KCS2E3 Transcript

0:00:18 - Allison
Hello everybody and welcome to season two, episode three of Kintsugi Conversations. I am Allison and I'm here with my mom, Cyndi, as always. Hello everybody, welcome, welcome, welcome. It is hard to believe that, like spring is about to spring. It is a sauna, I know, I know I always look forward to spring every year because I'm a summer baby and so as much as I kind of enjoy like fall weather a little bit to get to wear some boots and whatnot, like I love when the weather starts to warm up a little bit after a winter. However, this year, being in the UAE, I have not even really had any winter weather and so it just kind of feels like normal for me. There's not really like seasons like that here. But how are you feeling about spring, mom, because you were in real, real winter this year?

0:01:14 - Cyndi
Yeah, well, I enjoy being in the winter, you know, I guess, since I have only lived in Georgia my whole life. So now you know, getting to live in Boston is different than being able to actually experience like season changes. It's like really, really cool. I like being able to like see the snow, I like walking in the snow. You know, that's just so cool to me. And then you don't get home. I love like spring time, like you said, I like summer too, you know, being able to wear like sun dresses and stuff like that. So you know, I get tired of it being hot and I get ready for the cool weather. Then when it's cold weather, I would get ready, you know, I would switch back. So you know I don't like light or dislike either one to any full extreme.

0:01:58 - Allison
Yeah, yeah, I get that, Of course. With spring coming up, you know everything is Easter, easter, easter like. Even here in the UAE we're seeing little. You know Easter brunches that are being planned and things like that. Even though it's not really like a Christian country, there's so many like expats here from around the world they still do. You know some Easter things around here and I'm sure at home, all of the Easter eggs and Easter stuff is like out everywhere. So it is Easter time and I feel like we can't have a conversation about Easter without talking a little bit about, like, church, because you know, if you're Christian to some degree, easter and church go hand in hand, because that is what Easter is all about is you know Jesus Christ and him being risen from the tomb and all of that fun stuff that we love. So will you be in church this Easter Sunday?

0:02:59 - Cyndi
You know I won't because, again, I think we discussed this back when we were talking about Christmas and the CME Christians. You know I Can't do the whole crowded thing. Those people who come, you know, three times a year or whatever that crowd thing is just, it's just too much for me.

0:03:16 - Allison
So, you know, I rather get my, you know, do my solo praying and you know whatever, at home or watching a service on the internet or on TV, rather than having to deal with the crowd of everybody wanting to be seen for that, you know, one particular day, yeah for sure for sure, I will also not be in church on Easter only because I do not have a church to go to here in the UAE, although you know there are Easter Events and things taken you know that take place here, and I'm sure they do have some Christian churches here I just have not found one, so I will not be in church on Easter.

However, if I was at home, I think that I would go To church on Easter, which leads me into something that I've been dying to talk with you about, and that's that you know we go to two different types of churches. You know what I'm saying, and so I wanted to talk a little bit about, like the evolution of church and like you know what you call these, like new age churches versus old school churches. So, mom, like what kind of church did you grow up?

0:04:27 - Cyndi
in. Well, again, you know we didn't necessarily go to church as a kid, but when we did go to church it was like the old, like Negro spiritual type of church where you know back in the day, well, they say the preacher would hoop, he would do that rise and fall with his voice thing. You know, you have people flailing around giving the Holy Ghost and all that. You know. For me a lot of times the singing was more Uplifting than the actual message sometimes, because just just the whole Boop of the piano and the drums and just the whole. Yeah, I mean those, those old sisters could sing. But I mean you guys, now you have to y'all have this. You know there's piano playing, flute playing and I'm like okay.

0:05:18 - Allison
Okay, so I also, you know, grew up in a church, I guess similar to where you grew up. I mean, we talked already about how, like I wasn't really forced to go to church as a kid. The episode where we talked in detail about church and religion was episode number 12, which was the season finale of season one, and me and my mom both talked a lot about, like our faith journeys and what we were taught about religion and all of that stuff. So in that episode we Talked about how I wasn't forced to go to church as a kid. But when we did go to church, we went to pretty much your Traditional like black southern Baptist church and I have to say black because I have also figured out that like black southern Baptist churches and white southern Baptist churches, while they have some parallels, are not quite the same right.

