There is no feeling to describe going to the church of your childhood, and hearing one of the worst sermons you've ever heard in your life. I'm sitting there thinking, this is why I don't go to catholic church.

In a good way, I feel totally vindicated in deciding to worship at the church that I do, and in a bad way, I cannot help but feel sadness that I cannot worship at the church of my childhood.

Maybe I just had priests growing up who were black sheep, different from the typical catholic church priest. My childhood priests preached great sermons, preached the biblical text and showed how to relate it and make the ancient word of God viable in our current life.

My childhood priests never ever politicked from the pulpit in the form of a sermon. They preached the word of God straight from the biblical text, much like a presbyterian priest does. And when my presbyterian minister tried to politic from the pulpit, he gets dinged for it by the congregation.

Okay, so here's what the priest at the 8:45 am mass sermonised about today.

The old testament text was the Genesis story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Sarah couldn't get pregnant, so she asked Abraham to produce a child with Hagar. Hagar starts getting all haughty and everything, so Sarah throws her out. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, and according to one recent author, Abraham through the birth of Ishmael gave birth to the Arabic race.

There are lots of way to preach this problematic piece of old testament text. Here's what the catholic priest chose to talk about.

1) the pro-life position
2) why the catholic church opposes not only stem cell research, but genetic engineering and research science in general, because it's tinkering with God's plan for us.
3) why luxury is bad and poverty is better.

How he got these three points from the Genesis story, "only God knows", but then he went on.

Tomorrow the church is having a mass for Father Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, so the priest talked about that.

The priest He was in Rome for the canonization of Father Escriva de Balaguer and had a ticket to even go to the canonization, but he didn't go because 1) it was cold in Rome since it was October and 2) Father Escriva de Balaguer is a controversial saint.

The priest decided to take the train the Milan instead. But he concluded his sermon by saying that what he liked about now Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer was his emphasis on the centrality of Eucharistic thought.

Thank your Mr. Priest.

My catholic roots are showing. There's a big catholic church six blocks from where I now live. It must have a big congregation because it has four services on Sunday. That's a lot.

Anyway, I checked it out yesterday on the way home from my own church's Wednesday service, where I lit a candle for my grandma and asked the congregation to pray for her health.

But old childhood habits die hard, so I'm off to the 8:45 am service at St. Anne's. They had an earlier service at 6:30 am, but that was way too early for me.

I'm going to have get used to attending catholic services again anyway, because if and when I fly home I'm probably going to be attending catholic mass ever yday with the family.

The family back home is very, very catholic, and yes they know I attend a protestant church, which is so sinful and scandalous in their eyes. But they don't bug me about it too much, because I've always attended catholic services with the family when I'm home. I just don't take the communion, which totally freaks them out as well, but I think they're just happy knowing I'm at church with them.

It's 94 degrees in downtown San Francisco, and it's pretty hot here at the coast as well. Wow, a real summer day in San Francisco.

I'm thinking I need to write about my whole family history. It's so complicated, and I've been trying to piece it together for years.

Let's just say my biological mom was a "hippie lettuce smoking, drug taking air headed hippie chick" type, except she was born way too early for her type. And when you're a pioneer in a still somwhat scandalous type of woman, born into a "good family", well it gets complicated, real complicated, very fast.

Let's just say my mom was the type of person who experimented with more than her fair share of whatever illegal drugs were available at the time. Today, she'd be a normal college girl. Back then, she was a pariah to everyone and especially to her snobby stuck up family.

My mom is really why I have "inner hippie" in me. It's in my genes.