Log 68: Under his Eye
Next door to Hakuna Matata, there’s a beautiful, old, one room Episcopalian church that I’ve been planning to attend a mass at since my first day here. Yesterday, I finally put that plan into action.
As I approached the front doors of the church, I was greeted by two older women at a table full of miscellaneous pamphlets. Now, years of church experience told me that some of these pamphlets were meant to be brought into mass with me, intended to help me follow along with the readings and hymns. The only question was, which ones? Usually, pamphlet selection would be my parents’ (or grandparents’) department. In fact, everything church-related is usually their department. Panicked, I ended up walking right past the pamphlet table and into the church, selecting a seat in the last pew.
As everyone stood for the first hymn, a woman next to me tapped my shoulder. I turned to see her offering me another pamphlet, nodding encouragingly. “They run out of these at the door a lot - you can use this one!” I accepted the pamphlet with a smile, and proceeded to set it down next to me. When I did this, a slight look of confusion passed across the woman’s face. I’m supposed to be using this right now, aren’t I? I picked the pamphlet back up and leafed through the pages. Sure enough, the words to the song we were singing were in it. I played it cool, and started singing along like nothing had happened. Luckily, I actually recognized the song, and was able to sing along without really looking at the pamphlet at all. The woman next to me seemed to approve of this. Good recovery, I commended myself. A minute later, she leaned over towards me. “Did you grow up Episcopalian? You seem familiar with the hymn,” she commented. “Yeah, I went to an Episcopalian school K-12,” I explained casually.
At the end of the song, the priest concluded by saying, “may the lord be with you.” Like a veteran, I responded confidently, “and with your spirit!” As it turns out, while Catholic and Episcopalian masses are very similar, they aren’t identical. For example, while Catholics respond to “may the lord be with you” with “and with your spirit,” Episcopalians go the classic “and also with you,” route. A few heads turned at my mistake, and I sat back down in my pew hurriedly.
As mass progressed, I’ll admit I got a bit distracted for a few minutes, admiring the architecture and artwork inside the church. Suddenly, I noticed my pew-mate, the woman, getting up and moving towards the aisle. Welp, time for communion. Trying not to miss a beat, I got up as well to follow her. After a few steps, she turned around, looking at me strangely. Turns out, she was just going to grab something from her car, and it was not in fact time for communion. I sat back down in defeat for a second time.
Eventually, though, it was time for communion. I waited cautiously until it was my turn to join the line of parishioners waiting for the wafers and wine. The Episcopalian communion set up looked pretty much identical to the Catholic one. Thank god. When I was standing before the priest, I cupped my hands and accepted the wafer, preparing to pop it in my mouth as I turned away from him. Doing this, I almost bumped right into the wine-holding lady, who was standing much closer to the priest than I realized. I froze, wafer hovering in front of my open mouth. The wine-holding lady just stared at me. I glanced over at the wine-holding man standing on the other side of the priest, and watched as a guy took his wafer and dipped it in the wine cup before eating it. Looking back at the wine woman on my side, I slowly moved the wafer away from my mouth towards the wine goblet, dipped it, and ate it. Then, I sped walked back to my pew before I could further embarrass myself. The rest of the mass went smoothly. Actually, that’s not true at all. The rest of the mass went smoothly for me. Right after communion, the priest set aside some time for any visitors to stand up and introduce themselves to the congregation (although I may be leaving Maui in a matter of weeks, I consider myself a permanent resident, and as such, did not participate in this activity). A guy named Morgan, however, did participate, standing up and proclaiming before everyone that he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, then thanked us all for supporting and loving him. What a treat!
Highlight: A few days before Anne left Maui and headed back to Minnesota, she, Lucas, Sydney (my current roommate), and I made the trek to the top of Haleakala to watch the sunset. With a peak of just over 10,000 feet, Haleakala is the highest point on Maui. It’s an active volcano - having erupted at least 10 times during the past 1,000 years - and is responsible for creating a large portion of Maui’s overall land mass.
Driving the winding road up the mountain was surreal. Slowly, we climbed right into the clouds, before ascending past them altogether. When we found a spot that suited us, we parked along the side of the road and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.