So, like I'm talking, like you know, if we went to 11 o'clock service, like we probably weren't leaving till 2, type thing, like 3 hours I think, by the time I was, you know, in like middle school, if you didn't necessarily have to dress up for church on your regular day anymore, you could wear jeans and like a dressy shirt. However, you were gonna wear heels. If you were a woman, if you were wearing jeans and on Easter you were not showing up in jeans like you were Exactly just dressed and you know you had the pastor, who was he was gonna break a sweat and you know he was gonna have on the full what is it even called, like the little gowns? It's a robe, yeah, it's a robe. A robe. Yeah, under and underneath he was gonna have on like a three-piece suit. You know.

0:06:55 - Cyndi
Mm-hmm and be soaking wet by the time he's done.

0:06:59 - Allison
And you had the organ and the tambourine and the drums and the whole little you know. Whatever you had the full choir. They were gonna be up on the risers singing. You had clackling and rocking. Yeah, you had fans that were gonna be in the back of the pew because people were going to faint Pretty much every week.

0:07:23 - Cyndi
Somebody, yeah, I think they were turned the air off so that people would get overheated. Honestly, I mean honestly.

0:07:29 - Allison
I used to be terrified of people catching the Holy Ghost and I was like, if that's, I don't want to catch that. Like you know, they say it's a good thing, but I don't want no parts of it. It looked scary. People were feigning Like people had to be carried out, people. It was just a mess.

I mean, it wasn't a mess, it was church, but it was a little of a mess and what I do remember, yeah, when you were a little scary Is that I felt like I never took anything really away from the surface, like I enjoyed the music but I never understood what we had just talked about. For real, you know? Okay.

0:08:04 - Cyndi
That's why I say sometimes the singing would be a lot more uplifting and you get more of a message from the singing than you would the actual message that the pastor was trying to give.

0:08:13 - Allison
Yeah, like I was always so confused, like wait, what? What does this have to do with this? And what does this have to do with my life? You know, I had a hard time applying it, which I guess is what led me, as an adult, to find what my mom calls as like a new age church, and so she still prefers old school churches. But you know, I feel like churches have evolved and now you see a lot of I guess I think we would call them like non-denominational churches where, first of all, they're a lot more diverse and mixed in terms of, like, the races of the people that attend, and it's a lot more casual and it really looks more like an amphitheater, I guess, than a church, like in the way that it is, you know, built and the way that you sit and you know you have you do still have good music, but my mom is not a fan. She's come with me maybe two or three times and you're like I'm not going back to church with you.

0:09:14 - Cyndi
Yeah, it's just boring to me. I feel like I'm at a, I'm at a. What do you call those people? They back in the 70s, 60s and 70s they used to go the flower children playing all the. Where have all the flowers gone?

0:09:29 - Allison
It's just but mom it's so like easy to understand. You can apply it to your life. It's casual, you can come as you are and you're going to be in and out in an hour like Now that.

0:09:42 - Cyndi
I do love. Now I do enjoy the message because the few times I have gone with you, you're right, they do make a great parallel of today and the message that they are giving you. And also you're in there, you know 45 minutes, an hour max and you're done, as opposed to three hours. So I do really really like that part of it.

0:10:07 - Allison
Me too. You need to come on over. Come on over to the New Age church.

0:10:12 - Cyndi
Y'all could guess the people that could sing, but you will learn the words to the songs you will learn the never ending, reckless love of God you will.

0:10:22 - Allison
You will know these songs and you will be. You'll find yourself liking those and I'm good on that.

0:10:28 - Cyndi
Thank you very much.

0:10:30 - Allison
So, though, mom, like you know, obviously I know that nowadays, right, if you go to an old school church and I'm just calling it old school and new school so we can kind of differentiate You're going to see like an older crowd, versus when you go to like the type of church that I go to, you're going to see really people that are, I mean, you'll see some older people, but it's really like 40 and younger. I would say, what do you think has caused, like people to kind of jump ship from those old school churches?

