Oh The Humanity

Those of you who know me well know I don't like change. Yes, yes, yes, change is inevitable, I should accept it, indeed (yuck) embrace it, blah, blah, blah. I get that. That all makes a bit of sense. Circumstantially, philosophic Marty must add. I still don't like it, and you can't make me. But even I will admit to sometimes considering absurd ideas merely to avoid a mild, unimportant change in my expectations.

When I arrived here in Hessel last Thursday I discovered that the local Church had changed its Sunday Mass time from 8:30 to 9 AM. This is a nothing change, I readily admit. But my first impulse was, 8:30 to nine? What's up with that? That, that's a whole half hour. It was thirty minutes later than I was expecting. Two percent of the day had been altered. My Sheldon clock would be off. Why would you do that to me, Our Lady of the Snows?

I thought about driving to the Soo (The Soo is Michigan shorthand for Sault Sainte Marie, the French 'Sault' being pronounced as 'Soo' or, if it helps, 'sue') to attend a 4PM Mass on Saturday at the large Catholic Church there. But dude, that's 35 miles away. You're actually going to make a 70 mile round trip which will add every bit of 90 minutes to your Saturday, with gas costing five bucks a gallon, to avoid what amounts to no huge change to your Sunday but merely an alteration of a half an hour?

Well, yeah. I thought about it.

In the end, cooler heads prevailed. I went to the 8:30, uh, 9 o'clock Mass. It was okay, too, pretty much like the old, earlier service. I ended up just fine with it.

But if they change it again before my next visit, oh, the letter they're gonna get. I will take it all the way to the Pope if I have to.