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Church Runnings...

I haven't mentioned it before, but I'm Catholic. I haven't been practicing my religion for years, though. I haven't been to church since we christened my son. He was christened at almost 12 months of age, (yeah, thats late, and it was done then mainly because I was under serious duress from my parents to do it) so that was approximately nine months ago. Prior to his christening I hadn't been to church for several years, with the exception of weddings and funerals.

My parents used to force me to go to church while I was living with them, at least until I was about 18 years old. Once I could enforce my will, I stopped going, mostly as a kind of rebellion, I guess. And I just haven't been back. When I was a teenager, I used to go mainly because I was forced, and what did I get out of it? I used to watch all the pretty girls in the church. The high point of the mass was communion, because all the pretty young things paraded past you at that time, and you were able to look them over, and rate them and grade them and daydream about them and... Have you gotten the idea that I was girl-crazy yet?heh heh heh Lots of great eye candy go to church though. Even then when I was doing it, I felt that I shouldn't be doing that in church. Since that was all I was getting out of it, that was part of the reason I stopped going. But there are things about church that I've realised that I miss...

Today I went to my friend's father's funeral. There were several priests celebrating the mass, which I think is a mark of respect or something, but that was not what jumped out at me. What stood out was the music. When you have a good choir and a band, some of those hymns can really move you. The two that worked their way through me today were "One bread, one body, one Lord of all" and "the Old City"... You know, the one that goes "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing. Hosanna in the highest, hosanna to your King!" As we say in Jamrock (Jamaica) - BOOM! It was powerful stuff. It brings to mind another funeral I went to where they bowled me over with "Ancient of Days". At least I think thats the name. Good stuff.

When you hear some of those old hymns sung by a good choir, backed by some nice musical accompaniment, you sometimes think you can feel the presence of God in the church. Sounds silly, doesn't it. When the priest is up there sermonising, or going through the rituals with the hand raising, or lifting up the chalice or goung through the ritualistic chants, I don't feel it. When the congregation gets to join in the rituals, with the hand shaking, or going for communion, or joining the priests in prayer, I don't feel it. But just one of those hymns...

I've experienced this before too. It's not just today that I have felt this feeling. Not even only at church. For example, the shower. Lots of people sing in the shower. I do too. And occasionally when I've broken out into song, it's been some of those hymns. I start humming it maybe, then I burst out into song, and eventually I end up singing way up loud, as though I were in church... and immediately I think of going back to church.

Those songs are really powerful... I may just start going back...

Another thing I noticed... They had a girl alterboy... er, altergirl. Bam! When did that happen? And she did the job well, seemed to know what she was doing. I think thats cool. I used to be an alterboy too. There were a whole bunch of us, and there was a lot of comraderie. We'd hang out together a lot, and our church started a little football team, which we all were a part of. Our church was the central church for an area in rural St. Andrew. There weren't enough priests for all the churches in that area, so the priest from that church would visit one of the four other churches in that district once a month for mass to be held there. One week we would go to the church at Tom's River, the next to Faith's Pen, and so on. These field trips were great fun for us alterboys. We used to get up to all manners of mischief. I remember one Saturday, we were playing cards and we weren't being supervised, I don't remember where the priest was, and we found the chalice with the bread for Communion. I don't know what y'all think, but we all thought the bread tasted fine, so we stole out the chalice and ate off most of the bread.heh heh heh I wonder what her experiences as an altergirl are? Does she hang out with the rest of the alter er... alterpeople? What manner of mischief do they get up to? Hmmm...

Maybe theres hope for the day when priests can get married, and for women to be priests. I think that would be a good thing.

Also, I think church can be good for a growing boy. You learn about God, and morals, and how to treat peope, and stuff. Shucks, I got up to all manner of stuff in my life. Wenches, Wine and all manners of Wickedness. Can you imagine where I would have ended up if I didn't have those religious influences in my life. Yes sir, the bull calf (my son) is 1 year and 9 months old. I guess its time for him to start getting churchified. So maybe, yeah, maybe I'll go back to church. I'll keep you posted...

See ya.