Confessions of a Church-Hopper

As I've mentioned before (see the post entitled "Wait for the Rain" in the April archives), there are no UCC churches in the state of Mississippi. So I have become a bit of a spiritual wanderer seeking sustenance and fellowship where I may, whether that's in the high-liturgy Episcopal church I attend on Sundays, or with the black Missionary Baptist congregations where I go for Wednesday night prayer services, or in the occasional Methodist or otherwise Protestant locale. This adds to my spiritual smorgasboarding a year and a half ago in New Orleans, where there were enough UCC churches that I could pick a new location each Sunday without visiting the same congregation twice; my denominational schizophrenia in southern France, where I was both a member of the local Catholic cathedral choir and a regular attendee at a Madagascar-influenced Reformed Protestant Church; and my exploration of Hindu temples & guru wisdom in India.

All this exposure to the myriad ways in which we worship God has given me a rather potluck taste for liturgical practices--for example, I have a fondness for the familiarity and symbolic weight of centuries-old ritual in the pre-Reformation church, but I also crave the dynamism and creativity of the ever-changing participatory prayers in Protestant churches. I find taking communion each Sunday at the Episcopal church to be very fulfilling and I take strange delight in using kneelers--somehow I feel more devout & focused if I'm kneeling when I pray--but boy could they use some more melodious hymns. We never take communion at Wednesday night prayer services, but the verbal theatrics and pure passion of the evening message will set your soul on fire. I'm not even ALLOWED to take communion in Catholic services (let's not go there...it's a sore spot) and I can't understand the finer points of the homily at Spanish-language mass, but the sudden three-dimensionality of one of the mariachi players singing harmony during a folk hymn is pure bliss. (Plus I love seeing little old Mexican ladies in habits responding to every statement with "Gracias a Dios"--as in, "Isn't it a beautiful day out, Sister?" "Yes, thanks be to God." "The choir was in tune most of the service!" "Yes, thanks be to God." "Are you teaching catechism next week, Sister?" "No, thanks be to God!")

The contrasts amongst this great variety of worship styles and credos have helped me to refine what it is, exactly, that I believe; conversely, the commonalities which tie them together have served to affirm the validity of my core beliefs. It's certainly an enriching process, one which stirs up the proverbial religious pot and makes me put on my theological thinking cap.

P.S. Check out my earlier post for today's flavor on the church-hopping front: Latin(o) Mass!

Monday Night Misa

Monday nights my co-worker Elly attends Spanish-language mass at the Catholic church across the way from our office, and the first Monday after I got back she invited me to go. I'm rather game for new adventures, especially the religious kind, and I knew it would be a good opportunity to meet community members as well as work on my Spanish skills. So I put on yet another spiritual hat (to add to the UCC, Episcopal, Missionary Baptist and others I wear down here on the Coast) and headed off to la Misa.


The first challenge was trying to participate in the call-and-response service in a foreign language. I've been to enough Catholic masses in French to have memorized all the correct formulae and when to say what--"Pour des siecles et des siecles, Amen." "Que l'Esprit Saint soit avec vous..." "et avec votre esprit." Bada-bing. (The only trouble I've ever had is with the Lord's prayer, because I am so used to the words and the rhythm of the English version I grew up reciting every Sunday. But then, I get thrown off just by being in a different English-speaking congregation where they pause in different places or emphasize different words--although I have interchanging "trespasses" and "debts," as appropriate, down to an art.)

Now, I don't even know the Catholic service in English, so my participation in la Misa is entirely dependent on how fast I can a.) figure out what the priest (Father Paddy, who speaks Castilian Spanish with an Irish accent, I kid you not) is saying, b.) translate that to the corresponding section of a French mass, c.) remember the correct response in French, d.) translate the French response into Spanish, hoping I get somewhere close to what I'm actually supposed to be saying while still managing to fire off a reasonably sincere prayer. This is why I'm continually behind the rest of the congregation (thank God for the older lady who is also always behind because she can't hear anything); sometimes I have to resort to simply lip-synching and hope it looks like I know what's going on. And NEVER can I find in the missal what I'm actually supposed to be saying in time to join the congregation--it's torture!!

