Looking back to Monday, I visited the ear doctor. I still have mildly uncomfortable pressure in my right ear, caused by my failure to properly equalize on a scuba dive last December. She put me on a strict regimen of gum-chewing, twice daily.
As I was leaving, she said "I saw you at mass yesterday." "Huh?" I replied, as I don’t do mass. "You know," she explained "the mass at the mall." Oh yes, that's right, I was at the mall during mass the day before. The mall is where you go when you need to buy a replacement backpack strap and get it repaired, if your strap has been violently torn off in a motorized tricycle wheel. And it is also where you go for a Sunday morning Tympanogram and a Pure Tone Audiogram (ear tests, both of which I fall well within normal range.)
It also happens to be where many urban dwellers attend mass. The whole thing strikes me a bit weird. In the center of the mall, right outside the supermarket, hundreds of people fight for a spot to see the priest serve mass. Now I don't know much about mass, but I always hear the phrase "Let us put ourselves in the presence of god…" That seems pretty darn tough to do in a shopping mall. There are plenty of non-mass-goers passing through the corridor, tons of nagging children, noise pollution from every shop on the strip, and instead of angelic stained glass windows, the mass-goers can stare at immense banner advertisements for all the products to be bought. I saw one devout looking woman standing under a poster for the movie "Sin City," and another mass-goer leafing through the supermarket circular.
So I asked my doctor why people go to mass at the mall. She told me it is a matter of convenience. Parents like to take their kids shopping and for lunch at the mall every Sunday. So they can kill two birds with one stone. The shopping begins just as soon as communion has been received. And don't discount basking in the comfort of almighty air-condition. I asked her if she didn't find this convenience contradictory to the concept of making a sacrifice for worship. "Actually, the priest made the same comment yesterday." Ha! Don’t mind the messenger. Just bestow praise for all that western civilization has wrought.
FOR THE TIME BEING, COMMENTS ARE OUT-OF-ORDER. I’VE GOTTEN WAY TO MUCH COMMENT SPAM. SO UNTIL I FIGURE OUT A WAY TO DEFEAT THE SPAMMERS, NOBODY EXCEPT ME CAN SAY ANYTHING.