I am not proud of the person I brought with me yesterday. I’m talking about Sunday Mass. If Mass isn’t part of your world, indulge me and stay with this, because what happened applies to almost any room you walk into. Mine just happened to be a church.
There are a lot of geographic shifts in my life right now. I’ve kept up my practice of getting to Mass regularly, but I’m not closely connected to any one community at the moment. I’m not exactly church shopping; I’m more church surfing. Whichever Mass best fits my schedule is the one I choose. Today, that meant the oldest Catholic church in the city, with its distinctive touches. There’s the shrine at the back, where people slip money and devotional items through the guardrail that keeps the statue of Mary safe. There are the women who work the church steps every Sunday morning, with the gauzy scarves covering their heads with old-fashioned respect selling fresh-baked bread, rosaries made in South America, and devotional candles. And there’s the incense. Outside of a high holy day, I’m not sure I’ve ever had incense pulsing through the church for an entire Mass. It’s heady.
This church has one issue for me, and no, it’s not the music, though the traditional style isn’t my favorite. It’s the homily. Yes, I’m whispering that because a little voice inside me says, “Come on now. You know that isn’t the main point.” Many of us go to church looking forward to the music and the homily as the highlights, and when one or both fall short, we disengage. You may know this feeling from somewhere else entirely: a meeting you have to attend, a family gathering. Something fundamental doesn’t suit you, and a grumpy mood or a general ennui sets in, in real time.
The ennui settled in the opening prayers when I made a snap judgement that I knew what the next hour would hold. What my complaint was doesn’t matter; it’s beside the point. What matters is that I closed myself off and went into judgment mode. I spent most of the next thirty minutes trying to figure out what inside me had set this off and why I couldn’t shake it. At the halfway point, I started talking turkey with myself. If I spent the rest of the time this way, I would leave knowing only that I had brought a lesser version of myself into the space. I learned long ago that if church is just an obligation to check off a list, I’ve missed the point. So I went back to basics: what Mass now means for me. Part of it is to be inspired and filled. A more important part is giving praise and being available to God in a space where nothing else is competing for my attention.
A reverent space to be available to God. In this noisy world of ours, doesn’t that sound nearly magical?
I focused on what was drawing me in, and it came through the incense. Every time I smell that particular mixture, it evokes every church experience I’ve had with incense. I don’t flip through a Rolodex of specific memories; I just let the sensation roll over me. It’s like being caught in an unexpected rainstorm. You can try, unsuccessfully, to dodge the raindrops, or you can give in and let it wash over you, trusting that whatever gets soaked was worth it for the experience.
I leaned into the incense with as much attention as I could muster, and thankfully it was enough to pull me away from judging the celebrant and into the flow. Flow is what I call it when I bring my most unvarnished self to the experience and let God be present. Sometimes I think of it as the veil lifting between His unseen world and my very present one. It is resting in the real: the presence of Divine Love.
Two rows in front of me sat a toddler. Her parents had come armed with a Ms. Rachel backpack full of toys, but she was convinced the priest, the deacon, and the cantor were all speaking directly to her, and she babbled right back. Precious and distracting at the same time. Which would I focus on? I’ll be honest: I weighed it for a moment. Then I chose precious, because in the end I always give the benefit of the doubt to the small fry.
Not long after trading my judgy brain for the goodness of the incense and my chatty little neighbor, the shift happened. Call it mindset, call it heart set. Call it my soul overriding my ego, if you’re comfortable thinking in spiritual terms. My perspective changed, and tears fell. That’s not unusual for me, so don’t read anything dramatic into it. Often, when I can release myself into the moment, it invites a deepening and with it, tears.
Nothing about that Mass had changed. The homily was the same homily. The music was the same music. What changed was the person sitting in my pew, thanks in no small part to the little girl sitting in hers. For the first thirty minutes, little Miss Rachel and I were doing the same thing: responding to what we saw happening on the altar. The difference was that she took it as a gift meant just for her and she engaged with joy. I treated it as a performance requiring my review and I answered with one.
The judge’s job is to make a judgment. He is not oriented to receive a gift. When we walk into a room and start assessing it, whether it’s the meeting, the family dinner, or the church service, we have walked away from any grace that might have been waiting there for our good. Whatever door you walk through this week, notice if you’ve brought your internal judge along. If so, don’t waste time giving in to it. Find something that draws you in, a scent, a small voice two rows up, a quiet space, and sit with it. If you put that well-worn gavel down just for a bit, there just might be a gift waiting for you there, and you’ll have hands ready to receive it.