0:11:04 - Cyndi
Honestly, from everything I hear from people, it is sadly the about of time that it takes to receive the word. People are just tired and don't understand why they have to be in church three hours to get the same message that they can get in an hour.

0:11:26 - Allison
I agree. I think a lot of it is like time. I mean like because, to be quite honest, like I have two small children, ain't nobody? No, I don't have three hours to spend, and I do. They do go to the little kids' rooms or whatever. They're not going to even stay for three hours. You know what I'm saying? No one has three hours to go.

And I know, for me I really was looking for like a church community and like somewhere that had other family friendly events and things like that, and somewhere that I could come just like as I am, because every Sunday morning, like I don't have time to get, all you know, dressed up in my Sunday's best.

To be honest, sometimes you know these jeans and this T-shirt and these sneakers are going to be the best I can do, and so I was looking for somewhere that would accept me as I was.

And then, you know, on top of that, I also feel like there's two things that and I don't know if we talked about this in our last episode, but there's two things that kind of also turned me away a little bit from the old school churches.

Number one would be that I felt like they weren't changing with the times in their messages and their beliefs, like, obviously the Word of God, the Bible, is going to say what the Bible says and stand on it's not changing. You know what I'm saying? Like it's exactly. However, I feel like you know it's 2024 and like times have changed and like we have to be more tolerant and more accepting and I don't feel like a lot of the old school churches that I, you know, kind of, was privy to, were changing with the times. And then I also felt like there was, I know that tithing is important, like tithing is something that you are taught to do as a Christian, you should do it, but I felt like there was just such emphasis on like giving money, giving money, giving money, like constantly, and it was like almost overshadowing the actual message itself. You know.

0:13:36 - Cyndi
Exactly, and that was one of the things, too, that pulled me out of church. I felt like they were so hypocritical. You know they would get up and preach about one thing They'd preach about, you know, homosexuality, and you know against premarital sex and about having affairs and all this kind of stuff, and it's the same things that they were doing, though, but you know, they thought I guess they were doing it in the dark, but you know people knew that, okay, the pastor is doing the same stuff that he's preaching against, and so are some of the deacons and the other people in the church, and I just found that to be so hypocritical. Secondly, again with you, I said a long time ago that church had become a big business. I can remember being in a couple of churches, and you know they would take up their collection or whatever, and if it did not meet what the pastor wanted to meet that day, they would actually like lock the doors and tell the deacons, you know, to stand at the doors with the doors locked and not let anybody out, and they would keep taking up collections until they reached whatever amount it was that they wanted, before they would let you leave, and I just could not get with that.

I also had that's like OD and scary. I know I also had a problem with them. You know they always would be like. You know the church is here to help you If you ever need help with this.

That the third Well, you don't have a problem taking my money. But if I come to you and say I didn't help with my light bill or my rent, you all got to have a big meeting and get permission to help me, but you didn't have a have permission to take my money. So it was just so many things that I found that was just too contradictory and too hy and too hypocritical. Also, another thing after your dad passed, you know, I had more people coming to me want to know what he left for me and how much I was giving to the church as opposed to how I was doing. And even if I missed a few Sundays out of church, no one called to see if I was okay. They would tell me the next Sunday that they signed me up for X, y and Z because I wasn't there, Not why I wasn't out there, and I just, I just couldn't do it.

0:15:48 - Allison
I get that, I get that completely. And you know, I think that I don't know it's a shame that it's come to that and I'm sure not every church is like that, you know. I'm sure there are some good ones out there. But you know, like, for me and my family, we just are at a place where, you know, we still believe in God, we still want the Word of God, but we just really are enjoying, you know, our new church home and it is one of the kind of new age, like cool kid. You know churches in our areas, but you know it really is great and it is a place where even on Christmas, mother's Day, easter Sunday, like I would feel comfortable going.

