If you don’t go to church, do you have a social organization that replaces it? Something weekly, family oriented, permanent, and non-skill/hobby centered?
Is there any particular reason why it needs to be non-hobby-centered? I think that people often use hobbies--sports team, book club, quilting club, whatever--for human connection beyond just the hobby.
A lot of hobbies become exclusive if they require too much skill, or aren’t shared by the whole family, or the social ties to the group vanish if you can no longer do the hobby.
Well, but church is exclusive if you're a different religion or denomination? I'm trying to find out what you're seeking here, without triggering a religious argument. But I just realized that I'm responding as if you posted this in Research, not Lounge. We show movies in the garage.
I’m thinking about Unitarian church, but if the main point of religion beyond bolstering social norms is combatting the fear of the unknown, I don’t know what good it is to a kid. Movie club sounds better. Identify with the hero through film.
I attend church, but I know many who do not. The non-sport or hobby clubs they participate in are the Lions Club, boy/girl scouts (or leaders of), and rotary international. I don't know if you count sports as a hobby, but I know several families who do sporting activities together such as Ironman, bike club, triathlons, and other family inclusive activities like those. And no, you don't need to be in good shape or have great skills to participate in those sporting events, the goal is to have fun, finish if you can, and make friends along the way. Also, because I'm in a community of foreigners, we occasionally get together (regardless of religious beliefs) just to have family fun night, playing games or watching tv and eating lots of food.
No. I'm not really an organized-fun-with-hierarchy kind of person. Part of the reason I chose my two professions was for the social interaction, so joining such a thing would be a chore. If you're asking what we do on downtime, my friends and I go out to dinner or to concerts or to their performances, or we get together for BBQs and dinner parties and movie or TV screenings. None of us has kids, so "family oriented" isn't a factor. We are each others' family.
Nope. But the suburban Roman Catholic churches I went to as a kid weren't very social: go on Sunday, listen to the sermons, say your part of the ritual, get a wafer, more ritual, go home. That's one reason I quit: it was boring.
I would say there is no substitute for exploring what fulfills you socially, and leave it at that. The rest is simple pattern reinforcement; neither good nor bad just process. "Are you happy in your Circle? Expand it. Are you unhappy in your Circle? Expand it." - Master Kei
Meetup.com - pick one. I joined a cribbage group once, but discovered a group of fanatics playing what is a really stupid game for blood. Weather permitting, I play a lot of golf, which can approach a religious experience. The Lord's name comes up a lot, anyway.
This one guy flipped in a total religious conversion. One minute wearing jeans and a t-shirt, then a mere six months passed and he possessed the gross and the faraway, and an evangelical glint in his eye. Every other word said was curl, tube, and the hang ten. Longboard, he dribbled through his nose. ... 'Church,' the word 'church,' your introduction is like an aura, a smell of '78 and fear. I use the sensation to evoke spook, evil, loneliness, scout huts and scoutmasters. But then every Sunday morning I fill the kettle, hum along to a service on the radio. And they'll have me when I am gone. Shit, shit.
What I will suggest is seeking groups of your interests: writing, games, and the list goes on. Then see for yourself the place. Do you feel comfortable? Do you like the ambience? Are people nice? What's important is you find a hobby that fulfils you.
It hasn't been explicitly said, but weekly extended family dinner certainly approaches this. Regular participation in a farmer's market is a very community oriented weekly event - like a low impact fair. I lived in a community that seemed to have spontaneous block parties - people just brought out coolers on Fridays or Saturdays and others followed suit. It was surprising, but welcome. On the local news last night they profiled a rural hardware store that functions as the town's social center - with a group of retired guys that tend to hang out there.
Nope. Closest thing I can think of is work when I'm working out of the house. Hanging out at the coffee shop/bookstore is most of the socializing I've been up to lately.
Does bar-hopping in the neighborhood count? Seems that's what most of the locals do. Not very family oriented, I suppose, unless you have 9000 cousins like I do. Not that I want to see any of them.
No I do not, nor do I want to have such a social organization in my life. I do, however, have a variety of friends and activities that are not tied together by an organizational framework (thank god!).
The church I was forced to attend growing up was pretty much like the one Homer Simpson goes to: A whole bunch of whitebread WASPS (there was one black family in the church, the dad was a dentist and thus One of the Good Ones) who would spend an hour gossiping and backbiting with coffee and the kind of cookies that no one likes, then an hour nodding off or waiting for the preacher to hurry the fuck up because the Game is about to start while the man in front mouthed stale platitudes about Love and Forgiveness. I guess the last time I was semi-voluntarily inside a church other than for tourism or a friend's wedding was back when I was home on leave from language school. There was a local Korean church that offered services in English or Korean, so I figured that since my mom was going to drag me somewhere anyway, I might as well test out my language skills at the Korean service. One cool point: The word they used for "God" was the word for "One" (hana) with the honorific suffix -nim attached to it. Somehow that never came up in my military language classes. But I feel no loss from not having someplace to go once a week. I'm a relatively solitary creature by nature, I tend to have one or two very close friends and that's it. When coworkers whom I'm generally social with try to interact with me outside of lunch or the break between classes, it makes me uncomfortable. I don't like to join clubs because even though we're all bound together by a common interest, people who join clubs get way too intense about that interest and all pissy when you aren't there on Thursday night. Online forums are different, I can spend a lot of time here, but if I need to drop off for a while, I can, maybe even being polite enough to let y'all know I'm doing so, or not. Whatever. I suppose that since I'm planning on retiring to the boonies, I'll probably have to join the local branch of the Church Universal and Triumphant or the Mormons or the Moonies or something just so that when we get snowed in somebody will think to pick up our corpses in the spring, but other than that, I don't see the need.
Only the dentist had a shovel as the brethren pulled Aschendale from the drift. Who was this mysterious stranger in his cabin here on the edge of town? The cabin constructed, the mountain spilled her contents through his windows, the grafitti 'I hate children' still visible in the kitchen zone. They levered the corpse into the pick-up, the right arm rigid, frozen, reaching for survival. Or perhaps something else, perhaps this was his final salute? 'Do you think he was a Nazi?' said the dentist. 'I hope so,' said the chaplain.
Useless fact, but there is a Wikihow article (apparently with 15 pictures) on How to Go to Church. Should be a riveting read. ETA: There are so many reasons this is my favorite line:
The first time I went to a Chruch....I think I committed at least a handful of blasphemous what haves you. Wasn't even trying, just kept the regulars gasping at my sinful behavior. I remember getting on line for some bread chip thing and the priest tried to put it in my mouth, to my horror, so I snatched it from him and ate it without drinking the Holy water or whatever was in that fancy cup. Just one of my horror moments for regulars. Anyway, the point of that was to say I'm not all that social. Even when it came to my future Yogic study I still kept to myself. So, if anything, I don't have a group I go to. Never have. Dunno about the future.
If I may interrupt the flow of this thread, I'd just like to thank the Lord for the wonder that is @matwoolf . Amen.
