This morning I had planned on going to Saint Raphael...for one thing because I'd gotten as far as its parking lot twice only to see that I was a few minutes late...and I don't walk into a church late unless there's a seriously good reason to do that. Like if it was my funeral or wedding, maybe. Neither of which I plan on having any more of, by the way.
But St. Raphael had service at 8:30 and 10:30, and since I couldn't make it to the 8:30 because of Dad Duties, I thought I would aim for the 10:30. And since I was pretty sure I could make it to a 9:00 service and still get to the 10:30 at St. Raphael, I decided to see what was happening at 9:00 that I hadn't yet been to see.
There were 12 services available. I'd been to 10 of them. So I chose the first one that I hadn't been to yet--Immaculate Heart of Mary--and checked the distance via MapQuest. It would be tight, but I could make it. So as soon as my Dad Duties ended, I got in my car and set out for The Other Side of Town.
As I went further and further West, it occurred to me that (1) this was the same general area in which Good Shepherd was located-- 3.2 miles due south, I saw when I checked later--so it would probably be one of the poorer churches and (2) I started to wonder if this was another Black Church (I had known that there were 3, but thought that that was it)...which hadn't occurred to me before for some reason.
I hasten to say that despite the fact that I've said that it was intimidating to me to be The White Guy, I have been in that spot before. When I was growing up our family lived on The Last White Street in Arbutus, Baltimore, Maryland, and when I played basketball in the summer I was often the only White Guy on the court. I never thought anything about it, and I don't think anybody else did, either. (And I could play some ball back in those days, lemme tell ya. Just sayin'.) And my mom volunteered at a G.E.D. program held at the Baltimore County Public Library Arbutus Branch (you know, where DAVID BYRNE got his library books...during the same years when I lived there!), and she'd have the entire class over at our house at the end of the "school year," so she and I would be the only white people there (the rest of the family having fled the area for various reasons, only one of them due to bigotry). And when I was a teacher at Ballard High School, the kids in the Minority Teacher Recruitment Program lost their teacher mentor and they came to ask me to do it. So I did. And there were several times when I was The White Guy. Ha ha. People would even come up to me and say, "Hey, I just wanted to meet The White Guy." I thought that was great: that kind of honesty is not something you get much of in this world, y'know? So it's not that I even mind being The White Guy. But it does take some energy, you know? For one thing, because I'm kind of shy by nature, and there is no blending into the background when you're The White Guy.
Well. I parked my car and was greeted by a (Black) man who was just getting out of his car. And as I got to the front door I was greeted by another (Black) guy who was just getting there himself. And I went into the church...let's just cut to the chase and say that there were only four other white people in the church, and two of them were the officiating priests.
You know, I've found that Catholic churches do a really bad job of recognizing visitors. Much worse than their Protestant counterparts. But that was not true for Immaculate Heart of Mary, for sure. I was greeted again when I entered the church...at least a couple of times...and then one man took me by the arm and said, "Let me introduce you to our Priest," and he walked me over and had me shake hands with the Priest. Who tried not to act surprised to see me, but I could see the burner flames dancing in his eyes. I went into the sanctuary and sat towards the back and at the end of the row (chairs, not pews), because (1) I'm shy, didn't I tell you that? and (2) I didn't want to get in the way of people when they went up for communion, since I can't partake (not being Catholic), and it's easier to not be in the way if you're at the end of the row and can just stand up and take a step backwards. But people kept coming up and welcoming me and shaking my hand until the service began. My memory has already begun to blur, but I am sure that there were at least a dozen people who stopped by to shake hands and welcome me.
That's never happened to me in a church before. Not in ANY church, much less a Catholic one.
The service itself, in brief:
The sanctuary was pretty barren. It was basically a cinderblock building with a stained glass window at one end and Stations of the Cross bas-reliefs hung on the walls. There was a nice (and rather big) cross shaped baptismal font, though. Looked big enough to do an immersion, knowhati'msayin'?
