- When I went into church there was a lady outside with the "palms". I wasn't sure if she was selling them or giving them away, so I avoided her. What I did realize once I got into church was that they weren't palms at all. This is what they looked like.
Ok I know the picture is bad but I had to take it covertly so I didn't look like a weirdo.-I kept my coat on the whole time, turns out heating a massive building isn't in the budget.
- I apparently have either forgotten the 28 years of Catholicism that has been in my head or I had too much going on in my head trying to translate the French to remember how to say the prayers in English in my head. I had a moment of, do I really not know the words to the Lord's Prayer? I think it was just the French overload.
- We didn't really sing any songs. There were responses to the different parts of mass, but no hymns like at home. Maybe because they didn't have songbooks.
- They also didn't have kneelers, or pews, just chairs set up. This made it confusing when people where supposed to kneel after communion and such.
- Speaking of communion. Only in France would it not be exactly uniform. I'm not kidding when I say that when the priest got to the bottom of the stairs to give communion people literally went from the 15th row straight to the front, around the sides of the chairs to get to him as fast as possible. I instantly thought, only in France. People didn't make nice lines that went from one aisle to the next, they just went how the felt like, not waiting for people, waiting for people, whatever. Amusing, yet confusing.
- Finally, as with most of the churches I have been to in Europe, as I walked out the door, there was a beggar standing directly in front of the door asking for money. This beggar though? while he was holding out his cup, he was also jingling the loose change in his pocket. I thought, if you have all this change in your pocket, why would I give you more??
Aren't you glad my church experience made me so compassionate and giving?
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