Sunday Sunday

Maybe I was being punished. After all, at breakfast I had ignored the promptings of my conscience and continued in the book I was reading while I ate my Special K Red Berries (what can I say, it was on sale) and drank my O.J.

The book wasn't even that good, and now I was stuck in a liturgical time-warp. To begin with, I couldn't get over the fact that the entrance hymn began with the same riff as Chicago's "Where do We Go From Here."

As mass progressed, the effect of the drab architecture and soggy day was compounded by the mash-up of leftover late-seventies samples: a strange cacophony of disco-jazz voices apparently stolen variously from Abba, old Shaft reruns, and the soundtrack of any Disney film set in New Orleans--oh and whatever Jimmy (Page, Hendrix, Smith?) inspired the kid with the Les Paul and the wah-pedal.

When the cantor got up for the responsorial psalm, we listened to her model the refrain "The Lord is kind and merciful" and I wondered what sort of congregation this was that could possibly match her virtuosic lounge singer melodies. I didn't try. I was too distracted: with all my head-scratching modernist angst I feel out of place as it is in a place of worship. Moreover, in addition to the wet day making it hard for me to stay energized, my attempt at some semblance of weekly reflection was now getting sidelined by the prima-donna with a predilection for wind-chime crescendos.

Like I said, it's my own fault. If I had put my book down and been more diligent I could have made the ten-o'oclock downtown, enjoying the blend of traditional hymn and charismatic effluence I'm a little more used to: you know, a little "Eagle's Wings" mixed in with the "Godhead Here in Hiding," and a nice bit of silence under vaulted ceilings after communion.  Or maybe you don't know. Regardless, I was the one who dallied. Then again, it's a bit of a miracle for me to be functionally anywhere before eleven am these days: my weekly (or semi-monthly) hauntings are the closest I get to communing with the divine unbeing and the choir was throwing off my chi.

The priest threw it back a little. Readings about the end of times, one of my favorite topics (and part of my intended research), and he could have gone with the standard, don't worry about apocalypse, just make sure you've been to confession, but he stretched a little further. It was a bit of an esoteric stretch--something about the Second Coming not possible till the Sacraments were at an end--but the end result was exciting: don't worry about when God's coming back, since the whole point of him coming the first time was to say he'd always be here. If nothing else, I could appreciate the logical elegance. I closed my eyes through the second half of mass and drank in the semi-silence of the his prayers, thankful the choir is only sporadically present till the great Amen.

Like apparently all things these days, this eventually led my thoughts back to the stuff I'm reading along with schoolwork. Girard likes to think of apocalypse as a more secular/cultural phenomenon that's always potentially happening. Things get out of hand, we kill somebody, things get better. He thinks it's getting worse. Then I thought of the kiss of peace and the fact that there was a minor apocalyptic struggle for seat space in my pew at the beginning of the service. I ended up between a dark-skinned couple of north African extraction on the left and some older suburbanites on the right.

I was thinking about pettiness till the lady on the left told me not to worry about the books I had crowding the seat. It was still residually present till the couple on the right--as we exited--each said some nice words to me about being happy to worship together. In case you're not Catholic, this is a little exceptional. Half the reason a Catholic Church is a great place to let your inner introvert run wild is that no one who doesn't know you is likely to give you a second glance, let alone speak kind words to you.

These were appreciated. I have to confess I actually thought of coming back next week, annoying music and all: if you sit next to someone enough times they're likely to offer you a homecooked meal, right?

With the parentals and younger sibs coming in next week, and the roomie offering a family berth for Thanksgiving festivities, though, maybe I'll just stick to the Zatarain's and PBJ's for now. And get back to work at some point. On the agenda for today: reading, grading, more reading, printing a mess of articles and some concrete mapping out the writing sample. Here goes...