Other than that, however, la Misa is fantastic. The contrast between French and English masses (dare I say white/European masses in general??) and Latino mass, or even African-American mass (I once attended a fabulous second-line service at a black Catholic church in New Orleans), is like night and day. The first is solemn, slow, and can even be a bit dreary at times, although I do love the classical music & Gregorian chants that typically accompanied mass at La Cathedrale Saint-Sauveur. The second is more up-tempo and full of life--the homily is just as devout and the prayers are just as prayerful, but somehow listening to a group of mariachis (un-costumed; let's not get carried away) on guitars accompanying el coro as they harmonize Mexican folk songs while little kids zip up and down the aisles to be blessed, arms beatifically crossed and trying not to giggle--it just fills me with a little extra joy. Then there's all the cheek-kissing during the Passing of the Peace...okay, that happens in France, too, but somehow it's a little warmer here, a little less removed.

I never fail to walk out of la Misa with a smile on my face, my heart uplifted and my toes tapping for some ranchero music. It reminds me of the time a group of Unitarian-Universalist high school youth came down from northern Minnesota to attend prayer service at the local Missionary Baptist church--UUs can be pretty open to different forms of worship, but apparently these kids' home congregation wasn't too lively, because they all came out of service clapping their hands and singing gospel music, shouting "That was awesome, we're converting!!" much to the chagrin of their self-professed humanist youth group leader.

El Senor obra de maneras misteriosas...

Wednesday Night Revival

A Baptist revival, for those who have never been to one, is like a rock concert with the preacher as lead singer, the chancel choir as the back-up singers, the organ, piano, and drum set as the band, the chancel as the stage, and the sermon as the star's best-known rock anthem.
The "set" starts out with some of that pre-song patter, introducing the sermon's theme and reading the pertinent Bible verses; as the sermon progresses, the piano and organ start providing a little background to the preacher's spoken words; then things heat up fast, with the preacher beginning to not just hum in between important phrases, but outright sing the message. The band picks up the tempo, the musicians get louder, and the Amens and My, my s from the choir and the front rows add to the buzz. Then the whole congregation gets into it, swaying and clapping and hollering, following the preacher's ascent until things are at a fever pitch, and the preacher is sweating, and the people are swooning, and the organist is bouncing on his bench and the deacons are running up and down the aisles... you almost expect a moshpit to break out up near the altar. Things keep getting hotter and hotter until the preacher blows himself out on the last electric riff of his sermon--"Wake Uticus UUUUUUUUP!!!!"--and turns and walks straight off the chancel/stage and out the vestry door, like the explosive finale of a sold-out show. And at the very end, after the altar call and the prayer circle and the choir benediction, he briefly re-enters, making an encore appearance for his loyal fans. The last blessing is said, and the faithful concertgoers file out of their pews, hugging and greeting each other, all a-tingle from the fiery performance. The host deacon shakes hands at the door, but The Preacher himself is nowhere to be seen--you can almost picture little Sunday school students lining up at the back entrance to the church for a chance to get his autograph.

Not bad, for a profession often seen as stuffily unglamourous and uptight.

Wait for the Rain

Not that it's been dry here the past week or so... we did indeed have snow-like sleet accumulation on the rooftops last weekend for Easter--cold and wet just like every other Easter of my (mostly) Northern life, when I have come to the South for some HEAT, dammit!--and the rain on Monday meant that the crushed concrete one of our volunteer workcrews was layering into a pit for a client's driveway turned into a quicksand soup.

