a souvenir

North Dakota, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Minnesota. New York. Indiana. Illinois. Other states, too, a list too long to remember--just think of wherever February is cold. Canada, Italy, Switzerland, India, El Salvador. Visitors from all these places gathered with a small parish this past Sunday, outnumbering the members but not overwhelming them. It was church on display, at least you'd think so, but somehow it was not a show. In a way that seems a miracle, but perhaps that's what comes with three hundred sixty-eight years of practice, nearly four centuries of welcoming those who do and might and never will belong.

To occupy a pew is a Sunday ritual. One that, any more, I only sporadically attend to. My habit, if I'm present, is to at once sit down and check out, to do my convoluted duty and bide my time. This is a fact, not a point of pride. Not so this past Sunday, there in the Mission San Jose, and not so surprising: novelty is a strong lasso for the wandering mind. But while it's true a Catholic mass filled with mariachi music is so far from my experience in tradition, in atmosphere, in sound and in setting that it's perhaps remarkable my mind recognized it as a church service at all, the main difference may have been that I wasn't roped in, and that I simply enjoyed it for what it was. Genuine. Sweet, as my friend said. A time of beautiful music and community and peace. Sure there's that pesky Catholicism and the cloudy centuries of history that I'm glossing over. Irrelevant, and no spot on my day. I smiled in church, and not just because it was over. Will wonders never cease?