My journey to find a spiritual home started when I was a kid living with my mother in Chicago. We would visit different churches of different denominations. Around 1985 my mother visited a Christian Science Church, I continued to attend even when I left St. Louis and was living in New York with my grandparents, but when I aged out of the Sunday school, I stopped attending. After high school, I explored Islam for several years and during college I studied many of the major religions and around the age of 27, I started attending West Central Church of Christ with my mother and son.
While WCCC had a lot of issues, from not allowing women in leadership positions to not allowing musical instruments, but my biggest issue was the rhetoric they used concerning other religions and homosexuality. Listen, I am not gay, but I am very LBGTQ friendly. After attending the West Central for a year, I decided that I loved the congregation enough to join. The current pastor did not use a lot of inflammatory rhetoric and it provided an opportunity to spend more time with my mother. The morning of my baptism I stated plainly that I was not abandoning my principles, that my Grams was one of the kindest people I knew and I know that she is heaven along with some gay people who walk the walk.
I was a member of WCCC when I met my husband, he would attend for special events, but we agreed very early into the relationship that neither would try to convert each other. He is Muslim born and raised, but wasn’t fully practicing, and I was several years into attending church every Sunday and sometimes on Wednesdays. When we were engaged, my pastor made it his business to congratulate me, but to inform me that while we are welcome to use the church for the ceremony, he could not preside over the ceremony because Wallace was Muslim. This wasn’t necessary, it never crossed my mind to have our ceremony at WCCC nor would I have asked him to bless our union.
Fast forward five years the church changed pastors, I had two additional children and getting to church became a chore. I would wake up early Sunday morning, start with my oldest, then get my daughter ready and by time I got to the baby I was worn out, then there was always a reason for Wallace and I to argue. By time I arrived to the church’s packed parking lot, I was worn out and not in the mood to receive any message from the pastor. I went from attending church every Sunday, to maybe making it once a month to eventually not at all. Around this time, we had opted to move into an townhouse while we were looking for a house to purchase. This is when I was starting my joy of cooking (see last week’s post), and since we had more time on Sundays I started making pancakes.
Pancake Sundays meant not only would I make pancakes, but it include fresh fruit, eggs, turkey bacon, hash browns, and other breakfast fixings. Over the years Pancake Sundays evolved over the years, we would add different flavors, I would make paleo pancakes when I was being healthier, and overtime I started making them from scratch. As the children got older and started have activities and games, Pancake Sundays began to change, then Wallace and I became more serious about our diets and couldn’t eat pancakes, so they became less frequent. But as I stopped, I noticed my daughter started making pancakes on Sundays.
Having a tradition that provided time for the family to get together and commune was special.
Here are two of my favorite basic pancake recipes
My favorite recipe I use to make pancakes from scratch
Recipe to elevate your box mix
Deliberately dope 