This morning I went to The Church of Broadway.

At least this is how the experience felt to me, and not a bad one either.

We actually went to MCC Toronto (Metropolitan Community Church) to watch Da receive his outstanding award for Community Services.

An award well deserved too as Da has volunteered with many many many organizations in the past and will resume as soon as he has fully recovered from his surgery.

I was a bit worried about going to the church service actually as I have not set foot inside a church since my teen years unless it was for a wedding or a funeral. I’m Catholic, baptized and all, but definitely not practicing. The service this morning left me feeling humble and hypocritical at the same time. It’s a nice message of acceptance and love and that’s all good, but part of me refuses to believe in the “religious – Jesus died for our sins” part of it. MCC does a very good job of hiding some of it out and to drill the “love-help one another-acceptance” message part instead. AND, they do this in style… Broadway style. Hey, it’s a gay church after all. Lots of singing, even the “modified” Lord’s Prayer was sung. My foot was a-tappin’ while I found myself wanting to join in to sing with the choir even if I didn’t know the hymns, but then again, they project all the lyrics on a big screen for all to see, so there were no excuses… I swear, I was singing at the end of it, it was that entertaining. I was also teary eyed for a big part of it. Today was also their 35th anniversary and as a treat they had Louise Pitre singing for their congregation. Louise is a seasoned Broadway actress and singer. To my enormous surprise, Louise sang YOU AND I, one of my absolutely favourite songs, it is the theme song from the movie Goodbye Mr. Chips. How can anyone resist feeling touched after that.

I most likely will not to return for a service for quite awhile, but at the same time I will not think less of those who do go regularly, I do have a much better understanding of what they go to find there.

My avoidance of MCC Toronto was due to feeling that gay people who went to church were a bit forgetful of how the church had treated them, but I should have realized that the problem was more of a Catholic thing, you know, the church that makes you feel guilty about everything… During today’s service, I didn’t feel guilty one second.

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