Church
Since church started being online-only back in mid-March (a week before the governor required it - I'm a little proud that my church was so considerate), I haven't watched many online services. Actually I watched exactly one. Or perhaps half of one. I have an intellectual bent, so I love that whenever the pastor opens his mouth one can tell that he's a PhD who reads a lot (lots of Biblical history and such accompany all the Scripture teaching, yet he's accessible enough to draw a few thousand viewers every week). BUUUUUUUT without being there in person with a notes page and some free-yet-surprisingly-high-quality coffee, I just can't seem to stay awake for a videotaped 40-minute sermon.
My husband has the same problem, but being there in person with coffee doesn't help. Thus, in the last few months before the shutdowns he started going back to mass on at least some Sundays.
Soooo instead I've been reading a book on Sundays called Sacred Pathways. I did buy the book at my church's bookstore, so it counts as doing my own church in some way in my mind. I really like reading spiritual books. This one is all about different Christian spiritual traditions to help us understand ourselves and the tendencies of different Christians better.
I really like the book, but some of the chapters make me really miss going to Catholic mass. Elements of mass and other practices used routinely by Catholics (such as the Stations of the Cross) really get me *righthere.*
It's hard to believe how important Catholicism was to us and how quickly it got derailed after we got married. I mean, Ben had been contemplating the priesthood. It was that serious.
I got pregnant immediately after the wedding and couldn't stop puking my guts out. We went to mass a couple times, but I'd have to excuse myself to go barf in the church bathroom in the middle of mass or in a garbage can on the sidewalk on the way there, and it only got worse after that. So Ben just stayed home with me while I stayed close to a toilet bowl for the rest of the summer. That put a big crack in the mass-attendance habit.
We went more as I felt better, but the local church when we moved to California during the pregnancy wasn't very welcoming. Ben immediately jumped in with both feet and volunteered to help with church music, being a piano performance major and having volunteered to do music at churches (ours and others) in the past, but they told him no. Because they "had it covered" by someone who may have actually been 100 years old playing the wrong notes off-rhythm one key at a time. Like, really?
I was allowed to volunteer to teach religious ed., but in the minds of Ben and the parents and the students themselves, the Sunday evening time slot was no bueno. The religious ed leader told me a lot of parents had requested a different day and time, but she decided to just keep it as it was. Again... really?
But the real kicker was our baby herself. She was pretty chill, if a total insomniac, except on Sundays ten minutes before each mass. She was such a horrific inconsolable screamer that Ben wondered only half-jokingly if we needed to get her baptized to cure her of it. Ben was baptized as an adult, so we did break with church tradition on the infant baptism thing. I was baptized as in infant and feel like I missed out by sleeping through such a big moment.
Anyway. I found some nondenominational church with a nursery and there was some toy there that she really liked. So I literally let a five-month-old decide my church. On the bright side, she still loves doing church and she really loves Jesus, which is kind of the whole point. Even the priest who did our wedding told us ahead of time that the Catholic Church "doesn't do a good job evangelizing children" and that Catholicism is kind of an "adult faith."
But yeah. This book I'm reading, Sacred Pathways, really got me missing mass something fierce, right when I wasn't able to go!
I had a dream last night that I was back in my hometown at the Lutheran church of my youth and was invited to meet up with an old youth group leader of mine there. Then I found out that it was all online because of Covid! So I looked them up and they have a really nice setup. The pastor has a short video, but most of it is instructions for at-home liturgy, using a candle and hymns and communal prayers and everything. Such a better fit for me than a videotaped sermon. Not that I've actually done it yet, but it's nice to know that I have other options.