For the past week, the conversation has been that Chris wanted to attend church with us in order to visit Dunkin' Donuts afterwards.

As we drove past the former church building, in demolished rubble, Chris reasoned aloud that the building was torn down because "church is so bad."

Apparently the last acceptable prejudice is innate.


Kenny asked whether the old cemetery would be moved and I said it would be quite an undertaking to do it right. That comment took us intentionally to Spielberg's Poltergeist for an instance where relocating a cemetery was done wrong.

We happened to arrive at the active church building at same time as a classmate of Chris's, another kindergartner. I think he found that interesting. On the way into the building, my first communion candidate cautioned Chris about the service: "It's a little weird at first but you'll get used to it."

My boys have no qualms about weaving in and out of crowds so I'm quickly left behind. Kenny even maneuvered around two girls with their mother in order to get ahead of them to hold the door for them. He wasn't even aware of how he got in front of them.

During the singing, Chris followed along in the hymnal. He may find musical notation interesting or simply likes singing.

The Gospel reading was Mark's mini-apocalypse¹, so the homilist said "hell" a number of times. My first communion candidate was scandalized and objected to me on the priest's use of "bad words." As this was a children's mass, the younger kids had been ushered out before the readings to the church basement for, presumably activities on the readings suited for children. I reminded Tim that he could have gone downstairs with them if he wanted an easier time of it but that perhaps Father presumed only adults remained in the sanctuary. There was one other time I remember the homily digressing into violent descriptions of crime but, then again, the children were supposedly all downstairs.

I tend to look out the windows during the sermon and saw a large group of well-dressed people entering with an infant in a carrier. I didn't expect them to join us upstairs but they did, even though there were seats downstairs. And it happened that they made for a pew that appeared vacant only to discover two small boys ducked down, sitting on the kneelers. The group of them entered the pew from both ends and my two boys had no way to escape. I was pretty embarrassed but it was also very funny. You think they learned their lesson?

So, in order to accommodate everyone, Kenny had to scooch out of our pew into another pew by himself with another family. He wasn't too happy about that but I told him to make room for the other people.

And then during communion there was quite a bottleneck on the stairs from so many people. I found myself saying in response to my kids' complaints about the crowd: You should be happy church is so packed. But it wasn't very convincing, even to me.

---

¹ cf. iMonk's sermon on Mark 13, via.