Nothing Last Forever

I have an email notification on my phone this morning: Nothing Last Forever. I read that right. So did you. Nothing Last Forever.

As if we didn’t know that.

Maybe the grammatical error is intentional, a nudge to get me to actually open the email rather than summarily delete it. If that’s the ploy, it worked. The message is an ad for masks, barriers against airborne pathogens carrying the plague, from a company called Enro. I bought a few masks for the plane ride over here. According to Enro, we’re due for a new mask. No, we’re not. But thanks. 

Nothing last forever–

Something like that has been on my mind for the past few hours, as I was lying in bed deciding whether to go back to sleep or get up and capture the events of the last few days. My go-to strategy for putting myself back to sleep is to list the names of the 50 states in alphabetical order. Name a state, count to ten, name another state, count to ten. Alaska. Arizona. Alabama, Arkansas… There can be something settling in this recitation, an effect, when it’s working, that’s almost hypnotic. California 5, 6, 7 …. Colorado 5, 6 7, 8, ….  Last time I did it, I didn’t get past Louisiana. But not tonight. When I get to Wyoming at 3:45 a.m., I’m still wide awake.

I’m kind of stirred up from last night’s church service. For quite a long time now, that is not something I imagined saying, ever. Kind of like when I heard our niece say yesterday. “Oh, I just got a message from Uganda.” Both solidly in the very unlikely category.   

We went to a mass in the church up the street, a mass said for Tizi’s aunt and uncle who left this world a few years ago. Since they’ve been gone, if we’re here, we go. Usually the mass takes place in a small chapel in a rear corner of the church, a nondescript backroom with some earnest oversize statuary and seating for 20-25 of the faithful. In those events, it’s 20-25 minutes and out. No homily. If you’re lucky, no music. It’s a perfunctory service, bare bones.  Last night we were in the church.  

The new priest, whom everyone approves of, shows up in a wheelchair. He has a busted foot. He’s a big guy well into his 40’s, with dark hair and a fleshy face. On the street you might take him to be the town’s butcher. Last night he was wearing the robes and all, trying to keep from running over them, getting a lot of help from a deacon, who shoved him around when needed and arranged a microphone stand and fetched liturgical scripts as needed. I enjoyed watching the priest wheel left, wheel right, turning on a dime.

It’s an old church, with uncomfortable utilitarian wood pews, travertine floor, a high vaulted ceiling above the altar, and what greatly enhances a church experience, a wonderful echo. And a good sound system. The last two funerals I’ve attended were in acoustically disastrous churches, with sound systems that enhanced muffle, as if there’s an anti-crisp setting on the sound system, wrapping words in wool and then wrapping them again in plastic wrap, making them totally unintelligible. Last night every word was crystal clear and repeated in the church echo.

Not that hearing the words is important to me over here. I don’t know the mass in Italian. I can sort of guess: this is where we confess our sins, that sounded like “and also with you,” here we go with the Our Father, sure I’ll offer a sign of peace and give and accept kisses. Given the language barrier, I’m in it, but just barely. I comprehend little.

I realized last night, it doesn’t matter. A critical detail last night: no music. No organ, no piano, no guitar.  Thank God. Not to disparage church musicians of the world, but you can ruin a pretty good experience. The big guy in the wheelchair sang the mass, hitting those single Gregorian notes with their odd intervals, and the parishioners sang the notes back when invited to do so, and the echo had its very rich multiplier effect. It was eerie, it was penetrating. It was like attending a musical without the music. 

Then came the homily. Oh well, he kept it short. There was one laugh line. He employed a few typical Italian gesticulations to get his point across. I know he was talking about Jesus. I rarely listen to a homily in English. In Italian I completely tune it out.

The Gregorian notes and the echo–that’s really all I require. I have to wonder–when men and women of the church take orders, when they become part of one of those communities, and they attend mass every day, do they just get the notes and the words and the echo? And no music? And no homily? They’ve taken orders, so they don’t really need the homily, do they? We get the homily; it’s like orders writ small. 

It may have been during the homily I heard a cellphone message notification somewhere in the church. Over here you typically hear five notes: 3rd, 5th, 8th, 7th, 5th. Bee-beep bee-beep-beep. I thought, thank God that wasn’t me. Then remembered, with a feeling of total horror, Holy crap, my phone! My ringtone is the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian,” and it’s piercing. I couldn’t get my phone out fast enough to silence it. The Bangles would have broken the spell, for me and for everyone. The American! Tizi, where did you find this clown? I would have slunk out of the church in shame.

But the spell remained intact.

If the church could give me a no-music guarantee, and a no-homily guarantee, and if I could go to Tizi’s hometown church, I would go, willingly and often. I might even go everyday, to the church, that is; not that backroom. The way I feel this morning, if I could get a no-music, no-homily guarantee, I might even like to become a monk for a while. But not forever.  Nothing last forever.