.

I guess I’m more of a small-town loving hick than I realized.

Not everyone was that way. In fact, it’s probably mostly in my head. It was just not what I expected. I’m not settled yet on what I want to do or how I should think about it.