No, "Wait for the Rain" ain't a weather report down here--it was the theme of Rev. Don's sermon yesterday evening at the Wednesday night prayer and Bible study service at First Missionary Baptist. Don is my co-worker and a UCC pastor, but his was a traditionally religious African-American upbringing in the Carolinas, so when he's in town he attends and sometimes preaches at 1st Missionary.* And every Monday and Tuesday, he spends an hour or so rehearsing with the week's workcrew, teaching them a few African-American spirituals so that they can sing at the Wednesday night service. Watching all these white folks, who are used to a more staid, reserved worship style, stand up in front of the church and attempt singing, swaying, and clapping all at the same time, it never fails to strike me as a strange combination of earnestness and entertainment--a heartfelt offering by the workcampers to the community they are serving, and a source of well-concealed mirth for their black brothers and sisters sitting in the pews and politely nodding their heads and clapping along--I'm sure they must wonder what in the Good Lord's name these white people are doing trying to sing songs of a style wrought in the fiery furnaces of slavery, an institution of complicity for the forefathers and mothers of their race.
Some weeks go better than others, musically speaking; but because it is well-meant, the whole production is always well-received. Oh, and I forgot the kicker--Rev. Don always accompanies this crack choir on an electronic keyboard, playing in whatever key it is that is made up of all black notes. No matter what the song is or what key it was originally intended to be sung in. It's a trip.

Now that the stage is set:
Don is a rather quiet, reserved sort of man in large group settings--he is the one who will sit back and wait until directly called upon to make a contribution. But get him into a pulpit, and he lets go. I've literally seen him shimmy-shake across the chancel and run laps around the aisles, and if there's a sermon going, his own personal Amen chorus of Yeahs, Wells, MmHmms and Halleluuuu-jahs! can be heard all over the sanctuary. Last night he was filling in for Rev. Dickie, who was preaching at a revival down the street (more about that later), and when he took the microphone to preach about Elijah's prophecy that the drought he had called down upon wicked King Ahab's land was about to end, proving God's supremacy to the deity Baal, he called to mind one of those Hollywood-movies-in-30-seconds skits: back and forth, back and forth he pantomimed EACH ONE of Elijah's servant's seven trips to the mountaintop to see if rain was coming. There is something of a storyteller in Don, methinks.
Anyway, Elijah has heard the sound of an "abundance of rain," and Elijah's servant finally spots a cloud the size of a man's hand--and that sent Don off into a Spiritual Weather Report about outlasting your soul's dry spells, faithfully waiting for God's blessings to water your soul. His message resonated particularly for me, as I've just been through my own spiritual drought and I feel like coming to serve on the Gulf Coast was exactly what my parched soul needed. I could feel the individual water droplets plunking down onto the cracked earth--the story a workcamper shared about the astonishment of seeing a little boy who had been living in a crowded, unsanitary FEMA trailer run into a freshly dry-walled room and exclaim "I have a room!"; witnessing the transformations volunteers undergo in their short time working here; the humbling, overpowering ability to pick up my phone when someone calls on behalf of a family stranded, destitute, in a campground, and put them through to our caseworker, our SuperWoman, who can help them even though I can't; the profound peace of a simple beachside Maundy Thursday service with new, compassionate friends; the sight of a pelican or a great blue heron taking off, startled by my morning jogs.
I had to wait a while for those raindrops, and I didn't always know if I was capable of receiving them in the same carefree way I had before, if I could return to the same way of believing that I had grown up with. But as Elijah promised it would, it came--first as a cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a man's fist, then as a spring drizzle, then as a downpour of blessings that hasn't yet let up.

As they say at 1st Missionary Baptist: "God is good... Allll the time."


*There are no United Church of Christ congregations in the state of Mississippi. There used to be a handful, but they chose to integrate during the Civil Rights movement and, in addition to losing membership, their remaining congregants faced so much aggression and harassment at work and on the streets for their association with such a "radical" denomination that they felt they had to close those wide-open doors, or face even worse--bricks through windows, firebombings, etc. So much for "Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven."