There are a lot of aspects of life here that can seem charming, or entertaining, or absurb, depending on our frame of mind. At night we usually compare notes about how our days went, and today one of my housemates definitely gets the prize for the best story/worst use of his time. Each day, on his department's office door, a prayer is posted. In a corner of the prayer sign, there is a small picture of Jesus. Although he is Jewish, he isn't bothered by this, but he also does not possess the same Christian fervor that his officemates do. Recently, some work-related signs were posted on the door, and the prayer sign was displaced and ripped in places. When this was discovered, his colleagues were not happy. As he was helping to repair the sign, someone realized they had a copy of it on their computer and could print another one out – except that this new one wouldn’t have the image of Jesus on it. So my housemate was tasked with cutting out the image from the original sign and photocopying it onto the new one, which was hung on the door once again.
The fact that three employees dedicated resources to this project, the end product of which brings religion into the public sphere in a way that some might perceive as unwelcome at the very least, and threatening at another extreme, was enough to send us into hysterics at the dinner table tonight.
People talk very openly about faith here, the assumption being that everyone is a believer. I’ve actually been asked by several people if I’m Christian (most of the staff in our building seems to be) and the assistant in our department often checks with me on Monday to see if I went to services on Sunday. There don’t seem to be any Eastern Orthodox churches here, though I have seen Lutheran, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist and Methodist churches, and many signs for Jehovah’s Witness Halls. A sizeable chunk of the population is Muslim, and we have passed by some mosques in the city too.
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Alexis, I thought that I sent you a comment but it didn't take. Oh well. Your Praise the Lord experience is very similar to shat we encountered the year we lived in Alabama. One of the first questions we were asked when we met someone was "What church did we attend?" It was a little bit disconcerting that the assumption was everyone was the same in their religious views. It certainly did not feel like a comfortable assumption even though I know that the question was meant to be friendly...there was always a little bit of shock on their part when we said that we went to the Catholic Church rather than the Baptist Church. There really was no general experience of diversity. Seems so strange. We hope that you are well and that the pace of each day is what you like. Lots of Love Cathy Shannon
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