Skip to main content

#33 - attend a Catholic mass

St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Ave., 2008
When I was in London in 2008, I had the chance to go to High Mass at Westminster Abbey.  It was an Anglican service, obviously, but it was so moving and beautiful that I've had this fondness for mass ever since.  Earlier that year I had gone to NYC, and I had taken pictures (one above) of this amazing cathedral I passed on the street--I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was lovely.  So, when Ricky and I were planning our trip this year and we had an empty spot in our schedule after our early-morning return from Boston, I knew where I wanted to go!

Picture from 2012
Our overnight bus rolled into NYC around 5:30 AM, and we loitered (read: slept) at the Port Authority terminal for an hour before grabbing the subway to 5th Avenue for mass.  We got to the cathedral just after 7:00; I wasn't dressed nearly as appropriately as I would've liked, but the ushers were very kind about it.  The 7:00 mass was accompanied with singing, which was lovely in the arched ceiling.

From Wikipedia, because I surely wasn't about to take a picture during mass.
Since we were a bit late, we stayed for the 7:30 mass as well, surrounded by New Yorkers on the way to work.  I marveled to Ricky at how wonderful they were to come to church that early--I don't think I would get up to do anything that lengthy before work!  (My early-morning seminary days are long, long over.)  Overall, we spent about an hour at mass, and it was jarring to come back out onto the busy NYC street after the services.  I'm grateful that we got to go and have such a peaceful experience. 

(I have to confess that I don't actually remember what the sermon was about...something about John, I think.  And this is why I can't do early-morning church.)

Yay for #33!

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 29, 2012 at 1:45 PM

    Catholic masses are so relaxing. I always would feel pleasantly calm and drowsy during them when we would visit my grandma.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#16 - go to Claytor Lake

Yes, it is mid-January, and yes, I did decide this was a good time to visit a lake. Claytor Lake has free admission if you bring your Christmas tree for them to submerge as a reef for the fish, so off we went! It was a balmy 60 degrees with some pretty good wind, so not too terrible overall for a go-outside-in-the-dead-of-winter activity. We had fun throwing rocks in the water (B) and walking the trails (decidedly not B, who announced "I'm bored of walking!"). But hey, we did the thing.  (Currently making plans to come back in the summer when we can actually go in the water!)
Post a Comment
Read more

2021, in conclusion/memoriam

We're all just ignoring any and all goals we set during the pandemic, right? Right. After the nightmare that was 2020, 2021 wasn't so bad. I submitted my first first-author publication  that uncovered a long-standing misconception about airborne transmission of disease, and it got me featured in WIRED magazine . I successfully defended and submitted my dissertation about volunteer health communication in US refugee resettlement. (Those two projects sound very unrelated, but medical rhetoric is the key there :) :))  After 2 years of doctoral coursework and 3 (soul-sucking) years of dissertating, I graduated with a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech. My mental health immediately   improved. While I was finishing my dissertation, we sold our townhouse in Blacksburg and moved to a 1910s-era bungalow in coastal North Carolina. My daughter started 1st grade (!) in a Spanish immersion program. We all got vaccinated. I was on set as an extra in a Simu Liu/Phillipa So...
Post a Comment
Read more

2014 roundup

One of the perks of being pregnant is that you can do all the lazy, procrastinaty things you would normally be doing, and everyone gives you a pass because your body is growing another body with no conscious effort on your part. (The perks of pregnancy end there, very abruptly. Everything else is the worst.) So with that in mind, I'm off the hook for not updating my blog ever, right? The important thing is that I'm still checking things off my list--more slowly than I would be if I could still see my feet, probably--but checking them off nonetheless. Here's 2014 in review: #2. run a 5K Most people (read: sane people) prepare for a 5K by doing logical things like actual running. I prepared for my 5K by saying "Hey! A 5K! I should do that!" and paying the registration fee for my free t-shirt. I'm almost positive I put this goal on my list initially to make myself run more regularly, which means I completed this goal while also laughing in the face of my ...
Post a Comment
Read more