Right, so today's blog was inspired by my first outing to church last night since Christmas and it reminded me kind of why I'm not too fussed whether or not I go. I think it's only fair to mention first that I'm in no way religious; yes, I consider myself Catholic (because that's what I was raised to be), yes I believe in some ultimate Good out there that may or may not be God and I do believe in some kind of ultimate Evil out there that may or may not be the Devil, and I do believe in Jesus, yes I say prayers everyday, but besides those point I don't practice much or believe in much that the Bible says (more on that later); the extent of my church going is Christmas and Easter and going when theres a wake or funeral (and once for some kind of spirtualistic seance type thing with two of my friends back in jolly old England). So yeah, like I said, I'm not very religious - it in no way sways what I do day to day normally - so this blog may be a bit biased from the get go.
So yeah, here we go...
I went to Church yesterday for the first time in about six months and it was an experience to remember. I didn't go to my regular parish because I'm not too big a fan of the priests there and the masses they give but after last night's diabolical, I'll never leave my parish again. First of all, when we were in the church sitting waiting for mass to start about 70% of the congregation, if not a little more than that, was coughing, sneezing, blowing their noses, etc. That really bothered me. Now that the Swine Flu is an official pandemic in this world, people should use their common sense and stay home and look after themselves when they're sick. God won't begrudge you one missed mass due to your health people! Anyway, when the priest finally walked in the first thing I noticed was how unpersonable the guy was; most priests I've had throughout my life would smile, nod at their parishoners, shake hands, etc, but this guy just stared straight ahead the whole time; I guess he's just really into his job. As he passed my row, I noticed that he was wearing sandals and I immediately thought "Is this guy trying to be Jesus or what?" As soon as I saw this guy I had misgivings about going but it was when he started talking that I knew for sure I had made a mistake. He was speaking in the most slow, condescending, "talk to them like they're five year old" voice I've ever heard in my life. From that point on, I began checking my watch every two minutes waiting for the damn mass to end.
Then we got to his damn homily. Now mind you, this was about forty-five minutes into the mass - most other churches are finishing up their masses at about forty-five minutes in, but not this guy. Another strike against him in my book. I know I'm not religious, I shouldn't be going to church at all if I want to be out at a specific time, but it just annoyed me because every other damn church gets you out on time, why can't this guy? Not to mention, people have lives outside of church and probably make plans afterwards, they shouldn't go longer just because they feel like it. ANYWAY this guy's homily was about how to ACCEPT the freakin eucharist! Most of the parishoners sitting in the damn church were senior citizens, probably collecting their pensions already, and this guy was lecturing them like they're little kids! And then he was complaining about how most people don't drink from the wine glass and only except the bread at communion: "Most of you think it's unhealthy and full of germs drinking from the same glass but did you know the Bishops long ago went to the American Association of Doctors and they said it was perfectly healthy as long as we wiped it after each person drank? I want to see everyone take a sip today." Hello? There's a fucking swine flu pandemic, half the people in the parish are hacking up lungs, and you want us all to share the wine? No way! Then he went on about people eating dinner with their families at home: "If you don't sit down with your whole family at the table, without the tv or any other distractions, you're not a real family." Now that really bothered me; I thought it was way too harsh. First of all, my family doesn't eat together all the time and we're as close as anything. Second of all, I know tons of friends who barely ever eat with their families and they turned out just find and are close with one another still, so what the hell was this priest talking about? Maybe if he actually had a family of his own, he'd realize he was just talking shite. And THEN the guy actually mentioned how long his mass was taking: "I believe mass should be longer than forty five minutes that's why I try to keep you here for an hour at least, a lot of the times longer. Once we all die, we'll have to live with it for eternity anyway." What the hell? By that point in the homily, I was so annoyed I just wanted to leave and walk out and by the time we got to the "peace-be-with-you's" I wish I had...
As I'm assuming (I know I shouldn't use that word because it makes an "ass out of u and me") all of you know, the "peace-be-with-you" bit of the mass is right after you say the Lord's prayer, you turn to everyone around you, shake their hands and say "Peace be with you." Normally, I don't mind this, but considering the fact that I was sitting in the middle of people who look like they're dying of flu, I didn't want to shake anyones hands, so by that point in my mass, whenever anybody turned to me to say "Peace be with you" I just folded my arms across my chest and inclined my head politely to them. Well the number of dirty, hackey type looks I recieved when I did that! But honestly, a pandemic people! Use your common sense! Don't go spreading your germs to other, healthy people! If it was me that was sick A. I wouldn't even be in church and B. if i WAS i wouldn't extend my hand and risk giving other people my illness. And then it was time for communion and I have never SEEN the line to drink the wine so long (due to the priest's lecture) and all I could think was "germs." (At this point I would just like to note I am not a germaphobe but I am cautious, especially with this damn pandemic now). Anyway after I accepted the host - and not wanting the wine - I just left the church, going home early because I was so annoyed with the proceedings.
