What a wonderful weekend. Cat and I left early Saturday morning and headed to Neenah, WI. Cat’s brother Joe lives there with his wife Diane, and their kids, Cassidy (9), Keaton (7) and Christopher (2).
Christopher, aka Chip, is our godson. That might make me bias, but he is the most adorable kid. He calls all of the company that comes over grandma, or more like “gamma”. We did get him to say “ancat” (aunt Cat) and “unrah” (uncle Rob) a few times but mostly it was “gamma”. Despite the gamma’s he is a really smart two-year old. He can sing the ABC song and count to 10. He speaks in complete sentences (although you can’t always understand all of the words). He saw me kick a wood post that a tree grew around and then he started kicking trees, I told him he had to be nice to the trees and he should give it a hug. So he started kicking a tree, saying “ouch” and then giving the tree a hug. He did this to a bunch of trees and even a stone rabbit statue. It was so cute. So all in all, we had a really great time with them. We kicked the soccer ball around, watched them ride their bikes, went to the park, and even took a dip in the hot tub.
It wasn’t all fun and games though. We did have to go to church on Sunday morning. This would normally be a perfectly acceptable event but the kids just whined and cried about having to go. Cat asked Cassidy why she didn’t want to go and she said she “hated church”. Her reasoning was that she had no idea what they were talking about at church and she couldn’t follow along in the book. I gotta say, I haven’t used a misselette in years because it’s just easier not to, but I know a lot of people who follow the whole Mass. Cat told Cass that she’d help her and show her how to follow along. This seemed easy enough, but it wasn’t. The priest sorta made up his own prayers. He did his own version of the Eucharistic prayer and changed a lot of other things. It was nuts. That wasn’t the best part though. The whole mass was odd. They have a guitar group that plays for Mass. They had 8, yep eight, guitars and like 10 more singers and this girl that played the flute, violin and trumpet (non of them very well either). The music was bad and the songs that were on the board weren’t marked as to which was which and they weren’t even in the order we sang them. There as absolutely no time for reflection or prayer. We went rapid fire from opening song to opening prayer, straight into the first reading the psalm (which wasn’t even a psalm) the second reading and the gospel. This took all of 12 minutes. No kidding, I timed it. The homily was the longest part. It was about 18 minutes long and went nowhere. Being Pentecost, there was a multitude of great homilies that he could have given, but no. He managed to ramble on about 8 or 10 different topics that had nothing to do with Pentecost, like the fact that there aren’t many Jews in the Church anymore (um, no, they are Jewish not Catholic). He also said something about all parents have told their children that they are “a disappointment and should grow up” at one time or another. I’m sure parents have said that, but not all parents, and certainly not good parents. The wonders continued after the homily. The collection was still being taken when the hosts and wine were brought up and then the Eucharistic rite started (and the collection was still being taken) During the Eucharistic prayer, the two altar servers and the lector stood up at the altar with the priest and the deacon through the whole thing. Just before the Lamb of God, like 12 people went up to the altar to join the posse. They appeared to be the Eucharistic Ministers (perhaps it was the matching Jesus fish necklaces they were wearing that gave it away). After communion, they whole group went over to the tabernacle and formed a half circle around it. The deacon proceeded to put the Eucharist away while the others “guarded” him. CRAZY. There was a quick prayer at the end and an obnoxious rendition of God Bless America.
So the moral of this story…Love the niece and nephews, not so big on their church. Thank God for godsons and great parishes like mine.