And you know, the other thing that I do like about the evolution of church that I feel like we would we have to touch on is also like the birth of like online church, because I feel like that's not something that existed, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Like you could not watch church online. There was not even an option. And I feel like, especially of course, during COVID, it like boom. But like now, even on like certain holidays, they won't even have in person church because they're like hey, stay home with your family. I think my church it was like fourth of July weekend. They were like, hey, we're not having in person church this Sunday because we recognize everyone's traveling, but we do have a sermon to share and you can watch it online in your convenience.

And so I really especially I like that With our lifestyle. I appreciate the ability to still stay tuned in to our church at home even when we're abroad. And that's something that I think that you should do is, even though you don't really have a church home that you go to, maybe you can find one online that you like, that you like the music and that, because it doesn't even have to be in Atlanta or in Boston, it could be in Texas or whoever Maybe you can find one that you like. I know a lot of people really like Mike Todd's church. That's one that I know a lot of people that I know watch online. So maybe one thing that you would enjoy about New Age Church is the ability to just stream it.

0:18:09 - Cyndi
Yeah, I wish I could just find that happy medium between a message and also the singing that I like. So you're right, I do need to do some more checking into some research to see if I can find something that really hits me where I need to be serviced.

0:18:30 - Allison
I agree, so also wanted to talk with you a little bit about Easter, because obviously that's kind of how we got into the conversation about church. What was Easter like for you as a little girl? Like, did your family have any Easter traditions?

0:18:48 - Cyndi
No, I only remember going to church one Easter, and I remember back then you would go and you would learn these Easter speeches for weeks at a time to get in front of the church and recite it on Easter Sunday, and so I remember doing that, going as a little girl. I was probably maybe about seven or so getting my Easter speech and I got my Easter dress, and I don't even remember my mom taking us to church though, so I don't know how we all went to church, but I remember I'm up there and I had said my little Easter speech and I still remember it to this day, strangely enough, probably because it was when I won it on the time.

0:19:30 - Allison
Tell us the Easter speech. Say the Easter speech. No, we got to hear it. We got to hear the Easter speech.

0:19:36 - Cyndi
No, ma'am, I'll pass on that.

0:19:39 - Allison
But I will get you to say this Easter speech in private.

0:19:41 - Cyndi
I remember my brother coming into the church. They had all the men boys coming in marching up the aisle and they had all these white robes and, girl, I thought it was ghost coming. So I made a B line for the side exit. But I do remember, like I said, saying the little Easter speech. As I got old, as an adult going to church, I remember on Easter they would do like these, I want to say like a mini play, but it wasn't really a play, it was like that rhythmic dancing type thing that they would say to the word.

0:20:20 - Allison
Praise dancing.

0:20:22 - Cyndi
Yeah, I remember that, but I don't know. You know, everything has just changed so drastically now, and so, like I said, you know, church has just become to me more in line of a business than more. So speeding your spiritual soul.

0:20:37 - Allison
Yeah, it's funny because, like I remember that for the most part every Easter for me growing up was always the same, like we had pretty much an Easter ritual and I'm gonna tell you guys what it was so every weekend. I don't think that we have talked on Kintsugi Conversations in detail about, like our blended family, have we? No, we haven't. We did an episode of the duo way back when we were the duo about it, but we need to do one about it on this podcast. But basically, for those of you that may not know, my family is like pretty blended in that my mom was I am my mom's only child. My dad was married before he married my mom and that's where my siblings came from. That's why they are so much older than me. No, I'm sure my sister is gonna have something to say about that comment, but yes, and so I'm also very close to their mom and I've always been very close to their mom, and again, that is a whole nother podcast episode that we need to record, you know, and kind of give an update on. But I would go to make in and stay with them every single weekend, and Easter weekend was no different, and so Nana is Catholic and so I've been to Catholic church and I've been to lots different kinds of churches pretty much, and so Nana is Catholic and so we would wake up on Easter Sunday, most Sundays, and go to sunrise service. You know from her like, with her Catholic church and I by the time I was about six or seven I did not like sunrise service because it's at sunrise and it's very early and I did not like it and it would be cold. You know like I did not like going to sunrise service. But we would wake up and we would go to sunrise service and then after sunrise service I will go back to Nana's house and she would get me dressed. In cause I wasn't really wearing my whole Easter outfit to sunrise service because it was at sunrise, but she would take me back to her house, get me dressed and then you and dad would pick me up because even though we didn't live in Macon anymore at that time, our home church was still in Macon. So you guys would pick me up.

