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so i went to church this morning. for those of y'all who didn't know, i was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school from kindergarten through high school. i haven't been practicing really since freshman year in college, but i tend to go on holidays and stuff. i probably wouldn'tve gone today (since i was at waffle house with jorn at 1am last night), except that my mom is recovering from her foot surgery and she can't go, so i wanted to get her some palm. (jorn had no clue what i was talking about when i told him that. if you, dear reader, also have no clue, then leave a comment and i'll explain.)
so i went to a church on market street that i'd never gone to before; last year for palm sunday, i went to a church downtown and wasn't really thrilled about it. this church was loads better. on the way in, i met a woman who was also alone; she and her husband were in town for his work, and she had wanted to go to Mass. her name was kelly, and we sat together, which was nice, and we discovered we're also from around the same area near philly.
so the service. now, every church does things differently, and often they'll do different things for different Masses (ie, sometimes the 7am service doesn't have music while the children's choir sings at the 10am, things like that). for today's 11:30 Mass, since it was Palm Sunday, they had organized a dramatic reading of the gospel, which on Palm Sunday is always the long one with the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. so they had a bunch of people on stage reading the various parts. and i felt kind of weird, because instead of being moved by the story (which really is powerful and sad, even if you're not a xian), i was thinking the whole dramatic reading thing was kind of silly.
i also really didn't like the priest's homily--it seemed really scattered, without a definable point, and he seemed to jump from one topic to another. i know not every priest can be a great speechwriter, but still. i was also disappointed because a lot of the sung responses were different than the ones i had grown up knowing (and i know several different sets of holy holys, etc; these were new ones). and i kept getting put off by the male-centricness of the Mass. when you haven't gone for a while, you notice things that you didn't notice before, and i noticed all the "father" and "lord" stuff really strongly today.
but in spite of all that, i was moved by a lot of the service, especially the singing, because i still knew all the words to most of the songs (clarification: this isn't counting the sung responses because the words for those are always the same no matter where you go; it's the tune or the arrangement that changes). and there's some things about being in a church choir for seven years that just stick with you. and when the time came for communion, i really wanted to go up and receive it. usually going up for communion is just part of the routine and you just do it without thinking about it, but i really wanted to. and i didn't. because technically, a person shouldn't receive communion in a Catholic church if they're in a state of sin, or if they're not Catholic. by church standards, one or both of those would apply to me: my unmarried-but-basically-cohabiting status, without the sacrament of reconciliation which i haven't had in years, would be the state of sin, and really, i don't feel like this is my faith anymore. it's familiar, and like home, and in a sense i was longing for that closeness with the church again, but i don't know if the person i am can be a good Catholic again, or if i ever was one in the first place. so i chose not to receive communion, and i'll continue to not receive it, unless i someday return to the fold.
other things i noticed at church: there was hardly anyone there who was my age. lots of old people, lots of families, lots of kids. quite a few young women pregnant or with little kids, but not many young single college-age women. i saw a girl i knew from uncg, but not many others.
i also noticed an elderly black woman who was dressed to the nines in a bright pink dress and a matching hat. it was a straw hat in the same bright pink, and rather large. the front of it was decorated with slightly poofy netting and sequins; it sort of resembled a peacock's tail, with the netting making sort of oval shapes and the sequins as the center of an oval. someone else might've thought she looked gaudy and sad, but i thought she looked wonderful. she reminded me of gammy. a lot of things today reminded me of gammy.
so i went to a church on market street that i'd never gone to before; last year for palm sunday, i went to a church downtown and wasn't really thrilled about it. this church was loads better. on the way in, i met a woman who was also alone; she and her husband were in town for his work, and she had wanted to go to Mass. her name was kelly, and we sat together, which was nice, and we discovered we're also from around the same area near philly.
so the service. now, every church does things differently, and often they'll do different things for different Masses (ie, sometimes the 7am service doesn't have music while the children's choir sings at the 10am, things like that). for today's 11:30 Mass, since it was Palm Sunday, they had organized a dramatic reading of the gospel, which on Palm Sunday is always the long one with the Last Supper and the Crucifixion. so they had a bunch of people on stage reading the various parts. and i felt kind of weird, because instead of being moved by the story (which really is powerful and sad, even if you're not a xian), i was thinking the whole dramatic reading thing was kind of silly.
i also really didn't like the priest's homily--it seemed really scattered, without a definable point, and he seemed to jump from one topic to another. i know not every priest can be a great speechwriter, but still. i was also disappointed because a lot of the sung responses were different than the ones i had grown up knowing (and i know several different sets of holy holys, etc; these were new ones). and i kept getting put off by the male-centricness of the Mass. when you haven't gone for a while, you notice things that you didn't notice before, and i noticed all the "father" and "lord" stuff really strongly today.
but in spite of all that, i was moved by a lot of the service, especially the singing, because i still knew all the words to most of the songs (clarification: this isn't counting the sung responses because the words for those are always the same no matter where you go; it's the tune or the arrangement that changes). and there's some things about being in a church choir for seven years that just stick with you. and when the time came for communion, i really wanted to go up and receive it. usually going up for communion is just part of the routine and you just do it without thinking about it, but i really wanted to. and i didn't. because technically, a person shouldn't receive communion in a Catholic church if they're in a state of sin, or if they're not Catholic. by church standards, one or both of those would apply to me: my unmarried-but-basically-cohabiting status, without the sacrament of reconciliation which i haven't had in years, would be the state of sin, and really, i don't feel like this is my faith anymore. it's familiar, and like home, and in a sense i was longing for that closeness with the church again, but i don't know if the person i am can be a good Catholic again, or if i ever was one in the first place. so i chose not to receive communion, and i'll continue to not receive it, unless i someday return to the fold.
other things i noticed at church: there was hardly anyone there who was my age. lots of old people, lots of families, lots of kids. quite a few young women pregnant or with little kids, but not many young single college-age women. i saw a girl i knew from uncg, but not many others.
i also noticed an elderly black woman who was dressed to the nines in a bright pink dress and a matching hat. it was a straw hat in the same bright pink, and rather large. the front of it was decorated with slightly poofy netting and sequins; it sort of resembled a peacock's tail, with the netting making sort of oval shapes and the sequins as the center of an oval. someone else might've thought she looked gaudy and sad, but i thought she looked wonderful. she reminded me of gammy. a lot of things today reminded me of gammy.
