The Awesome God Project™®©

Once again, it’s me, Deanna. I’m here this week to bring you a filler post and all the joys (and hatred) of Easter.

I have trouble with Easter, and my trouble with it is mostly because I have difficulty finding meaning in it without regurgitating the entire manual of Christian idioms and vernacular I learned as a child. All of the natural, knee-jerk phrases I would use to talk about Resurrection Sunday all consist of things that I now hear myself say and think What does that even mean? I was hard-wired to recite and understand events like these like the story of Hanzel and Gretel. And I mean that not so much in the sense that reduces Easter to just a story, but more in the sense that if any seven-year-old at a modern evangelical church were asked to retell either story, both are automatic, integrated stories that can be recited at any moment’s notice.

For family reading, stop panicking that I’ve backslidden (another nicely packaged word with a bow on top that is not heard in any other normal situation) and listen to what I’m saying.

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I’m Deanna. Drew asked me to fill in because he’s sick tried to pawn his writing duties off asked me to be a guest blogger after visiting Christ Church of Cranbrook with him. You can find me at Soul Like a Spider or on Twitter.

After waking up late, almost walking out the door without knowing where I was going, having to stop at a gas station to grab some chocolate milk to keep my empty and noisy stomach from taking part of the festivities, and accidentally trying to go in through the out driveway (zing!), my morning at Christ Church Cranbrook was off to a weird start. (This is the Awesome Project, after all. No post here is complete without some strange and seemingly controversial cultural reference in the title. Zeppelin for the win.)

“I’m probably going to be about 5 mins late.” That turned out to be a lie, it was more like 15.
“Okay. I’m on the right side of the church, about 15 rows from the entrance.”

The campus that the church is located on is peaceful. The driveways are strolling, the parking lots are nicely spaced and are scattered throughout a landscape full of trees, large sections of grass, and old architecture. I mean, I like my megachurches sitting in the middle of a plain, industrial parking lots built for a football stadiums as much as the next

Christ Church Cranbrook in springtime

person, but there is something to be said about the serenity that was immediately present from the environment as I was walking in.

Luckily I walked in while there was singing going on so my awkward search to find Drew wasn’t noticed. I must say, he wasn’t lying when he said the church was beautiful enough to make me want to immediately convert. The sanctuary was thin, not quite as wide as the Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal in Quebec, Canada or some of the old European cathedrals in Amsterdam, Netherlands, but it was long. Everything is built of grey stone, and the paintings on the walls are just stunning.

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