I don’t remember who mentioned that TLC show to me but I finally remembered to add it to my Tivo list the other day. I got a chance to watch it yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It’s fun to watch Cody learn about things like what Shalom means and the JCC. While I did grew up in the South (Shalom, Ya’ll!) I also grew up in a neighborhood with a fairly large Jewish population. I swam at the JCC for years when I was little. I remember going to see Fiddler on the Roof there. In high school I got the radio deejay job because my friend Paige was in Israel for the summer. My second serious boyfriend was Jewish. I came *this close* to converting and a lot of what he was reading at the time combined with the Catholic boarding school I’d gone to my freshman year made me really start to examine organized religion and how I felt about it. So the idea that Cody’d never heard of the JCC until after he met me is so weird!

So back to Shalom in the Home. The episode I watched was about the lesbian couple with the two daughers. I thought it was particularly cool that the daughters had the same mother and had been inseminated by sperm from the same anonymous donor so those girls are actual biological sisters. Not that a family isn’t a family if they’re not biologically linked. I just thought that was kind of neat. This was an interesting family. Both mothers were successful smart women and the daughters were clearly intelligent and creative. There was some stress but in the end the family had worked things out.

I think my favorite part was when Rabbi Shmuley (is that not the coolest name ever?) was very careful to explain that we are all God’s children and it’s not our place to judge any of his children. There are a lot of things I don’t like about organized religion but that’s the kind of accepting love in Judeo-Christianity I can always get behind.

So imagine my delight when the doorbell rang fifteen minutes ago and there was a woman on my front porch with her two children (roughly the ages of supergirl and superboy). The mother was holding a bible. My house is like a magnet for door to door sales but I hadn’t had anyone testifying for quite a while. I’d forgotten to put the “No soliciting” sign back up after Halloween but the sales calls have diminished over the years. Which is good because Cody is sleeping during the day and the doorbell and dog barking interrupts his sleep.

Weirdly my hundred pound dog clawing at the storm door didn’t even seem to phase her or her kids. I was mostly just confused that she wasn’t the UPS guy and she had such a look of compassion on her face that I didn’t have time to come up with a quick excuse. So she started talking about how one should look to the bible for comfort instead of paying attention to the depressing news (depressing because of sins of ommision and maybe warmongering by our elected leaders perhaps?) and talked about the promises of the world beyond. Specifically passages from the book of Matthew. I think people are free to believe in whatever they want but I’m not so crazy about having it peddled door to door or legislated into my life. It always seems to lose its sincerity by then. So I stood there and pet my dog. And looked at her kids who mostly looked hot and tired even this early in the day.

And I quoted what Rabbi Shmuley had said, which I think took her by surprise since clearly we had the messy yard and three headed dog of pagans. Then I told her that my husband is sleeping because he works nights but good luck to her. And she’s welcome to come back tonight when we’ll be roasting a goat and dancing nekkid around the yard. Ok, not that last part. But I didn’t offend anyone and I managed to quote a guy named Rabbi Shmuley and it isn’t even noon yet.

Shalom and Blessed Be, ya’ll!