This whole episode reminded me exactly of why it's such a fight for my mother to get me to come to church with the rest of the family. It's not because as this priest said that "people who don't come to church don't want to accept Jesus in their lives," it's because I'm a grown person who doesn't want to be lectured about the way he lives his life. I don't agree with half the teachings the church preaches anyway. No birth control, No sex before marriage, No Abortions, No Divorce, etc. It's ridiculous! Not to mention if everyone went to Hell for breaking a commandment or committing one of the Seven Deadly Sins, 99.9% of people on this earth would go to Hell. I think the Bible is purely a book of morality tales and nothing more and the Church blows them all up out of proportion. Nowhere in there does it say that Mary is actually a virgin. She's a virgin in the sense she has a pure spirit and heart but it never said she's PHYSICALLY a Virgin and the Church still preaches she is. While I like the story of Adam and Eve, fossils and evolution disproves it, and though Noah's Ark is a good story there's no way a flood could destroy the world and that one family could repopulate the earth. They're nothing more than morality tales most of them and the Church does nothing but preaches them all as truth and that's my problem with religion.
Like I said, I believe in something. I think if God exists - as I think he does - , I do believe He created the Universe and all, but he did it by causing the Big Bang and then everything on Earth evovlved on it's own. I don't understand why people can't see that Religion and Science can't exist side by side and only think it can be one or the other. To quote the movie "Angels and Demons" - "Science and Religion are telling the same story, just in different languages."
Anyway, that's my blog entry done. Boring topic, I know, but that priest last night just really annoyed me.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Home, a "Hangover," and Summertime in General
This is my first blog post so bear with me. I don't even know if this will be good. I want to be a writer professionally one day, but sometimes I don't even think i can write well so I thought I'd start a blog to get a bit of practice.
As all of you know already (and if you don't, you must be a complete stranger so thanks for finding my blog intriguing enough to at least read this far) I got back home from England about two weeks ago after practically dying of homesickness for about two months. Each day that passed I got more and more excited. I had not seen anyone in my family or any of my American friends in month and I was really looking forward to catching up with them all. When I first got home, however, things were just...odd and they still are, two weeks later.
After being away for just about eight months straight, give or take three weeks or so, I find it completely awkward trying to talk to, interact, and hang out with all of these people on a daily basis again. The night I landed back in New York and got back to the house, I should have known this would be the case because I found it really hard trying to come up with conversation with anyone in the house. My sister all of a sudden had grown up and was going out all the time, and my parents just made general small talk, asking how my second semester went, asking how I enjoyed England, and other similar pleasantries. It didn't bother me at the time, because I just gotten off an eight and a half hour plane ride and I just assumed I was too tired to really take in anything, but the days that followed were no better. Having not seen them for ages, being away from the family and the friends of mine that they met and knew, I didn't know what to talk to them about. The times I got drunk and spent the next day running out of lectures and into the toilets of Lipman throwing up all the alcohol? The girl I was trying to get into bed? The only two in the house I felt I could talk to were Booster and Buddy and that was only because they were dogs and couldn't talk back! My relationship with them hadn't changed at least.
If I thought things were going to be better with my friends, I was wrong. The first time I met up with them, most of the time was spent in a terribly awkward silence. Again, pleasantries were exchanged: "How's it going?" "How was your semester?" But besides that, we didn't really have much to say to one another. We tried talking about girls we were into, but not knowing them ourselves killed those conversations pretty quickly and it was the same story whenever we tried relaying adventures we had had with our respective friends at University. Once those conversations failed, we ended up reminiscing about our time in high school together the whole time. It seems that without common friends to ask about ("Did you hear what Thom did?") or a common enemy to bitch about ("Jessy's such a whore"), we have to try ten times harder to make conversation. Two weeks later, it's still not really too much better but it is getting there and I guess that's all I can ask for.
I guess I'm just disappointed by the fact that I had been looking forward to going home for months and now that I'm here it just feels a bit anti-climactic and weird. The thing is though, I know it will get better eventually, but by the time it does it will be time for me to go back to England to finish my third and final (already?!) year of Uni. And even though that's still three months away, I'm starting to get nervous and panicky that it will be the same way when I fly back there, though ten times worse because I'll be living completely on my own.
