Last Sunday I was out walking and ran into my delightful colleague Becca. She asked what I was up to and I explained I was out for a long slow distance walk in preparation for a marathon, upon which she exclaimed, "Wow, you look great! Not like you're tired at all!" I glanced at my watch and said, "Well, that might be because I left my house 8 minutes and 42 seconds ago."
It seemed odd that Becca would be nowhere near her own home, sitting by herself on a bench outside a closed minor branch of the San Francisco public library on a Sunday morning. It turns out she was killing time waiting to go sing in the choir at St. Dominic's Catholic church. That in itself doesn't seem too surprising, I suppose, until you remember that Becca is (a) Jewish and (b) an atheist. She walked a few blocks with me and explained that when you love to sing, a choir spot is a nice gig: you get a large crowd every week, and while perhaps they aren't there to see you in particular, they are certainly a captive audience. She went on to explain that she had set up some rules for herself about what she would and wouldn't say during services: she sings whatever needs to be sung, of course, and there is a chanted prayer that she considers close enough to singing that it passes muster, but she doesn't recite the normal prayers or take part in the other spoken portions of Mass. Except, she noted, for the part where someone says to you "The Lord be with you," at which point she is happy to respond with the expected, "And also with you." Because, yes! Definitely! For sure he can be with you...no, really, I insist.
This seemed like a reasonable system to me, and called to mind my own days as a Mass-attending atheist. For reasons that had something to do with the local public school sucking ass and the closest private school being a Catholic school, in 1974 I found myself suddenly thrust into a first-grade classroom governed by a woman in what seemed to me a rather strange, penguin-like dress and hat ensemble. My parents apparently did not feel it necessary to explain to me prior to my matriculation exactly who this God person was, or mention the existence of the Bible, but they had conveyed the message that whatever one's teacher said should be assumed to be true. Imagine my confusion when Sister Rosario told us the story of Adam and Eve with a level of conviction and enthusiasm that suggested she believed these nudist garden-dwellers had actually existed or something. I am proud to say that even at the tender age of six, my bullshit-o-meter immediately skyrocketed to eleven. Whatever a six-year-old's equivalent is of WTF?, I was thinking it.
This educational institution where I spent a further four or so perplexed years was called The School of the Madeleine, which makes it sound like there might at least be pastries or something, but no. The closest things to a cookie were the communion wafers, which I never got to experience because I knew (although I have no idea how--I don't recall being told this explicitly) that I hadn't been baptized and that this meant I was not allowed to get up with everyone else while the guy in the elaborate bathrobe shoved tiny edible discs into people's mouths. Thank goodness I never put together that the wafers were supposed to be Jesus's actual flesh, because C'MON, PEOPLE, that's disturbing, and I'm trying to sit quietly alone in my pew and think about ponies, here.
One day in third grade, the principal, Sister Bernadetta, came by and was asking us what was our favorite part of Mass. I had somehow picked up on the idea that Mass was not something one was supposed to enjoy, and so I worried I would be reprimanded for admitting that the singing was my absolute (and, come to think of it, only) favorite part. I was shocked when her face lit up and she said, "Oh, wonderful! You know, singing is twice praying!" And I thought, great, now you've ruined that part for me too.
Speaking of singing, I went to observe karaoke night at a dive bar last Monday after work with some co-workers. Sweet imaginary Jesus, what a day it would be if I ever had the nerve to get up in front of people and sing. I love love love singing, but the thought of doing it within earshot of anything human turns me cold and clammy. Now I can't decide whether I want to turn this into some kind of Life Challenge or whatnot, because lord knows I already carry around a lifetime's worth of real and imagined humiliation at the tip of my brain twenty-four hours a day. Most likely I will continue to sit quietly on my barstool pew, nursing a margarita and wondering what communion tastes like.
