Sunday nite in rogers Park for Indian food and a catholic mass. So, on and on about Indian - maybe twice a week @ this point - Mutter Kuster and I went to a new place (have a 50% coupon for it, Jakovv said it was good until after we ate there - then he said he'd 'heard' it was good). New Place = um, forgot the name, but it's a Devon place - and brilliant. We shared plates of Masala and some beef dish - added 2 parathas (wait - paratha $2 each? ouch!!). Loved it. Will go back and try different dishes.
Then, back to my undergrad days for mass - but, wait, where were we? On the campus of Loyola University? But ..... it's so different!! It's no longer the campus I knew. I know, i know, 'my city was gone...' and 'this is were we swam/hunted/...buy a souvineir' and all the other 'old fogey' things back in my day - but the change in the place is stratospheric. The oldest of the old buildings remain - Dumbach, Cudahey, and the science buuilding. Mertz dorm remains. But the rest isbasically ..... 75% changed? Really - subtract those three buildings - even Cudahy has a giant addition tripling it's size - and little of the old campus remains. That little sand beach outside Madonna della Strada .....
And that's good - time and progress marches on. The campus looks good. Looks great. Who would want it to look the same? Glad for the next generations.....
But I knew that ONE area would remain unchanged - the Mass. Passed down thu' generations and generations around the world - passes down thru' generations and generations of my life - surely i would get the same satisfaction here - except ......
There have been three generations of me 'going to mass' By rote, growing up, I went to mass. Loved St. Rita, loved being a part of that. In college and living on the north side, I fell inlove with the student mass @ Loyola - the girls, the ease of a 10.15 pm mass, the girls, frenz, the girls....and, most inportantly, the singing. I learned to really enjoy the spectacle - and loved the singing. Looked forward to it because - always - you'd wonder what songs they'd kick into that nite. open up rocking w. "gather us in"? That stunning spiraling sung "Grant us peace". Sung "The Lords Parayer?" Spirituals like "Where you there when they crucified the Lord?" or "I once was blind....". Like a concert, I knew I'd arrived when somehtiing - be it the instruments, the singers, the time of the nite, the tenor of the sermon, the godpel readings - would lead me to weep - silently, secretly - so only The Father knew - but moved I was.
And a giant part of that was the music, and it really changed going to Mass 'by rote' to really enjoying the experience. Then came reading John Spongs Jesus for the non religious and the ongoing biblical scholarship that follwed, the attempt to 'save Jakovv's soul" and a third era of Mass going has been entered - the chuckling over which readings are used - tisk tisking when a Paul letetr was used that wasn't one of the 7 'For shure written by Paul', the giant smiles inside whent he priest sermoned what I liked or when biblical scholarship was deployed ...
But, on this sunday jnite, when I was expecting the music to move me - it didn't. The band? Horrible. No longer on the ground floor, it's now in the balcony (where we used to sneak up during mass and watch the rest down below) and muffled. Song choice? Stilted. Singers ...... eh.
Yes, the changes to campus are great. Part of my childhood was spent there in university, and I love the school and hope for its future. However, the mass experience was crushingly dissapointing.
I made the staement "I will never go back".
But maybe I should.
Then, back to my undergrad days for mass - but, wait, where were we? On the campus of Loyola University? But ..... it's so different!! It's no longer the campus I knew. I know, i know, 'my city was gone...' and 'this is were we swam/hunted/...buy a souvineir' and all the other 'old fogey' things back in my day - but the change in the place is stratospheric. The oldest of the old buildings remain - Dumbach, Cudahey, and the science buuilding. Mertz dorm remains. But the rest isbasically ..... 75% changed? Really - subtract those three buildings - even Cudahy has a giant addition tripling it's size - and little of the old campus remains. That little sand beach outside Madonna della Strada .....
And that's good - time and progress marches on. The campus looks good. Looks great. Who would want it to look the same? Glad for the next generations.....
But I knew that ONE area would remain unchanged - the Mass. Passed down thu' generations and generations around the world - passes down thru' generations and generations of my life - surely i would get the same satisfaction here - except ......
There have been three generations of me 'going to mass' By rote, growing up, I went to mass. Loved St. Rita, loved being a part of that. In college and living on the north side, I fell inlove with the student mass @ Loyola - the girls, the ease of a 10.15 pm mass, the girls, frenz, the girls....and, most inportantly, the singing. I learned to really enjoy the spectacle - and loved the singing. Looked forward to it because - always - you'd wonder what songs they'd kick into that nite. open up rocking w. "gather us in"? That stunning spiraling sung "Grant us peace". Sung "The Lords Parayer?" Spirituals like "Where you there when they crucified the Lord?" or "I once was blind....". Like a concert, I knew I'd arrived when somehtiing - be it the instruments, the singers, the time of the nite, the tenor of the sermon, the godpel readings - would lead me to weep - silently, secretly - so only The Father knew - but moved I was.
And a giant part of that was the music, and it really changed going to Mass 'by rote' to really enjoying the experience. Then came reading John Spongs Jesus for the non religious and the ongoing biblical scholarship that follwed, the attempt to 'save Jakovv's soul" and a third era of Mass going has been entered - the chuckling over which readings are used - tisk tisking when a Paul letetr was used that wasn't one of the 7 'For shure written by Paul', the giant smiles inside whent he priest sermoned what I liked or when biblical scholarship was deployed ...
But, on this sunday jnite, when I was expecting the music to move me - it didn't. The band? Horrible. No longer on the ground floor, it's now in the balcony (where we used to sneak up during mass and watch the rest down below) and muffled. Song choice? Stilted. Singers ...... eh.
Yes, the changes to campus are great. Part of my childhood was spent there in university, and I love the school and hope for its future. However, the mass experience was crushingly dissapointing.
I made the staement "I will never go back".
But maybe I should.
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