On a brighter note, however, I went to the movies last night with 6 other people to see "The Hangover" and that made me feel considerably better. Never before have I laughed so hard during the movie, and never before have I heard an entire sold out theater laugh once a minute. It was so funny that I'll need to go see it again just to catch all of the lines that I missed due to the raucous atmosphere the movie caused to descend over the audience. I highly recommend it to everyone! It's quickly ascended into my top five movies of all time.
Now re-reading this before I push "publish post," I'm beginning to feel pretty nervous. I think I picked too gloomy a topic for my first blog and I don't think it sounds well written or anything at all. It sounds pretty rambly and everyone who reads this is probably going to be bored out of their minds (Lucky for me, however, I'll probably get a total of two or three readers and no more). I don't really know how to end this so I guess I'll end it with a list of hopes for my summer:
1. Get over the awkwardness of being home and learn to sustain conversations with my family and American friends.
2. Show Holly and Jo a good time when they come to visit the end of this month, and meet up with Caroline a few times as well.
3. Start my dissertaion - or at least the reading for it - so I'm not stressing about it come september when I have 2 other essays and presentations to do at the same time.
4. Be Happy and Have Fun. :-)
And that's me done with my first blog! :-)
As all of you know already (and if you don't, you must be a complete stranger so thanks for finding my blog intriguing enough to at least read this far) I got back home from England about two weeks ago after practically dying of homesickness for about two months. Each day that passed I got more and more excited. I had not seen anyone in my family or any of my American friends in month and I was really looking forward to catching up with them all. When I first got home, however, things were just...odd and they still are, two weeks later.
After being away for just about eight months straight, give or take three weeks or so, I find it completely awkward trying to talk to, interact, and hang out with all of these people on a daily basis again. The night I landed back in New York and got back to the house, I should have known this would be the case because I found it really hard trying to come up with conversation with anyone in the house. My sister all of a sudden had grown up and was going out all the time, and my parents just made general small talk, asking how my second semester went, asking how I enjoyed England, and other similar pleasantries. It didn't bother me at the time, because I just gotten off an eight and a half hour plane ride and I just assumed I was too tired to really take in anything, but the days that followed were no better. Having not seen them for ages, being away from the family and the friends of mine that they met and knew, I didn't know what to talk to them about. The times I got drunk and spent the next day running out of lectures and into the toilets of Lipman throwing up all the alcohol? The girl I was trying to get into bed? The only two in the house I felt I could talk to were Booster and Buddy and that was only because they were dogs and couldn't talk back! My relationship with them hadn't changed at least.
If I thought things were going to be better with my friends, I was wrong. The first time I met up with them, most of the time was spent in a terribly awkward silence. Again, pleasantries were exchanged: "How's it going?" "How was your semester?" But besides that, we didn't really have much to say to one another. We tried talking about girls we were into, but not knowing them ourselves killed those conversations pretty quickly and it was the same story whenever we tried relaying adventures we had had with our respective friends at University. Once those conversations failed, we ended up reminiscing about our time in high school together the whole time. It seems that without common friends to ask about ("Did you hear what Thom did?") or a common enemy to bitch about ("Jessy's such a whore"), we have to try ten times harder to make conversation. Two weeks later, it's still not really too much better but it is getting there and I guess that's all I can ask for.
I guess I'm just disappointed by the fact that I had been looking forward to going home for months and now that I'm here it just feels a bit anti-climactic and weird. The thing is though, I know it will get better eventually, but by the time it does it will be time for me to go back to England to finish my third and final (already?!) year of Uni. And even though that's still three months away, I'm starting to get nervous and panicky that it will be the same way when I fly back there, though ten times worse because I'll be living completely on my own.
On a brighter note, however, I went to the movies last night with 6 other people to see "The Hangover" and that made me feel considerably better. Never before have I laughed so hard during the movie, and never before have I heard an entire sold out theater laugh once a minute. It was so funny that I'll need to go see it again just to catch all of the lines that I missed due to the raucous atmosphere the movie caused to descend over the audience. I highly recommend it to everyone! It's quickly ascended into my top five movies of all time.
Now re-reading this before I push "publish post," I'm beginning to feel pretty nervous. I think I picked too gloomy a topic for my first blog and I don't think it sounds well written or anything at all. It sounds pretty rambly and everyone who reads this is probably going to be bored out of their minds (Lucky for me, however, I'll probably get a total of two or three readers and no more). I don't really know how to end this so I guess I'll end it with a list of hopes for my summer:
1. Get over the awkwardness of being home and learn to sustain conversations with my family and American friends.
2. Show Holly and Jo a good time when they come to visit the end of this month, and meet up with Caroline a few times as well.
3. Start my dissertaion - or at least the reading for it - so I'm not stressing about it come september when I have 2 other essays and presentations to do at the same time.
4. Be Happy and Have Fun. :-)
And that's me done with my first blog! :-)
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