So......First Congregational. What did I think? I think if Jay Gatsby ever went to church it was here. I think Molly is the hippest pastor I've ever met in my life. The day I went, the last Sunday in January, the snow was falling, the radiator clinked and hissed, the wool mittens and sweaters steamed and I listened to a sermon on death and dying and growing old gracefully that was all at once difficult and poignant and funny. And then I was invited down into the underbelly of the church for one heck of a spread. Bagels and coffee and something that filled the air with the tang of curry. I met some really fun people...a man who can compose winter songs from mid-air, a Harvard Divinity School student who will make the most empathetical pastor someday, and a couple of girls who made me laugh and made me welcome.

And then.....we went to Mexico. Where we attended a blessing ceremony held by a Mayan Shaman.

We held hands in the middle of the jungle, ever aware of the proximity of uncountable jaguars and pumas and crocodiles, atop a ceynote where the corpses of great Mayan kings were thrown. The threshold of earth and the underworld. An ancient Mayan dressed in white, chanted something and burned a resin that smelled like sandalwood but came from a nearby tree and he blessed us - me, my husband, two Germans and four Canadians. I understood nothing. But I didn't have to because there a universal meaning to spirituality and sometimes the inability to understand makes things clearer.