My friend, who I went to West Virginia with and who I play "spot the mullet with whenver we go out, are going to see this movie called American Mullet.

My friend always wins because she's totally into mullets. She even sends me mullet haikus whenever she finds them on the Net.

West Virginia was fun because we could play "spot the mullet" every day. Best places for mullet sightings in the SF Bay Area are at sporting events like Giants and A's baseball games, football games, and county fairs.

So that was my bad catholic sermon rant.

Things I miss about the Catholic Church:
beautifully decorated churches
all that wonderful stained glass
the statues
the stations of the cross art
prayer candles
altars to various saints galore
lots of services to attend because there are times in one's life when you have to go to church every day
kneeling - I always found kneeling very spiritual, don't ask me why. We don't kneel in protestant churches.

Things that I liked about this catholic church:
a very racially diverse congregation (way more than my protestant church)
the church has a sunday mass in cantonese and one in arabic
confessionals that say "Hearing Aid"
confessionals in languages other than english
confessionals that say "face to face"

Things I like appreciate more about my protestant church:
sermons that remind me of my childhood catholic church
bibles in the pews (catholic churches have no bibles in the pews)
great music and choir
for a protestant church, mine has a ton of stained glass windows and a giant mosiac of Jesus, and yes the fact that we faintly resemble in decoration a catholic church does come up once a year. Most protestant churches are very plain.
My church has communion every other week, which is way more than a lot of protestant churches

One last thing. If the catholic church believes that during the communion the bread and wine actually turn into the body and blood of christ or transubstantiation, can the priest act like the miracle that this is, instead of a "I'm so bored with communion" delivery.

Transubstantiation is a "miracle" darn it! Like the resurrection, it's like "amazing, glorious and unbelievable." Can't we at least treat it like the miracle that it is, instead of delivering the service in this "haven't we done this is all before and isn't it boring" way. I hate rote robotic delivery of the church service, no matter what the religion is.

See, this the fault of my childhood catholic priests. They took their catholic service rituals and their religion deadly serious. Communion was like delivered in a hush, like "this is such a miracle". In fact, the whole service was delivered in this, what I can only describe as totally spiritual.

My childhood catholic priests did everything during the service with gratitude and they preached that church and service was something you should feel priveleged and grateful to attend.

I still feel that way. I go to church on Sunday, and sometimes I still feel that I feel blessed that I have faith and that I can sit in a Sunday service and worship with other people.

There is no feeling to describe going to the church of your childhood, and hearing one of the worst sermons you've ever heard in your life. I'm sitting there thinking, this is why I don't go to catholic church.

In a good way, I feel totally vindicated in deciding to worship at the church that I do, and in a bad way, I cannot help but feel sadness that I cannot worship at the church of my childhood.

Maybe I just had priests growing up who were black sheep, different from the typical catholic church priest. My childhood priests preached great sermons, preached the biblical text and showed how to relate it and make the ancient word of God viable in our current life.

My childhood priests never ever politicked from the pulpit in the form of a sermon. They preached the word of God straight from the biblical text, much like a presbyterian priest does. And when my presbyterian minister tried to politic from the pulpit, he gets dinged for it by the congregation.

Okay, so here's what the priest at the 8:45 am mass sermonised about today.

The old testament text was the Genesis story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar. Sarah couldn't get pregnant, so she asked Abraham to produce a child with Hagar. Hagar starts getting all haughty and everything, so Sarah throws her out. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, and according to one recent author, Abraham through the birth of Ishmael gave birth to the Arabic race.

There are lots of way to preach this problematic piece of old testament text. Here's what the catholic priest chose to talk about.

1) the pro-life position
2) why the catholic church opposes not only stem cell research, but genetic engineering and research science in general, because it's tinkering with God's plan for us.
3) why luxury is bad and poverty is better.

How he got these three points from the Genesis story, "only God knows", but then he went on.

Tomorrow the church is having a mass for Father Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, so the priest talked about that.

The priest He was in Rome for the canonization of Father Escriva de Balaguer and had a ticket to even go to the canonization, but he didn't go because 1) it was cold in Rome since it was October and 2) Father Escriva de Balaguer is a controversial saint.

The priest decided to take the train the Milan instead. But he concluded his sermon by saying that what he liked about now Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer was his emphasis on the centrality of Eucharistic thought.

Thank your Mr. Priest.

My catholic roots are showing. There's a big catholic church six blocks from where I now live. It must have a big congregation because it has four services on Sunday. That's a lot.

Anyway, I checked it out yesterday on the way home from my own church's Wednesday service, where I lit a candle for my grandma and asked the congregation to pray for her health.

But old childhood habits die hard, so I'm off to the 8:45 am service at St. Anne's. They had an earlier service at 6:30 am, but that was way too early for me.

I'm going to have get used to attending catholic services again anyway, because if and when I fly home I'm probably going to be attending catholic mass ever yday with the family.

The family back home is very, very catholic, and yes they know I attend a protestant church, which is so sinful and scandalous in their eyes. But they don't bug me about it too much, because I've always attended catholic services with the family when I'm home. I just don't take the communion, which totally freaks them out as well, but I think they're just happy knowing I'm at church with them.