They all say we, as humans, tend to like things, places, people that have become more familiar or are already familiar. I had not realized that until I realized the reason why I go to church sometimes. No, it is not that I am particularly religious or that I go to repent, sometimes I go to mass because I have a sense of nostalgia. This sense of nostalgia reminds me of when I was younger and my parents used to take me to church before my sister was born, or after when she was old enough and we would all go. In the midst of a crazy week, I could count on this serene place of comfort. When we went to mass, it was almost as if time stopped in the outside world. There are few places were the environment has a since of reverence and a crowd of people are able to hold it together enough to have moments of absolute silence where a pen being dropped could be heard and this was one of those places. For me, mass is a sense of mediation, a place where I can look retrospectively back at my life and feel comfortable because I am not expected to speak if I do not wish to do so. I feel truly comfortable because I can be around people but do not have say a word. I can just observe.
It was during one of these observations that I had a strange thought. These rituals, such as Ash Wednesday, will one day be obsolete. So I looked around the beautiful church, with the carefully crafted stain glass windows with the light shining through them giving the depictions on the windows a glimmer, at the faithful father standing before us devoting himself to the church, at the pews with people with so much faith and hope, at the beautiful and cleverly carved columns and roof. I looked on to this sea of people and sudden they were gone. In there place was nothing but vines growing on the walls, crawling towards the inside of the decrepit walls of the once great church. Mother Earth reclaiming what we had only just borrowed from her. Her long over due taxes finally being claimed. In that moment is when I realized we are living in an era that no one else will get to see but only read about in their textbooks like we read about those before us. We are time travelers in our own sense. So take those small moments to observe, to not talk but listen because how you see the world, no one will ever see the same way you do.
Great Perhaps 