Mass Elsewhere

I went to St. Joseph's, here in Bardstown, this morning. It is a lovely church, and the vestments were very nice, but I mixed up the time and arrived late. Also, the music is what I call cha-cha. Perhaps it's littleness in me, being petty, or whatever, but I do not like cha-cha music at mass. Anyway, it left me feeling kinda blah inside. It wasn't the fact they had cha-cha music that made me blah, it was my reaction that did it.

Perhaps I was wrong to even try to go somewhere else for worship, daily or Sunday. Maybe the fit I feel at Gethsemani is as good as it can ever get? The gas usage, while no longer in force, mixed with the attempts on my part to find a place here in town to go to mass, baked up a nasty cake of just plain old not going to mass. I hate that. Something is wrong, and it can't be the whole world, it has to be me. Parish life has never been a good fit for me. I've never felt at home in a parish.

There's another thing to consider. Why, if I feel at home at Gethsemani, do I not just go back to Gethsemani? Part of the answer has to do with my discernment about whether or not I want to convert to the Roman Church. To do that I have to go through the RCIA process, which means joining a parish, which means I have to go through a sacred path in a context which I never intend to be in again.

I am monastic. There, it's said. If I am not daily in the monastic setting, I vary and veer, waffle and dodge. I'm fed up with the whole process, and can only pray that by returning to what prior discernment has shown me is where I belong, that I may once again thrive.

Pray for me all who might read this.
Pray for me Holy Mother of God.