Are You There, God? It's Me, Manager Mom

So, did you do anything fun this weekend? Because I think I managed to turn a dinner party invitation into a one-way ticket to Hell.

The dinner was at my next door neighbor's house, which would normally not be blogworthy except that she also happens to be the priest of the local Episcopal church. There were seven of us there; the others were very funny and cool, and we were having good get-to-know-you cocktail hour chitchat.

We moved from topics like golf, taxes, and pot-smoking neighborhood teens on to politics. Emboldened by a few gin and tonics (you wouldn't think a priest would pour such stiff drinks, but you would be thinking wrong) and never one to err on the side of good judgement, I made a joke about how you weren't supposed to talk about politics or religion at a dinner party but that since we already covered politics, we might as well go there with the religion.

I then proceeded to tell the story about how after The Girl was born, I met with the local priest about having her baptized, and he spent the whole time hassling me about how I never go to church and why did I want to get her baptized anyway when I'm such a horrible Catholic? And then on the day of the ceremony, he forgot to show up, leaving our family cooling their heels in the church until I found him in the rectory more than an hour later.

Midway through the story, I started to have that feeling I have where I'm dreaming of being in a public place and I look down at myself and realize that I'm TOTALLY NAKED, and then everyone starts pointing at me and laughing.

And that freaked me out MORE, so I went on to apologize, and then to babble about how I have issues because my parents used to fight a lot about religion, and the whole time there's a running commentary in my head in which I alternate repeatedly thinking the Lord's name in vain with disbelief that I told my mean priest story to a ROOM FULL OF PRIESTS.

Luckily, one of the other guests made a joke about how it's pretty hard to shock an Episcopalian these days, and my neighbor busted out some cake and everyone was able to move on from my moment of oversharing.

But the next morning I woke up with a slight hangover and a heaping helping of piping hot Catholic guilt, because I was forced to confront what a massive failure I've been in the spiritual guidance department.

I did TRY to take them back to Mean Priest's church a few years ago, but he made us go sit in a soundproof cube area where The Boy (who was three at the time) managed to find a stray gummy worm underneath one of the pews. I can only hope that the rest of the parishoners were more entertained than the priest was by the sight of me frantically digging through the kid's mouth, trying to get the fossilized floor candy before he could swallow it.

Bottom line, it's long overdue for us to give the kids some spiritual grounding. Therefore, I have decided to go church-shopping.

I have high hopes that somewhere within a 10-mile radius, I'll find a nice, progressive, Christian-esque church that won't judge us too harshly if we skip the occasional mass for a soccer game, and that vacuums their floors on a more regular basis.

In the meantime, please feel free to post comments with ideas for my family's salvation. I should have some time to review them on Sunday.