Forty things I like about Christianity

1. Very old books
2. The calendar
3. Getting buried when I die instead of burned or mutilated or set adrift or abandoned or eaten by birds
4. Luke chapter 1
5. The abolition of slavery
6. Always believing (and occasionally even feeling) that I am forgiven and ultimately ok
7. Going to church
8. Staying home from church
9. Christmas carols
10. Europe
11. C. S. Lewis
12. Believing that my dog was created by God and hoping that he will go to heaven too
13. Clerical vestments
14. Novels
15. Evensong, and the ability to see morning and evening as holy
16. Cappadocian beards (like the one growing on Oliver Crisp)
17. Russian icons
18. Very old churches with old bones lovingly planted underneath
19. Babette's Feast
20. Gargoyles
21. America
22. The love of names, and the belief that names are holy
23. The sign of the cross
24. All the women's names, hundreds of them, derived from the Virgin Mary (Mara, Marie, Mariella, Marietta, Marilyn, Marita, Maryanne, Maura, Maurine, May, Mayra, Minnie, Moira, Morag, Muriel…)
25. Civil law
26. Italian cooking
27. Having a lot of other people (billions of them) who will always think of me, no matter what, as a brother
28. Hospitals
29. The resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come
30. Codex Sanaiticus
31. Being able to read Milton and T. S. Eliot and understand what they are talking about
32. Old people
33. People who speak in tongues
34. The nomina sacra (see #22)
35. Holy communion (even when I don't deserve it)
36. Kim Fabricius
37. People who argue about very old books (see #1)
38. The habit of seeing normal things, bread and wine and water, as the best and holiest things
39. Learning how to pray
40. The meaning of words like grace and love and steadfast love and lovingkindness and mercy and the multitude of thy tender mercies.