palms for the poor
sunday was palm sunday. sometime saturday i did the math and figured out that easter was probably next weekend, which meant that palm sunday was sunday (or “tomorrow” from my past pluperfect tense perspective of the day before). i decided that i should go to church.
i’d been putting it off, mostly because the last time was so moving, i was worried about disappointing myself with the next trip because they can’t all be that cool. well, i suppose they can be, but like most things, expecting and trying to force it is the best way to guarantee it’s not going to happen. the great communion question was also weighing pretty heavily on my mind. how will i know it’s the right time if i never go back?
palm sunday, however, was inexplicably different from the general “i should probably go to church” feeling i’ve had off and on since about november. all day saturday and the parts of sunday before mass i felt this urge. it should be noted that is was a standard urge, not something mystical coming from deep-within/far-outside of me. it was just a sort of nagging “you should go to church, it’s palm sunday.” why palm sunday? i have no idea. it just seemed right to go and pick up some palms and get all splashed with holy water. a sort of semi-re-induction, if you will. i also didn’t want to not-go before easter. and palm sunday is the last sunday before easter.
so i went.
…and i showed up 30 minutes late because i had the wrong start time. mass would have been mostly over if it hadn’t been palm sunday. as it was, they were about 1/3 of the way through the special palm sunday gospel reading of the passion. i didn’t realize my error until i was sitting down. i was a bit curious as to why everyone was looking at me like i was 30 minutes late instead of “almost late” though.
i missed the sprinkling of the palms, although an usher was kind enough to give me one. i also missed the first section of the mass. the section that basically purifies you and makes you “clean” for communion. without it, you really, really shouldn’t take communion. i think the specific bit that you need is the kyrie (lord have mercy etc). anyway, i knew enough to know that if i was going to play by the ritual’s rules, i wasn’t going to take communion. i was also pretty bummed because the sprinkling was something i was looking forward to, as kind of a mini re-baptism. (i’m gonna feel pretty crappy if there’s no sprinkling, the catholics who read this can steer me right)
so then i started obsessing and arguing with myself about the whole thing, trying to argue my way in and out of the possibility of taking communion. this went on all mass. when i wasn’t chiding myself for focusing on the guy wearing a health-mask in front of me or the fussy child next to me, or the guy a couple rows back who was overly proud of the fact that he’d replaced all the masculine-god references in the response with “god,” i was telling myself to shut up about the communion thing. “you get to focus on two things,” i told myself. “what’s going on at the front, or what should be going on inside of you.”
but all i could do was focus on the fact that i missed the first part of the mass and how that negated any opportunities to take communion.
eventually i hit the go-no-go part of the mass. and i started arguing with myself again. of course there was no sign. i hadn’t been focusing on anything at all the entire time. i wasn’t in place where i could hear anything, so why even bother listening? plus, i can’t go anyway because i wasn’t there at the right time. even if it was the time to go, i wasn’t going to go. of course, it’s not like that really matters when i’m picking and choosing which rules to support not that it really mattered because it was technically arbitrary and nobody around me probably knew why they were judging me even if was paying attention to the people around me which i wasn’t, honest.
finally one of the many non-mystical voices in my head shouted above the others, “would you just shut up and go take communion already?”
so i did.
boy was that weird.
it’s a bizarre feeling to want to giggle and to cry at the same time. euphoria and relief, mixed with some extreme self-consciousness (what if i say the wrong words, what if the priest calls me out, what if lightning strikes? what if someone notices that i’m about ready to burst out laughing? what will they think when they see the tears in my eyes?) is fun, but not fun.
i picked up the host and put it in my mouth, and said “amen†and crossed myself, and it was a little like i’d never left (which made me want to cry/giggle some more). it felt huge to be part of such an ancient ritual again.
so…um…yeah. there’s that. first communion in a catholic church in over 13 years.
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