Silent night

Our family has seldom been able to attend church in a nice family unit bunch; one or more guyses has seen church as a fine place for making less than joyful noises unto the Lord while surreptitiously shoving a younger sibling or two, maintaining Keane-painting eyeballs o innocence all the while. The family motto on too many occasions morphs into "Who, me?" The solution is the double-shift approach to worship: Mom and Our Andrew the early risers take the early shift, Dad, Nan and Mikey the PM shift. J, although shrived, is still the heathen -- even as we type his lissome bellows two floors up waft unmusically through the walls, no doubt convincing our neighbors that perhaps it might be more prudent to put off parenthood another year or five.

This becomes problematic when scheduling for the holy days, the entomologic roots of holidays. We've fortunately moved a bit beyond responding to the great theological Why do we have to go to church again? with the equally great theological Because; Dad however tends to grump that scheduling and logistics are how we earn our daily bread, not how we live our daily lives and so we drift happily into the hardly great yet traditional Whoops, hurry up we're late trope. And so it came to scheduling shifts for Christmas Mass.

The home church offers the vigil Mass, the Midnight Mass, and two AM Masses Christmas morning. Keeping Nan and Mikey up past their bedtime is a strategy long-proven to be doubleplus unwise; best to let them do that themselves. The Christmas AM Masses potentially interfere with present unwrapping, can't willingly schedule that no no no. This leaves the vigil Mass, which is the poster child for the old architect saying (told me by a middle-aged architect) "Don't design the church for Christmas." This is the so-called Children's Mass, which means that it is the preferred Mass for every christened child for miles around. For the last three years, we have had preferred seats behind the organ pipe box; kind of like radio church in real space. This year, we decided that the Mass being licit no matter what or where so long as the priest is legit and the rubrics are followed, we the B Shift shall go to the Next Church Over, which has a later-evening non Children's Mass at an appropriate time in an appropriate nearby place.

The Next Church Over has a lovely little traditional church down the road aways, the site being the beginnings of the American Red Cross. It also has a not-quite-so-lovely big traditional Worship Center much closer in; the Worship Center can also be used for Pinewood Derbies, flea markets, high school proms, and if you brought in big enough electric service you could do a decent product roll-out for Microsoft if you wanted. No doubt it is from time to time, but for Mass it does have the right number of candles and an altar that appears more permanent than a folding cafeteria table. Smells and bells worship is available elsewhere.

Nan and Mikey were suitably impressed: padded chairs, not wooden pews! Carpeting (no pad, slab on grade, pile a sainted memory rather than a reality), not kneelers! Three-quarter round seating! And people aren't quiet and shushyful, like they are in Some Churches We Might Mention! And the choir is better, too -- they don't sound like old ladies (come to think of it, they don't look like old ladies, they look younger than you and Mom). Out the mouths o s. Dad, quite aware that his Meyer-Briggs places him among the J-est of the INTJs, smiles pleasantly and considers that catholic means universal, which implies bigger than puny humans. Then the servers and priest entered, and the fun began in earnest.

I had forgotten the traditional "Hey, wow that was great!" dialogue 'twixt the priest and the choir leader that follows the opening prayer, echoing the ancient stychomithia between Johnny and Doc; I had forgotten the traditional "Let's do that again!" invocation. I had forgotten confessional homiletics ("You know what we really think up here at Midnight Mass? What the hell am I doing in church at one o'clock in the morning!" Wacka wacka wacka). I had forgotten the second homily that comes right before the Eucharist, reprising the theme of the first homily in case we forgot. And I had blessedly forgot the padre's tambourine, hauled out to joyous congregational whoops and whanged arhythmically for the curtain call. Recessional. Whatever.

The guyses loved it. Can't wait to go back. They got donuts there, too.

You know, the people there are wonderful. We had more greetings from parishoners in our hour-or-so time there than we've had in seven years. There is great love and small-c communion there, no question. These folks love the liturgy they celebrate. There are families younger, way younger than us, eyes shining in the church like I've never seen. This seems Good. It's certainly a church, would certainly align easily with the churches that sponsor our scouting guyses, and certainly was a place we stopped on our way long ago while we searched for the road.

It's not our church. Sigh.