Let me start by saying I love my new place of employment. I love its values, culture, mission and cafeteria. I’m even partial to the bathrooms.
Had I ever played Never Have I Ever in the last two decades (which, sadly, I have not), I could have confidently proclaimed, “Never Have I Ever Purchased Spirit Wear.” It’s true. I’ve worked at (and loved) a lot of schools yet never once felt drawn to drop $60 at the bookstore on a seal-emblazoned hoodie. I’m just not a representin’ kind of gal.
Now, I own a t-shirt, long-sleeve t-shirt, AND the obligatory hoodie. I even wear them about to announce my devotion! Though I will say, the Spirited Tuesdays where everyone from the VPs to the Facilities admin dresses head to toe in school colors is still a bridge too far. How can anyone possibly own that much orange?
The other thing I love about my new job is the campus. There are prayer gardens and a little chapel and winding paths through quiet woods. There’s art everywhere — paintings and murals and ceramic-tile mosaics set into the walls. It’s great!
And also confusing…in a manner I’ve come to associate with Catholicism.
In my ecumenical journeys, I’ve been to many Protestant churches. I’ve hung out with the Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopals, Disciples of Christ, United Congregationalists, Mennonites, Presbyterians, and a slew of non-denominationals. I can find my way around a church supper like nobody’s business. Need some extra sporks for the Mac and Cheese? I’ll grab them from the fourth-grade Sunday School room, which I can find by instinct, rather the way a Capistrano swallow locates her own particular mud nest.
Then I met the Catholics, and I met my match. Toledo seems particularly imbued with the Church of Rome, though this impression may be influenced by my choice to a) marry a Catholic and b) work for them. Regardless, I have become particularly aware of Catholic…um…city planning.
A Protestant church may be large or small, but it has the same basic elements: a variously-named large worship hall (sanctuary, nave, etc.); a gathering space that may or may not double as a basketball court, some offices, a lounge for the Ladies, and a series of classroom-sized spaces for nurseries and Sunday school. And (and this is key) a Protestant church is contained. Except for the disconcerting campuses of the Mega-whatever-they-ares, Protestants generally make do with a single building, with maybe an addition or two every fifty years.
Catholics? Catholics sprawl. They’ve got the church and the events hall and the basketball court and the industrial kitchen and the elementary school and the baseball field and the middle school they added in ‘68, and —
Years ago, I tried to go to an event at a Catholic church. I tapped the street address into GPS, naively assuming I was looking for a building and not a city-state. I went in the front doors where I was almost crushed by the pre-Christmas evening Mass crowd. To escape, I wound through a warren of dead-ending secret passageways, before finally being spilled out through a gymnasium with a freight elevator into the snow. I finally gave up and went home, only to learn later that the meeting was at an annex a half-mile away, still on church property.
Catholics add on, and on, and *on*. In my first few weeks at my new job, I was asked if I knew how to tell I was in a new building. I stared blankly. Was this some kind of a test? Did they think I couldn’t register the fundamental difference between “In” and “Out” of Doors? That I wouldn’t notice the sudden exposure to the elements one experiences when exiting a structure?
I said, “Ah?”
And then, “Oh.”
Because one never goes “out” of doors. You know you’re in a new building when the floor tile changes. That indicates, you see, that the Catholics have added on. I spend more time than I’d like to admit wandering about, aware, by the seven tile changes that I’ve traveled a great distance, but with no idea if I’ve drawn closer to or further away from my intended destination.
This profound difference in religious approach has, like the number of the sacraments and the inclusion of the Apocrypha, inspired in me long and careful reflection. Ultimately, I’ve found I can best understand it in terms of Legos.
When we drive past a lonely, single-structured St. XYZ or Our Lady of LMNO, I say, “Oh. They only got the starter pack.” City-states, on the other hand, invested in the Deluxe Expansion Set, Limited Christmas Edition.
Don responds to my observations with eye-rolls and an exasperated, “Oh my goodness.”
“Oh my goodness.”
I’ll “Oh my goodness” him.
Any day now I’m going to drag him to a Methodist Fall Sunday School Wrap-Up Supper and Hymn Sing Plus Youth Group Mission Trip Fundraiser.
“Oh, you need more sporks? Sorry, Pastor. No idea…maybe Don can find them.”
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