After the Gospel

I don't know if you're familiar with the Roman Catholic Mass at all, but the first half contains three readings, usually one from the Old Testament, one from the Epistles and one from the Gospels (although sometimes they mix up the first two; I always liked the reading from Revelation on All Saints, and while Acts isn't cool like Revelation, it's nice to get an occasional break from Paul in the second slot) and in most churches these days they let a couple of worthy parishioners get up and read the first two. I'm not sure why, but these people normally have incredible difficulty reading relatively simple passages, and I think if Paul could hear the way people would be reading his letters, he would go back and redo them all as stick-figure diagrams.

So, last Saturday evening, I was sitting there, picking lint out of the velcro in my pants and staring idly around, while the second guy goes up to read the bit from the Epistles, and he starts reading the wrong thing. Usually when this happens, they read the wrong week's reading which is at least understandable, but this guy started reading the Gospel, which has a completely different lead in and tone of voice and all from the Paul's letter to the Lower Slabovians, you know? And you know everyone in the congregation is doing the exact same thing I am, which is not actually listening to what he's reading at all, but wondering whether he's realized that he's reading the wrong thing (he must have) and what he's going to do about it. I'm not sure whether they tell readers not to admit they made a mistake or something, but this guy went all the way through, like nothing was wrong, and then took part in a little ceremony they do in my church where the reader brings the book of the Gospels up (obviously not totally necessary) and gives it to the priest to read the part that he read already, and sits down, which, I guess, just pushes it off onto the priest to figure out what to do next.

Of course, the guy had to read something else later in the service and he spent a good fifteen seconds making sure that he was reading the right thing, standing up there, while four guys in the back were probably taking bets on what would happen this time.

The point of all of which is, I can understand the guy's problems. Just the other day, I was sitting in a coffee shop, talking to the girl. I'd gotten to know her quite a while before, and we'd had a little while of things going really well and since then it's been a longer while of things not necessarily going so well, but not really going badly at any point. I haven't seen much of her lately — I'm moving to a new job come the first — and when we'd planned to get together, I figured it would be a good time to call it quits. Not the "I hate you forever" kind of quits, but more of an "I'm going to be many, many miles away and we haven't really be together long enough to attempt a long distance relationship plus I have issues from my last relationship with even attempting a long distance relationship so really I love you but I don't see how either of us can make this work" kind of quits, but once we're both there and talking — not Talking — my resolve starts to wither away. Eventually, I force it into being Talking, and she says that everything's not always clear, and things can't always be cut and dried, and sometimes you're just in an inbetween stage and that's not a bad thing

(Now, what I told myself coming in is that while that all makes some sort of abstract sense, inbetween stages don't necessarily work when you don't see each other very much, and probably don't work at all when you're 500 miles away from each other, and there's no point in saying to each other oh, this is just an inbetween stage when at least I recognize that the only thing it's in between is my realizing that things aren't going to work out, at least as they are now, and my saying that to her outright.)

and the bad part is, after talking and stuff, it all makes sense to me and I'm afraid to lose her, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to look like this is all a mistake, so just like that guy up at the lectern reading the wrong thing, I say yeah, it's an inbetween stage and we hug and kiss and walk our different directions from the coffee shop.

But what I'm wondering is, who comes up to the lectern afterwards to figure out what to do next?