Today, I thought about going to church. It’s the day for going to church. But I don’t belong to a church. I don’t know where I’d go. I was raised Catholic, so would I go to Mass (ensuring, of course, that I made the requisite stop at confession beforehand)? Or would I just head to the nearest place of worship – there’s a United church just around the corner, only steps away – and sit in a back pew and wrestle with feeling like an interloper? Do I go where I know people, or where I don’t?

How would I even begin to decide, to choose?

This will be a task for this week: to figure out how and when to explore visiting places of worship. This will be daunting for me. Introspective reflection on matters spiritual, reading and thinking and praying and reading and thinking about praying and all that kind of personal thing, that does not frighten me. Approaching a community of faith, that frightens me. Not because people frighten me, but because it just seems so, I don’t know, frightening to approach such communities from a position of uncertainty. How does one enter such a community, approach the people within it, when one does not know how to be there – nor even whether one wants to be there? What does one say? Hi, I’m Catherine. I am spiritually confused and am just here to observe. Please excuse my ambivalence.

Also, I’ll need a babysitter.

This stuff is hard. I knew that it would be, but still.