Amen

I came upon St. Patrick's Cathedral with great surprise, Madison Avenue was closer to the train stop than I had thought.  It reminded me of a cleaned-up Sagrada Familia.  I walked in because I hadn't been to church in over 6 years and also because I wanted to breathe in the warm smell of incense enclosed within thick pillars and stone statues.  Squeezing in between a gentleman who was emailing from is Blackberry and surreptitiously checking the Jets score, and a couple who wouldn't stop groping one another's thighs, I looked around at the rest of the crowd.  They looked uncomfortable, not too calm, squished betwixt their enormous fur coats and their bulging shopping bags full of consumerism.  Around the hundreds of people seated, there were people literally milling around the pews as 12:00 mass was in session.  Big boots, hats, and cameras flashing, as the words of Isaiah, Luke and the Thesselonians were being spoken.  The scene reminded me of Notre Dame, where I was appalled at the amount of loud, crazy tourists who hung out at one of the most sacred buildings in the world, screaming in mid-day drunkenness and scaring the pigeons. At St. Patrick's, a woman who looked and sounded like Toni Braxton did the readings, her strong voice shouting into a microphone.  The priest, clad in red, had a thick New York accent and had the tone and imposing inflection of Bob Uecker - instead of saying how many outs there were, he's telling people how important it is to go to confession, his voice reverberating, echoing off the long lines of the towering walls.  As the service carried on, I remembered when I was really young and my mom would bring a bag of stuff for me to do at St. James: coloring books, puzzles, snacks... I was really getting the word of God while eating Cheerios from a Ziploc and finding where Waldo was and yelping loudly as my sister repeatedly pinched my arm.  These are the real religious experiences that stick with you forever.  It's interesting how last weekend at this time,  I was at the Museum of Natural History, staring at exhibits of how monkeys turned into men, and this week, there I was sitting on a hard, wooden pew at St. Patrick's Cathedral, crossing myself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit listening to a guy tell me about how God created all things and all men.  After exchanging "peace be with you's" and germs directly before receiving the body of Christ, I walked out, thinking that this holy visit would be sufficient for the next six years.