I went to a Mass this morning.
I am not Catholic, but I have been pondering converting.
I did not know what I was going to write in my post today,
but after watching an episode of Moral Orel on Adult Swim,
I have the perfect subject. Oddly enough, it has something to
do with my day.
I started out the morning by searching on masstimes.org to find churches in my area.
I knew of one on Cody, but I did not know the times they had Mass. When I checked, they had one starting at 11am.
This seemed perfect. It was about 9:30 and I had plenty of time to jump in the shower, get dressed, and head over.
I got to the church at about a quarter 'till 11. I noticed everyone walking into the back building and not the front building. I thought this was odd, but after looking at both buildings, it appeared that the back one WAS the sanctuary. I went in.. and I was a little confused.
I had intended on finding a seat in the back on the far right. This was, of course, while picturing in my head a cathedral-style sanctuary. This sanctuary was not laid out as I expected. It was a big semi-circle. There was no convenient way for me to find a slightly-secluded seat.
When I walked in, there only looked to be about 30 people there. I chalked this up to it being a relative new church. However, from about 5-to-11 and 11.... the sanctuary quickly packed itself with people. Despite me having picked a lone spot on the left part of the semi-circle, I now found myself surrounded with people.
I felt like I was sticking out like a sore thumb. I was differently-dressed than pretty much everyone there, and I was not doing the same little maneuvers as everyone else.
At first, the family sitting next to me was dressed "strangely" as well, as what I thought. They seemed to be wearing what I would expect to see if I were to go to one of my own denomination's churches out in the country somewhere. Near the middle of the Mass, but before communion... this family left. Apparently there was a family standing in the back looking for a seat, because the spots were immediately taken.
I tried to follow along with everyone else. When everyone stood, I stood. When everyone sat, I sat. The first time every knelt, I did not. From then on, I did. I think I was also the only person in my little area (that I noticed... other than the little kids) that was actually reading the song books (or as I call them, "Hymnals"). Everyone else already knew the words. I think this fact also made me stand out some.
Now... the inspiration for my post:
The Lord's Prayer...
I saw everyone stand. I stood.
Everyone began reciting The Lord's Prayer. I noticed that the people in front of me were holding hands. At first I just figured they were a couple. Then I looked around some more and noticed that everyone was holding hands. Noticing this, I looked to my right. The girl next to me was motioning for me to take her hand. I hesitated for a moment, but I then took her hand and continued reciting the prayer.
That is when it happened....
I was reciting the prayer from my own memory, while still trying to follow along with everyone else. Here is how the middle part of the prayer went for me...
"Give us this day, our daily bread.
And forgive us our deb....passes, as we forgive those that trespass against us."
Yeah.... In case you are wondering what the heck that is...
It was supposed to be "forgive us our debts, ...."
but these people said "trespasses".
At first I was thinking that I had perhaps just forgotten the order,
but then the "debtors" line never showed up.
Then I was wondering if maybe I had just remembered it incorrectly.
I forgot about this.
That is, until Morel Orel came on.
Morel's new neighbors came over. They had dinner together.
When they were saying grace, they were reciting the Lord's Prayer.
Then they paused in the middle and repeated a line.
At first I could not tell what the deal was...
but then I realized...
One family was saying "debts", while the other was saying "trespasses".
A feud started.
This reminded me of my morning.
I thought it was hilarious, and very coincidently timed.
And that was the point of my long story.
However, I do have a couple more things to share.
At one point during the Mass, I was thinking about Dane Cook. He mentioned when "peace" was coming, you could always tell, because the priest would say "peace 5 times in rapid fire"...
I heard the priest say "peace" several times.
Then everyone started turning to each other and shaking hands. I was slightly familiar with this concept. At every church I have attended, they had a few minutes when everyone would just greet each other.
However, this was another one of those embarrassing moments for me because I was apparently not familiar with what I was supposed to be doing during this time frame during Mass. This became highly apparent to me between the end of my first handshake and the middle of my second one. The girl next to me turned to me with her hand outstretched toward me.
What she said:
"Peace be with you."
What I said:
"Hi"
How she looked:
Confused.
Second person shook my hand and said "Peace be with you."
I was still contemplating the previous handshake, and, for some reason, the words I uttered here were, "be with you".
So yeah, I totally screwed up the "Peace" part of the Mass for myself.
At the end of the Mass, a woman began to speak to the Parish about this great 'growing' school in Tillman's Corner. "St. Vincent de Paul".
All I kept thinking during her entire spiel was "BEST".
There are many more details I could share about the Mass, but I will save those for another time.
After the Mass, I just kind of waited around for a bit. I wanted to talk to the Priest, but he was busy greeting people at the door. I sat in a pew and just waited around for a bit. Then I decided to stand up and walk around. As I was looking at one of the little shrines, a man approached me.
He asked if it was my first time there. For some reason, I figured he was probably one of the leaders of the Church and that it was probably his job to greet me. I was wrong.
He, was a Lutheran. He married a Catholic woman. He attends the church but is still fairly new to it. He said he noticed that I stood out a bit, so he figured I must be new.
Now, in retrospect, I cannot tell with total certainty how he figured it out. Perhaps he was sitting near enough to me to see all my quirks... or perhaps he saw me raise my hand when the priest asked if they had any first time visitors to the Parish. Either way, he seemed like a pretty cool guy. I talked with him for probably about 10 minutes, actually. I never did meet his wife Nicole. She was chatting with another woman about 5 feet away.
I was nervous about going to talk to the priest. However, I was not as nervous as I originally anticipated, because I caught a vibe from him during the Mass. He seemed to be quite down-to-Earth. Now, it is still a little early to tell if that is entirely true, but that was the first and second impression I got from him.
We chatted for a bit. I took one of their bulletins. I read through some of it....
and I made plans to return next week.
...
Did I mention that the sermon was inspired by James Brown?
.....
---few minutes later---
Yes, Doug, she was hot.
