University Station to University Station.

An advantage to getting up early. As badly as it messes up my day if I wake up even a half hour early, it's the only way you catch certain things, these gorgeous sunrises for instance. We're out of the monsoons so things are drying out and there's more particulate matter being stirred up by the autumnal winds. And the later church services at  Christ's Church, Denver start at 10:30 so, to be on time, I need to get up at 6:00 to give my heart medications time to get into my system, and be out at 8:00 in case I have to wait a half hour on the train at Arapahoe Station. 

Since I'm hiking in my old neighborhood around University Boulevard, I decided to visit my old church there. I have friends and many good memories there and am considering returning for an Advent service next month. It's a depressingly rare event. This is only the second time since I moved over three years ago. (I've been there several times, still associated with their library.)

The University campus is always good for a stroll. The building in the foreground, the Cable Building, isn't actually a part of the University, being a monument to the cable industry. It's not immediately apparent how prominent the cable industry is in Denver.

There is that appropriately abstract statue in front of the Cable Building.

But it fits with the powerful and cyclopean aesthetic of the rest of the campus. Here's yet another shot of the Newman Center for the Arts. That's okay....I like the building with it's towers, rose window that actually look like a rose, and sun dial.

Between the college and the residential parts of University Boulevard is a row of high rise apartments.

It's fall and all the non-indigenous plants along the boulevard are in full color.

Cherry Hills is an affluent neighborhood but Christ's Church, in the middle of it all, is a varied mix of a lot of different kinds of people that get along like a family. It's refreshing to experience. It's an Episcopal church but a large proportion of the congregation is Baptist and another is Catholic. Lake Woebegone should take notes.

The emphasis that day was the Feast of All Souls. Many don't realize that Halloween and it's associated All Hallows Day and the Feast of All Souls are not pagan celebrations.... they're Christian from their inception.

Syncretism is almost a human process. If you can't beat them, absorb them. I have no problem with that but I'm necessarily a pagan Christian. Being a werewolf in the church sorta demands it. Syncretism is a fusion of cultures. Halloween is a good example. Many cultures, pagan and Christian, are concerned with people who have died and "gone on". Samhain was (is) one of four seasonal, originally Gaelic festivals marking the end of harvest and beginning of the darker part of the year. It was thought that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest at this time so celebration of relationships with those who had died including defense against the "dangerous dead" was appropriate.

The natural Christian equivalent was remembrance of departed Christians. Canonized saints were Christians who were exemplary in some way, often martyrdom or the performance of miracles. They had special days of recognition, feast days or other celebrations. But for most parts of the Christian church, all believers are considered saints and recognition of all the saints whose lives are not celebrated by special days occurs at the end of October and the start of November. Halloween is "all hallows evening", the night before All Hallows Day.

It was a good visit. I was surprised that, after over three years absence, so many people would remember me. Of course, these were people who stood by me when a mysterious ailment put me out of operation for a month. A church family is true family.

My favorite "Halloween hymn" is Ralph ("Rafe" not "Ralf") Vaughan Williams' "For all the saints" and that was threaded all through the service. It's as if they knew I would be there. And All Saints' Day isn't just for remembrance of departed friends and family. It's a day of welcoming and baptisms.

Advent Season is coming up and I'll be trying to visit again. By the way, in Orthodox Christianity, Advent comes before Christmas.... they're two different things.

After services, I headed back to the train station with a short stop at the main intersection on campus for a milk shake.

That doesn't look like a very old university but keep in mind that Denver was established in 1861 and there was no city here before 1858 when gold was discovered in Colorado. The Denver isn't much older than the University of Denver.

The requisite shot of the Rockies (heh, that phrase is now in my spell checker)....the last time I took an elevator to the top deck of the RTD parking garage, the mountains were not even visible because of the weather. Here are some more shots from up there 

The Valley Highway (Interstate 25) and University Station.

The campus and more mountains 

More of the campus and the mountains. If you enlarge the photograph, you can see Pike's Peak just over the end of the (curved) Cable Building.

Across the Interstate toward Washington Park, which will be a destination for my next station-to-station hike. There's also a good view of the Denver skyline.

Back at Village Center (Arapahoe Station) I saw these shiny grasses. Grasses really are underrated as ornamentals, but when you live on the plains, they rise in prominence. I'm going to guess that these are Miscanthus sinensis, or Silver grass.

It's cool how different light so drastically changes the appearance of things.

Are there places in your area that hold a deep significance for you. It's fun to dig deeper and learn more about them. They make good hiking destinations.

--- Sociology of church ---

                                 The First Baptist Church of Selma at Lauderdale and Dallas

As a Christian, when I walk into a church sanctuary, I feel as though I have entered a court - not a court of law, but the court of royalty. That's not a feeling commonly met with for most modern Americans, but I think it's appropriate for a person who has the core beliefs of the Christian church.

On the other hand, I must admit that churches are social organizations and, as they are today, play prominent parts in the functioning of local communities. It's hard to grasp how most communities function (in the United States, or in the world) if the church (Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, whichever is relevant) is left out of the picture.

There was a time (the Middle Ages) when being excluded from the church (excommunication) was complete exclusion from the majority community. Outside the church, a person was a rogue. That began changing during the Renaissance and the Protestant reformation.

More recently in the United States, in my lifetime, a person was viewed with suspicion and was, at least partially excluded from community affairs if they were not a member of a local church (and, remember, I'm not talking exclusively about the Christian church when I say "church".) Churches provided connection and support structures in the community.

One downside to that in the South was that, if you were not born into a church community, you never fully belonged. You might have friends, you might even have a good life in a Southern community, but you were not ever very intimate with the community like "other people" were.

When I began my professional career in Selma, I intended to visit several churches before deciding where I would settle. My first try was the First Baptist Church at Lauderdale and Dallas (there were two First Baptist Churches in Selma). There I stuck because I found a friendly and accepting group of people there. There were also other advantages. The administrator of the facility where I worked was a member there, as were some of my colleagues, and my doctor.

I'm still a member of the first Baptist Church of Selma at Lauderdale and Dallas even though I attend a church halfway across the country. I actually visited one other church before settling on the Christ Church Episcopal Church across the street but the same qualities decided the issue. Christ Church is a friendly and accepting bunch of people (and diverse - did I mention diverse? and I'm drawn to diversity.)

On my off-time in Selma, one of my activities was helping people find resources they needed to solve serious problems in their lives. I had a standard beginning. I would ask them if they had any family in the area. If the answer was, "no," then I would ask if they were a member of a local church. If their answer to that was, "no," I knew that I had some serious work to do.

A church is an extended family. I'm reticent to call a person a "friend" just because they belong to the same church that you are a member of, but you can generally rely on fellow church members in ways you can't rely on others. They aren't necessarily friend, but they are family. And, of course, like families, some churches are dysfunctional families - so I'm not selling churches, here, as a panacea for life.

What I am doing is pointing out that churches are not just religious organizations. They are very much a part of communities, and to understand the sociology of a community, you have to figure the churches into the equation.

How would your community be different without it's churches? How would it's social structure be different?

If you feel comfortable doing so, talk to a few church goers about the place of their church in their lives. How much of what they say is religious and how much is social?

To see some of the more distressing aspects of church sociology, and I highly recommend this book to Christians particularly, you might want to look up and read "unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters." It's written by two very Christian gentlemen: David Kinnamen and Gabe Lyons. And I will recommend to everyone Eric Berne's "The Games People Play."