The Church of Costco

Let's face it. Costco is the new church. At least for us and a bazillion other church-dressed families on Sunday morning. Puh-lease, all  you dressed-up-to-look-like-after-church-shoppers don't fool me. You're all doing this instead of church, just like us. Costco is your church, just like it has become ours. And why shouldn't it be? 

We enter your cavernous cathedral, oh Costco,  flanked with aisles buttressed in boxes exploding with every gadget we never needed. My husband can oft be found staring in awe at your inversion machine, gravity boots up high like an alter to proper spinal alignment. We stand in your nave awaiting our communion wafers so deliciously disguised as beef chili, cheese ravioli & chicken nugget samples. We walk through your priorly Romanesque transepts, so brilliantly updated to warehouse chic... and we spend. Yes we spend and we spend and we spend our money. All in the name of stocking and stuffing our homes and hearts full of you, oh dear Costco. We love you.

Before I had a family of my own, I shunned you from my life. Now that I am a mother of two, I am your newest devotee. To run out of diapers or wipes with two un-potty-trained butts would be a natural disaster for our household. Your generously proportioned stockpiles enhance our home's welfare. To run out of goldfish, Cheerios, applesauce cups or string cheese sticks could be devastating to our playground snacking. Puh-lease, if it weren't for your monstrously ginormous bags of tortilla chips, we'd be freeloaders at all our potlucks. And to come up empty when reaching for a low fat organic chocolate milk box in the morning for G would be ruinous. 

Costco, we have looked far and wide for a church to suit all of our needs as succinctly as you have. But nowhere, not the United Unitarians, nor the Self-Realizers, nor the Jews, nor the Catholics could come close to embracing our mixed-faith marriage as wholly as you do. And to sit down for fellowship with your congregation, all enjoying greasy slices of pizza together after our exhilarating experience inside your walls, just encapsulates our adoration.  

You have saaaaayved us, dear Costco. We are forever indebted to your generous abundance (except rice milk - why don't you carry rice milk, dammit?) and forgiving nature (you don't even reprimand our kids for spilling their third sample of oatmeal or yogurt all over your polished concrete floors.) Where would we be without you Church of Costco?