Religion, Hockey, and Cheaper Places to Get Sauced

I'm struggling with relationships lately, and one of them in particular is to my church.

I love my church a lot more than I thought I could love any church. LullaBelle and I were married there, we have good friends there, people have, or claim to have, a lot of the same values we do. It's a good place. Keep in mind, we each spend a couple of days besides Sunday doing things there, and I spent a year and a half on a Search Committee there recently. It's not that we don't love it there.

But, tonight, we didn't go to a big deal thing there. There were lots of reasons, but the biggest one was that I, we, just didn't feel like it. We had other things we could do, and we did them.

For the second year in a row, they decided to hold a $50 a plate dinner, an auction, and a wine "auction" to raise money for a charity we are involved in. I'm not entirely sure how and why we came to be involved in this particular charity, but it seems worthy enough. My issue is with the fundraising. This dinner has quickly become one of the big deal social things at the church besides being a fundraiser. At $50 a plate, it's not exactly a cheap dinner. The wine comes in at something like $14 a bottle, but is only available in full or half cases. Large chunks of this money goes to the charity, but large chunks don't. And, it's just damn expensive.

Last year, I told any number of people that I thought the cost was too high, and that the wine was, frankly, not worth $13-14 a bottle. It's just not that good of wine. It didn't all sell last year, prompting folks to be peddling and pushing it for a month or two after the fact. If certain generous people hadn't bought up a bunch of it, the church might have gotten stuck with a big fat bill. If we could raise $20,000 (a made up, but close number) by selling $40,000 in wine, why the hell didn't we just donnate $20,000 to the charity? Why spend the difference on a mediocre wine? (At $13 a bottle, I can easily beat this wine with things off the shelf from my local graocerie store, let alone what my wine dealers can get me for that price.) Hell, we could still throw a big party to pat ourselves on the back if we wanted to and save a lot of money.

I know there were others that felt this way, I know the issue was discussed, but, the fact is, this is a community of rich people, and they act like... well, they act like rich people act. The $50 a plate dinner was back, the wine was back, and there was even more of it this time. They have even offered "scholarships" so that people that can't afford a $50 a plate dinner can go.

How wonderful! Your church holds a huge social, fundraising thing, and you can either fork over $50 a person to attend, or you could take charity from some rich folks so you can, uh, go to the, uh, charity, thing. Hmm...

Or, you can skip it to go cover the hockey game (at which point, you realize how convenient it is to be a hockey writer). The hockey game tonight was a fundraiser too, though for a hockey related cause (which I realize is not the same sort of thing as a real charity). The tickets were about $7 each, and I spent $30 on food and beer for LullaBelle and I while we hung out with people that, frankly, don't have all these odd attitudes and expectations of us when it comes to money.

LullaBelle and I recently invited a friend to our church. She's had some bad luck and lost her job, and before that, she wasn't exactly rich. She felt a little odd about being hit up for $50 a plate dinners and cases of over-priced wine. Not exactly a great early impression. That wouldn't exactly go over with any of my non-church friends, in fact. None of them are folks that generally throw around that kind of money. Kind of odd to spend so much time on a place that doesn't present a welcoming atmosphere to people... like me... hmmm...

Last Sunday morning, LullaBelle and I walked through a steady rain to attend church. The building is too hot in the heat, too cold in the cold, and kind of damp. The woman preaching didn't play anything safe; faced with a Republican convention in town, she gave people a piece of her mind. After, the dozen or so of us that were there met in the "parish hall," that is, the little house next door, for coffee and snacks, and everyone wanted to know who we were. They insisted on taking our pictures for their scrap book. Lots of them remembered us, even though we visit about once a year, and haven't been there in a year and a half. Things, and people, didn't seem to be so taken-for-granted there.

Hmm... Gonna have to think about that...