Beanz Meanz Heinz

The sound of Easter!

The sound of Easter!  recorded at the end of this morning's church service at Calvary Episcopal.  Widor's Toccata sounds rather like an electric guitar on my slightly grainy phone mic...

A Happy and Blessed Easter to you all!

            Play the Recording!

The return of the not-so-Zagat guide

Having fully intended to spend the week before my November trip back to the UK giving daily doses of a self-styled "Pittsburgh Church Guide", I failed miserably - producing a solitary and somewhat dour review of one down-town church. 

However, some interesting exploits from the last few weeks have moved me to resurrect (pun horribly intended) the attempt at a guide, and to do so on a more manageable once-weekly basis.  Maybe posting a new reflection/review every Sunday can be my obscure blogging way to mark a weekly Sabbath? (which in itself could lead to the Church of the Blog - "In the name of the Server, the Blog and the Host" - reminding me of last night's tummy-tickling episode of Family Guy, where Peter founded the Church of the Fonz... "heeeeeeey")

First impressions

In tidying my room this weekend, I unearthed a number of old scraps of paper with near-indecipherable scribbles on them.  Actually, they're not exactly scraps of paper so much as whatever materials (donation envelopes, service orders, upcoming event announcements) I managed to land my hands on whilst sitting in church pews.  I could probably bind them together and call the product a critic's note-book (anybody get the song reference?!), but, alas, it still wouldn't contain anything about my first Pittsburgh church experience...

My first weekend in Pittsburgh was a strange one. I'd just left Chicago, and everything I'd known for a year, with the shortest of notice and found myself living in the downtown of a city I had only spent 3 hours in  prior to my move.  So, enterprising me Googled 'Churches, Pittsburgh' and chose the first one that looked like it was within walking distance.  In fact, it turned out to be an Episcopal Cathedral, which, given my Anglican background, boded well.

So off trotted Sarah (an on-the-spur-of-the-moment weekend trip to Pittsburgh) and I in the hope of finding tuneful choirs and warm (but not moist) handshakes.

Here follows my rating, based on the 5 dictionary.com definitions of 'church'

The not-so-Zagat Pittsburgh Church Guide

Over the period of my first 14 months in Pittsburgh I think I have managed to sample 14 different churches (get it? One per month... completely unintentional, I promise).

Today it was new-church visits Nos. 13 and 14 and that realization has inspired me to spend this week blogging about those experiences* in the form of the wonderful Zagat Restaurant Guide. It's probably a little inappropriate to steal their name here as really this is only my own rating of churches in the 'Burgh and, of course, wonderfully subjective.  But thinking about that led me to wonder whether some kind of Zagat-style guide to churches/religious establishments might make a lot of sense?  I'm pretty certain I'm not alone in the search for a spiritual place (although the '14-church-count' may put me in the 'more-difficult-to-please' category...) and it's incredibly difficult to know what to expect and even what to look for when you're new to a place and willing to shop-around...

Logically, the next question would be:  What are my criteria?

And frustratingly I am very vague on the matter, although perhaps the following definition of 'Church' might prove a useful starting point: