What luck! The Hub had to work yesterday - the day I was hosting family dinner at my house and my asthma came back with a vengance....something I realized was going on after he left. I located a new rescue inhaler, took a puff and got ready to go to the store as my hands started shaking, etc. All that is a side effect of the inhaler. Sure, it opens up your lungs, but it also makes your heart race, your hands shake and gives you a hyped up anxious feeling like you need to outrun a tiger.

Of course, since I was going to Shoppers Food Warehouse on a Sunday morning about the same time as the After Church Crowd I suppose I needed the adreneline rush just to have the energy boost to get out of the way of all those Crazed Christians with shopping carts.....

The place was mobbed with people in beautiful clothes scowling and running over the heathen ( that would be me) with their carts. Not less than 3 people who had clearly just come from hearing the Word of God ran into the back of me: two gave me "flat tires" vis a vis my shoes and the third ran into the back of my legs - hard enough to cause real pain, though granted, for a person in without back trouble it would probably have been no big deal. None of these people apologized and the one who really thwacked me didn't even notice. While I might have been tempted to say something on another day, I didn't feel like wasting my breath on these people. Plus, since my heart was already working like a house afire from the inhaler I didn't feel like letting myself get angry on top of everything else.

I know it's unpleasant to shop when it's crowded, but it wasn't like I was trying to get in the way of these people. Of course, after awhile my own instinct for self preservation kicked in and I wasn't exactly cowering behind my cart either, and I admit to using my height to try to look less like a target to children pushing carts in there.

** Okay, totally unrelated aside here. I've discovered a new reason to hate being about 5ft 10" tall. If I look for clothes in my size on ebay, especially skirts and dresses which I'm naturally looking for this time of year, it often says "cross dresser" in the description line. And while I had no problem selling one of my sheer Liz Claiborne blouses left over from better days to a drag queen in Georgia it's depressing to feel as if I might get into a bidding war with him over a 4 tiered skirt. Probably the only thing more depressing for a woman than realizing that she has the same taste in clothing and is roughly the same size as a man is when she meets the man in question and he has a better figure!!**

Anyway, I don't know what the sermon was at the local churches, but if it had anything to do with being humble, gentle, or considerate of one's fellowman I don't think it registered. Or maybe I just don't qualify as "fellow" in the eyes of these folks, seeing as how I was wearing sweats, no makeup and don't think I looked especially well. And I'm NOT saying that every single person who just came from a place of worship to the grocery store acted that way - that would be painting with too broad a brush. It's just that I noticed, and so did several fellow "slobs", the behaviour of the spring suited elite. I'm just saying that, if County churches have empty pews this could part of the reason why.

What I got out of it was this: If there really is a "banquet" in heaven then I fully expect to be seated well below the places of honor which imagine I will be reserved for people who had fewer oportunities than me but who served God and Man better than I did....people in Third World countries who held their faith in spite of persecution, or people who proclaimed their trust in God to provide for them from the opening of their tarp in a tent city in someplace like Calcutta or Rio de Janero. I wouldn't even be surprised to be seated lower than the woman who ran into the backs of my legs since I don't know what was in her heart. She could have been blinded with grief over a recent loss. She could be suffering from early onset Alzhiemers and not know she did it. It could have been a momentary lapse in an otherwise spotless life.

But I think if I presented this idea to most of the "elite" grocery shoppers I ran into - or, who more correctly ran into me - it would be a new concept for them. I'm not saying they wouldn't accept it, maybe even embrace it. I'm just saying I think it would be new.

Anyway, if you missed a sermon on Sunday I suppose you got one now. Still, it IS how I feel.