I Went to Mass Last Night

A bus passed my bus this morning

I went to mass with a woman I work with before she gave me a ride home. I didn’t have to go to mass to get the ride, but I figured it’d be worth it. And it was. This is bound to get deeper than I’d like, but here goes…

I really enjoy being in a room full of people trying to be better people. That’s what mass was for me. The skeptic in me usually balks at religious ceremony because I usually don’t believe that whoever is officiating really knows what he’s doing or that he is who he says he is (usually it’s a he). This applies to any religion, even my own. I recognize how presumptuous this is and I’m trying to overcome it. My own experience has shown me that I know very little, and I tend to project that knowledge of nothing onto everyone else, especially when someone is claiming to know a lot about intangible and barely comprehensible things. That’s not fair. But it’s only a small quibble, as I see it.

As I said, I really enjoy being in a room full of people trying to be better people. Sure there are phonies at any church, but I like to believe that most people are at Wednesday night mass not to be seen but to try to be good. I felt this very strongly last night. It was palpable. I understood most of the Our Father (Pai Nosso).

Other than that, I’m still settling in. I saw Batman (again) last night and plan to hit up many movies to practice reading the subtitles. I found out which bus to take to work, and I’m at work reading Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar in an effort to understand more about open source software and exactly what I hope to accomplish over the next couple of months.