Author: al
Posted: 2007-11-01 16:55:03
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They Don't Wear Suits
“He said no one wears suits there.”
“Well you're going to.”
“But no one wears suits there.”
“You're not wearing your torn up pants.”
“I'll stick out like a sore thumb.”
“We'll all stick out anyway.”
That was a deafeningly valid point. We were indeed going to stick out. Still, no one else would be wearing a suit. I tried in vain to get that point across a few more times. I gave up on the prospect of wearing regular clothes the instant she said that I'd be wearing my suit, but the game was fun, so we both played. I love a lost cause, and Nik is gracious enough to indulge me in a hopeless defense for extended periods of time.
We had been talking ourselves in and out of trying St. Mark's for months. We'd get psyched up to go, then the horrible realization that we might like it would come over us sending us away in terror. What if this is where we are supposed to be? How do you raise kids up to be Catholic? As an adult it looks tempting. As a child I think it would look wholly unreasonable. Aside from transubstantiation and intercessory prayer, I'm probably theologically closer to Catholic than anything else. As a kid it looks like there is barely anything else to the whole Catholicism thing aside from these two incredibly improbable tenets.
Still, every time we almost went, we got closer than the time before. Recently we had dropped the question of proper attire to some Catholic friends. I heard “No one wears suits.” Nik heard “Most people don't wear suits.” Or so she says. Perhaps she was still looking for a way out. Just an hour earlier the consensus had been that no matter how awful it was, it was worth a try. That consensus was certainly broken for me, but I wasn't going to be the one to back out.
For you gregarious folks out there, this is how two painfully shy people operate together. Once critical mass is achieved, and a decision is made for real, it takes more effort to back out than to go through with something. In such situations, passive aggression is the only solution.
Alas, passive solutions are rarely anything but a pastime, and soon the time was indeed past. We circled the parking lot not unlike sharks circling their prey, but much more not unlike water circles the drain. We knew that we had come to get something that we needed, but we also had no idea where we were going nor what lay in store for us.
All of the entrances looked foreboding to our primitive Protestant minds. The main doors at the back looked too ornate to dare enter through. We saw someone slip through a side door that had a plaque warning that it would be locked when mass began. Any warning of any kind was enough to scare us away. The next set of doors did indeed look like a main entrance, but singing could be clearly heard from behind them. We dared not even peek through lest we find ourselves in the middle of a choir forced to sing in Latin in a cruel joke played on all the Protestants. The final door had many people coming and going, but said something about being an office. Back we went to sneak in through the warning door.
Inside we rushed past the holy water. I was afraid that if it saw us it would accuse us of all manner of heresy. We found the most inconspicuously close to the exit seats that we could and slouched in, trying to not be noticed. I was the only fool in there wearing a suit.
“I'm the only fool in here wearing a suit.”
“Hush! We're still early.”
More and more casually dressed people filled the room in the ensuing minutes. The room seemed to be an even mix of the very old and the very young. I found that unsettling. If there is one thing that I do not like, it is a church service where the young are overly involved or are even the target audience. Moments before the service started we noticed our very casually dressed Catholic friends come and sit down across the room. Thus, the only hint of familiarity available to us seemed as distant as a foreign land.
As the service went on, the first thing that struck me was the ugliness of the ritual. I came into this expecting to see what Protestantism had ruined and made ugly. I doubted that I could discern any meaning from it, but I did think that it would be beautiful. It wasn't even gaudy in the way that some people find beautiful. It makes me wonder if things were always that way within Catholicism, and that it is a great lie that Protestants have uglied things up for the benefit of all mankind.
One thing that I did find beautiful and encouraging is that they still recite a creed. A long creed at that. I think that it was the Nicene Creed, but I am not entirely certain. Whatever it was, it took a good two minutes to get through, and I reveled in it. I was reminded of the good old days when we Methodists used to recite the Apostle's Creed.
Creeds are a bit of a sore spot with me. As a child I would never say them in church. I found it too cultish and would stand in silent objection when the rest of the congregation recited them. When I finally started to grow up, and it occurred to me how inane I was to refuse to say something that I believed in and found to be particularly beautiful with other people who believed it too, the Methodist churches suddenly removed it from the service. It was as if I were a child who had refused some treat because it was unfamiliar, and then when I wanted to try it, mommy would not let me have it. To this day I feel ridiculously silly over the whole thing.
Next came the sermon, or rather I think it was the sermon. This is what I was here for. I was hoping to be pointed in the right direction and given a good swift kick to get me going. I will recount the sermon in its entirety to you now. “God is not a vending machine. You cannot just put your coin in and expect to get whatever you want out of him.” How true. I had just put in the coin of an hour's worth of my Sunday night time into Catholicism expecting to get something in return. Whatever that was, it was jammed in that machine somewhere. I'm not sure where, only that it was more than an arm's reach inside.
I would learn later that the evening service is “mostly for the teenagers.” If that's your excuse for a two sentence sermon then you guys have problems. Protestant children's sermons last longer than that, and the kids still like to go and get something out of it. A few other Catholics have told us that there really isn't much of a sermon at any Catholic service, but I swear that I remember one from my only other experience at a mass.
Finally it was time for communion. Since we had sat down I had been trying to remember if they did that every week or not, but now it no longer mattered. They were doing it this week at least. The thought of going up there made me chuckle. I wouldn't even have to fold my arms. I'm the only fool in here wearing a suit. Still, I would have to go up there, and that wasn't going to happen. I looked at Nik.
“Should we just sit down then?”
“Yeah.” A look of relief came across her face, and our family flopped down with the gravity of four sacks of bricks.
Four extremely Protestant sacks of bricks.
When it was all over, we got up and practically sprinted to our friends. I had been practicing my “hello” sentence in my head for about half an hour. That is something shy people do. We practice conversations over and over like an obsessive. “Hey, so just to make sure everyone knows we're Protestants, she put me in a suit!” It went over well. A good laugh was had by all.
Nik and I got the kids settled into the van and drove off for some dinner. At the end, we both agreed that there just wasn't any substance to the experience. Eventually, we both agreed that bad substance was better than no substance. Anyway, in a few months, maybe we'll try something else. Rather, in a few months we'll begin the process of circling a church 'round service time trying to figure out what to wear when we eventually go. |
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