Hugs And Fishes

A few days ago I attended a family get-together. When I arrived, one of my relatives made a beeline right for me.
"You remember that fishing trip we went on a few years ago? You want to go again?" she asked excitedly.
The trip she was referring to, incidentally, was a church trip. Her church was doing it again and she wanted me to come along.
I had gone a few years ago (though I wasn't part of her church), and had had a great time, but as it was an all-day trip I didn't feel like repeating it this year. But since it was nice that she was including me, and since she seemed so excited, I said I would think about it.
However, there was one thing about this conversation that amused me, and it was this: she had had her arm around me the whole time. My mind flashed back to a few years ago, when my grandfather put his arms around my mother and me and invited us to church with him (as I mentioned in a previous post, "The Funeral").
So my family had a "tell," it seemed, a common pattern of body language. If they were "witnessing" to you, they were probably hugging you too.(Though my extended family does not know that I am an atheist, I do get the impression that they are concerned by the fact that my parents and I do not attend church.) It all made me wonder: Did a day on the river count as "church?"

On the way home later, after I had related my unusual experience that day, my mother remarked, "I thought it would be a nice thing for us to go to church with them, but I don't know how to explain to your grandfather that it would be a one-time thing, that we came just to see him."
"You think he would be worried about our relationship with God?" I asked, thinking I already knew the answer.
"Yeah. I mean, I hope there's a god," she said. "I keep praying that God would show me that He's real."
This came as a surprise to me. "I thought you were fairly certain?" I said.
"Maybe I'm just getting older and more uncertain," she shrugged.
I was secretly glad I was no longer trying so hard to find God. My search for answers had caused me a lot of anxiety and frustration over the years. I did not say any of this, though, not wanting to disparage her search for truth.
An interesting thing I've noticed about her, though, is this: When she talks about God, she never hugs me. I am grateful to be a fellow traveler on the journey through life, and not a lost soul causing her to worry.

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