By this time I'm all dolled up in my white stockings, some white shoes, some a little Easter outfit and my hair bows and the whole thing, and I got my Easter basket because I would always get an Easter basket from the Easter bunny on Easter morning. But I got my Easter basket and I've emptied it cause I know I'm about to pick up some more eggs, like along the way. So you guys would pick me up and then we would go to church, you know like Baptist church on Sunday, so we'd sit in there for like four and a half hours. It's Easter and it's gonna be extra long. But I always have like an Easter egg hunt after the service for the kids and so you know I'd get to fill up my basket and then we would go, I think, to grandma's house from church for dinner and I know, every Easter Sunday, like clockwork, I would change clothes when we got there into play clothes.

But I always skit my knee on Easter Sunday playing outside. Every Easter Sunday I would skit my knee and that was kind of our, you know Easter ritual is that you know we would have church and then we would have Easter eggs and then we would have Easter dinner. You know, as a family and I don't know, like you know, I'm such a holiday person and so I love little traditions like that and Easter is a little bit different for my kids, especially because we've been abroad, but I do want to give them kind of a similar Easter experience as they get older, you know.

0:24:15 - Cyndi
Well, I think those traditions are important though, especially like the little, the family aspect of it, even if you do church, like you said, even if you view it as a family online, but still just having the little Easter egg hunt and then like the family dinner I love family dinners, you know. I remember we used to do that, try to do it every Sunday, and that was just a time for us just to all get together and just spend time together, and I miss that a lot.

0:24:43 - Allison
Yes. So you know, even with as much as we travel like no matter where we have been in the world, my kids do always have an Easter outfit they're gonna wear, you know, and I do do an Easter basket for them. Even last year in Japan, both kids got Easter baskets. So this year will be no different and they both got Easter baskets. They probably won't see an Easter bunny here in the UAE. I have to look and see if I can find one.

0:25:08 - Cyndi
We found a lot of salmon. I'm sure Harper won't mind that object.

0:25:11 - Allison
I'm sure Harper won't mind. Yeah, harper was actually terrified of the Easter bunny A couple of years ago when we were home for Easter. I had the Easter bunny come to our house on Easter or right before Easter, thinking that she would enjoy that, and she did not enjoy it at all. Not at all. That's so. If I can't find an Easter bunny, I don't think that she will be horribly upset. Yeah.

0:25:32 - Cyndi
I don't think so.

0:25:33 - Allison
I'm gonna look and check and see Any last Easter thoughts, mom no.

0:25:37 - Cyndi
I just Easter, just like every other big, I guess I wanna say family holiday. It's like Easter and Christmas and Mother's Day. It's like those are the holidays that grown kids and whatever promised their mothers that they would go to church with them. So they have to show up during those times, those three times a year. But I think a lot of the times, though, for Easter, we as humans have forgotten what the day is all about, the true message and the true meaning of the day. So, just like a lot of things in our lives, I would like to see us get back to what the true meaning of the holiday is all about.

0:26:23 - Allison
I agree. A lot of times, I do think that on Easter the Easter bunny and the Easter eggs they kind of overshadow the fact that Jesus Christ died for our sins and then rose from the grave For lack of a better word magic and power of that. So I agree that, whether you're in church or not on Easter Sunday, if you're a Christian, you do have to spend some time not only thinking about that and giving thanks for that, but also, if you have kids, teaching them about that, because it's something that I definitely want my kids to know. I don't want them to just think about how many Easter eggs, because at one point, that's what I was on I'm like where are the Easter eggs though? Because I need these Easter eggs. Yes, all right, guys. Well, we hope that you guys have a happy, happy Easter, however you are celebrating. We will definitely be sharing pictures of the kids' Easter outfits, so be sure to follow us on social media. We are at kensugicom conversations on all platforms. Thanks guys. We'll see you guys next time.