The Rite of Peace, also known as the handshake part

I stand up and walk to the podium, adjust the microphone, God's microphone. I clear my throat. Jesus is behind me, dying for our sins, and he's looking down at me. I want to turn around and say, "Hey Jesus, lay off, man!"

That's how it looks in my head. I haven't gone to church, save Christmas and Easter, in six years. This November, I will read from either the Old Testament or the New one (minus the gospels) at my grandparents' 50th anniversary mass. It will be the biggest sacrilege I've committed since I ate the wafer at Easter last year.

Losing one's faith is a Catholic rite of passage. It's not easy to suffer through sixteen years of obligation, obtuse rituals, and school on Sunday (!) and come out of it still believing in God. Looking back, I can pinpoint the exact moments that shook my faith. Like the time all the Sunday school students were issued envelopes and told that they had to donate to the church every Sunday. This would not have been so bad if I hadn't recently figured out that all the money donated to the church didn't actually go directly to the poor (an impression I must have picked up somewhere, but probably not in the real world). Or the fact that the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-forgiving God of mercy and love doesn't want to hear my fucking sob story for forgiveness unless I tell it to a priest in a weird little room.

I digress. There's still a pang of guilt when I commit these little blasphemies. Granted, this pang of guilt is far less uncomfortable than the awkward conversation with my grandparents when they find out their eldest grandson ain't a church-goer anymore. Sometimes you just got to eat that wafer.

There's a part of the Catholic mass (and maybe the other ones, too) where the parishioners turn and greet each other with a handshake and a "peace be with you." Sometimes if you catch someones eye but they're too far away for physical contact, a cool guy "what's up?" head tilt will suffice. This is called The Rite of Peace, and it's my earliest memory of church.

When you're a kid, the service as a whole is as esoteric as it is dull. "Blah blah blah sit. Blah blah blah stand. Blah blah blah kneel." All of a sudden, everyone turns around and addresses you. I still get a little tingling sensation before the rite of peace.

While having an argument with someone when I was young and my faith was faltering, I was told that the function of church, by which I mean the reason the church and most of one's peers find that a mere personal relationship with god does not suffice is that the church is there to serve as a community. It's a gathering point.

Which makes it even more of a political institution than it seems.

It's not like I have much right to complain, hypocrite that I am. I can bitch and whine about how problematic these things are, but when I eat that wafer next month, (and oh yes, I will eat it) I'll be just as big a fraud as any of them. That's the bitch about religion. You're messing around with world views. They're more than world views, it's a way of life and a comforting presence and a world view all rolled into one. The line between critical thought and flat-out insult is practically non-existent.

Peace be with you.