The music was provided via piano...but there was a sizable choir. Wearing blue robes, mmm-hmmm. I think this was the first choir I've seen in robes. I like that. Choirs should be robed, I think. And yes, I will say it: the music was Blacked Up. Made me feel happy, too. I particularly remember the choir singing a Welcome to Our Church song and a kids choir coming up and doing a pretty fantastic little Cuban rhythm thing. It was goooood. And not just repetitive or screamy the way that kind of music sometimes gets. The only thing I felt was missing was that there wasn't really any room for the congregation to do anything but some incidental singing. And no hymnals, no songs in the booklet either. I still sang along, though. Had to do it.
During The Lord's Prayer, the woman standing next to me just reached out for my hand, and we held hands as we recited the prayer. Not only hasn't that ever happened to me in church before, I'm pretty sure it never will again unless I return to this church...or, possibly, at St. Martin de Porres, St. Augustine, or Christ the King. (Those are the other Black Catholic Churches, in case you missed that.) And it was really sweet.
I am usually uncomfortable during the giving of the sign of peace. Except when I'm with my kids, because then I have a built in go-to. Fortunately, in most Catholic churches the sign of peace thing takes about twenty seconds, so there's not much time to wonder how outgoing I should be. But at Immaculate Heart of Mary? Whoa. I must have gotten at least a dozen...and possibly two dozen...possibly even more than that, come to think of it...Peaces. And it was like a five minute activity. You could tell that these people were really glad to great each other...and me, too. It was very sweet, very sincere. It felt like family.
At the end of the service, a woman went to the pulpit and asked that any visitors stand and introduce themselves. Two people did. The lady next to me looked over at me. I ducked down. The lady at the pulpit then said, "And if there are visitors here who don't want to introduce themselves, that's okay. We just want you to know we're glad that you're here."
As I was leaving the church at the end of the service a guy came up to me and gave me a calendar. Then he said, "Why didn't you introduce yourself?" I said, "I'm sorry, I'm just really shy." He looked a little puzzled, but he let me off the hook and said something about he hoped to see me again.
The calendar, by the way, is fantastic. Lots of Black Jesus pictures.
I might could be going back for more of this, I'd say.
The service didn't run too long...just a little over an hour...but it was so far away that I knew I didn't have a chance of making it to St. Raphael, so I looked for a church I hadn't yet visited with an 11:00 service. There were a few, but I decided to hit up Saint John Paul II.
Oh, my, what a difference those fifteen and a half miles made. I went from being one of four white people in a Black Church to being one of three black people in a White Church. That's a joke, son. But not about the whiteness of this church. There were literally only two black people in this church...which was small, but very full. It was a nice looking church, too, and I would have guessed that it was pretty well-to-do. I'd have been wrong, though, as you'll see if you stick around.
I was kind of sort of greeted when I came into the sanctuary by a guy standing near the door, but to be honest it was so mumbly and vague that he could just as well have been telling me that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Let's just say it wasn't a full throated greeting. But it was all that I got.
The service itself, in brief:
The music was provided by piano, guitar, and chorus. They sounded pretty good, but I am more than a little bit prejudiced against the use of a guitar in a church service. Sorry, I'm just an old school kind of guy.
The sermon...well, let's just say that it wouldn't be fair to judge the priest on this one, at least not completely. He was reporting to the congregation that a decision had been made to shut down the parish in 2019 and move all of the services to their other location on Goldsmith Lane, due to the fact that membership and money were on the decline. Which is most definitely a valid thing for a priest to tell his congregation. It didn't do much for me as a visitor, though, and I have to say that he went way deep into the details, reading three different letters and reporting on every aspect of the closure. Not only did it feel like he was beating around the bush, it almost felt like he was playing it out a bit. It took at least fifteen minutes before he actually said that the parish would be closing. Everything before that was What We Have Been Talking About, What So And So Said, etc. I actually thought he was going to say, "And our parish has been saved!" at two different points. So that felt kind of wrong.
So on the one hand I don't want to judge St. John Paul II too harshly, given that circumstance...but I have to say, the contrast between these two churches was so gigantic that I wouldn't even have recognized them as being of the same faith if it hadn't been on MapQuest that way. Even before the Sermon of Death, St. John Paul II was just so lifeless, so joyless, so devoid of human warmth and feeling.... It really felt like everything that is wrong with organized religion in condensed form.
Even if they were going to remain in their pretty little space...and it was kind of pretty, actually...I wouldn't even think about going back to this church.
More Black Church for me, please.
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