Sunday

Liv and I attended mass this morning at St. Peter Claver Catholic Church as part of the final project for her U of MN World Music class (Joel was a lector at Corpus Christi so couldn't attend with us... in fact, as we took the car, he had to bike to church). We had a very interesting two hours. I was afraid we would be the only white people there, but the congregation was about 60% black/40% white. The pastor was a 50ish white man with an Irish name who led the congregation in its gospel singing, called out lines, and exhorting us to sing, "Now, one step higher! Now one step higher and louder!" He also spent a lot of time mentioning all the sick and dead by name and relation (such as "great-auntie") to parishioners, including those in Africa. It was jam-packed and hot and some women actually had fans from a funeral parlor. During the passing of the peace, everyone left their seats and greeted everyone in the whole church. Anyway, it was cool, but you can see why it took two hours.