There's no escaping the fact that Chris and I come from very church-y backgrounds. Chris grew up in a house adjacent to Bethany Seminary in Chicago where his father taught church history. His family's denomination, Church of the Brethren, is one of three historic peace churches along with Mennonites and Quakers. Brethren belief emphasizes peace, simplicity, and (masculine name notwithstanding) equality of believers. Family vacations centered around trips to Europe, namely Austria, his mother's homeland, where the family frequently visited churches and she pointed out the gruesome stories of the saints painted on the walls.

Great-grandchild and grandchild of Lutheran pastors in Norway and Minnesota, and niece and cousin of several more, I've been a church-goer forever. I sang in the choir as a kid and attended Sunday school and youth group activities. As a teenager, I served as one of the first female acolytes in my hometown church in Ann Arbor, and felt powerful in my robes and with my candlelighter-snuffer tool, then confused and angry when I received a "tsk-tsk" from an older male parishioner. At our home, hardly a meal went by when Mom didn't touch on the topic of church politics. And then, to seal the Lutheran deal, I went to St. Olaf College--founded by a Norwegian-American Lutheran minister--just like every single member of my family and extended family.

When we moved to New York in 1989 we joined Trinity Lutheran Church on the Upper West Side where Chris and Ingo were baptized. For six years Chris served on the church council. Then for six years I did. When the church opened a homeless shelter in 2006, I spent many Saturday nights sleeping on a cot there to relieve our shelter monitor on his night off. For several years, I coordinated volunteers and walked up to church on Saturday nights to unlock the door and let them in.

This week, like most weeks, we'll attend the service on Sunday morning with its great music and sermons and obligatory coffee hour chats. It's a routine embedded in our cells and we find comfort in it.

Chris objects if I call church a habit however. "It's part of us," he says, and I get his point, though I struggle more with where habit ends and belief begins. He cites a 1958 appearance by Jack Kerouac on The Ben Hecht Show. Hecht was a journalist, playwright and screenwriter who contributed to classic films like Hitchcock's Notorious and Spellbound. In the interview he peppers Kerouac with questions about politics, writing and religion and asks, somewhat condescendingly, "Where did you get this worshipping instinct?" to which Kerouac replies, "I grew up in a religious home."

Yet all of this is to say we sometimes take a break from church. That's when you'll find Chris watching Manchester United v Tottenham Hotspur in a Red Hook bar, and me in a cafe, writing.

Devotion in another form.

But not on Easter of course.

Sunday morning devotion (at the altar rail)