Merry Christmas~

The family went to midnight mass today. It was a service that reminded me how much I love Catholic service and awakened my latent desire to go more frequently. I know better than to make this a New Year's resolution, but I do miss church.

I grew up in the Syrian Orthodox tradition as I mentioned months ago, but my upbringing was laced in Catholicism (having attended a Convent primary school in India run by strict but fair nuns). There is a peace that comes over me after I go through the ritual that is mass. Knowing the hymns, responses, and times to kneel fulfills within my cultural framework the need for collective belonging. I also love the smell of incense and the whine of an organ as a novice choir tries to sing over it. I revel in being in a cathedral--the meditative value of those high cielings is even higher in a privacy-lacking nation like India. I feel a sense of absolution, no matter how misplaced, after I leave a novena. The chanting quality of sing-song delivery by priests whose completely grey hair reminds me of my grandfather seals the deal.

It's not church I miss. It's the innocence of my youth. It's India. It's my grandfather. It's nostalgia.