When we were young, we’d vacation on Cape Cod for a week sometimes. Sunday would roll around, and our parents would want to take us to church.
But Mom, it’s vacation.
We’d go to the church named after some Saint we never heard of, filled with strangers. There wasn’t even any stained glass. There were no elderly Italian women in the last pew, dressed all in black because they were widows. It was like a whole different religion. It was fun to stand on the step after, and feel a different sun in a different sky beaming on your face. A Cape Cod sun.
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“It was like a whole different religion.”
That’s more or less what I used to think at Mass with my parents at St. Pius X in Yarmouth. Thanks for sharing the insight, Sippican.
I suppose the alienation effect would be even greater if you went to church in Provincetown, except that in Provincetown the big old churches all seem to have been converted into dance clubs or something.
tjl- Heh. I’ve been in that church a couple dozen times. I think my younger cousins were all baptized there. Officially, I think that’s South Yarmouth.
feel a different sun in a different sky beaming on your face
Ah. But the same Son eternally within.
I loved vacation church. Mine was usually somewhere in Ohio. And then the next weekend, it was the one my mom grew up in in Pennsylvania. Ours now is in North Myrtle Beach…Our Lady Star of the Sea.