Is God in Fargo?

Spirituality is weird and mystical and all that. It's especially difficult for me sometimes because I'm just not a mystical guy. Sometimes I (and, I would guess, people who are like me) feel like I'm un-spiritual or whatever because I don't like to go up into the mountains and eat granola and stare at the sky listening to Yanni for eight days and then come home having had some sort of grand, spiritual experience. It's kind of like Coen brothers movies -- they're great for a lot of people, but they just don't quite do it for me.

Last Sunday at Life Pointe we had a message on serving, and then a church picnic at the park afterwards. During the service, a handful of people were at the park setting things up rather than sitting in the service. Now I ask you -- who was more "spiritual" that day: us good church attenders sitting there laughing at Jamey's jokes as he talked about serving, or the people who weren't there because they were busy preparing the picnic?

I'm not down on going to church -- not at all -- and I definitely believe that there is a mystical element to a connected relationship with God, but I think it's getting "spirituality" backward if church attendance or prayer or whatever is the end-all be-all. They should be the catalyst, not the finish line. At some point, maybe actually doing something in the physical world is as "spiritual" as sitting in a redwood contemplating whatever "spiritual" people contemplate.

Eh, or maybe I just need to re-watch "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" now that I understand the South a little bit.