st. mary magdalene's

- is in northern Berkeley, up Milvia Street, an unpretentious white building that blends in well with the residences neighboring it. It is the fifth parish I've attended Mass in this year - and probably the church in which I've felt the least at home. Largely, I think, because the service I attended was pitched at kids (mostly third graders who had just had their first Communion yesterday).

Still, it was not terrible - for a start, the celebrant seemed genuinely happy to be there, unlike some priests who sulk their way through Mass and read their sermon in monotones off one side of an 8.5 by 11. The choir was passable, joyous even, although I still maintain that if you know you can't sing in parts you shouldn't try.

And then there was the Q & A during the sermon:

(the gospel, of course, was from john: " peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.")

Priest: So, children, what kind of things give you peace?
Girl in third row: Playing
Priest: Playing, good, anyone else?
Another girl: Sleeping
(Heh. I approve.)
Priest: Sleeping. What else can give us peace?
Precocious boy right at the front: Money!

*
Then there was the homeless lady with long straggly hair who, as she passed me in the aisle on the way to receive the Eucharist, leaned over and asked if I could spare her some change. Stunned, I instinctively refused (almost always do, according to the give a man a fish philosophy), and then felt bad because I was in church, and then felt angry because she probably knew that and was trying to use the location to guilt people out of their money.

(My feelings were somewhat assuaged when I saw her guzzling half of the chalice of wine before high-tailing it out the back door).

*
Attending church in all these different places has been good in giving me perspective, refreshing me, shaking me out of the rut one gets into by attending the same service in the same church for months, years. Mass in Stella Maris (in Bermuda) was (for want of a better word), earthy - not in the sense that it was crude, but rather that it was atavistic, truer to the original Mass than its contemporary form (though not in Latin). St. Egbert's (Beaufort) was a parish of great spirit and joy, infected, I suppose, by the verve of the Bible Belters. And St. Mary Magdalene...well, it sort of defies description at the moment, but we shall see. One more week here. No more children's Masses for me, though.