Monday, July 16, 2012

Sipping tea, and Mass musings...

I'm a tea drinker. I do also drink coffee, but I'm not addicted to it. At work, I exclusively drink tea, and I brew it daily. My absolute favorite black tea is Celestial Seasonings Nutcracker Sweet, which yes, is a holiday tea. That seems to be a theme lately. They put it in the stores in the fall, and I stock up. It's a nutty vanilla tea with a hint of cinnamon. I adore it.

Well, this year I didn't stock up enough. Sometimes I remember to stalk the grocery store *after* Christmas, and then all the holiday teas are on clearance (score!). But I didn't this past year. Hence, I ran out of Nutcracker Sweet about a month ago, much to my dismay.

Thus, I pulled out the regular Salada bags that I'd had since before my pregnancy with Anne. I try to drink more decaf when I'm pregnant, so these had been sitting around awhile. It was fine, but I was missing my Nutcracker fix. This was a BIG box of regular tea bags, and I dutifully brewed a cup every morning until I couldn't take it anymore. I went in search of Nutcracker Sweet.

Happily, I found that via their web site, Celestial Seasonings sells Nutcracker Sweet year round. And if you buy a bulk box of 6 packages, you get a small discount on the price. I snapped one up.

It arrived on Saturday, and so I'm contentedly sipping Nutcracker Sweet at my desk. *bliss*

On a totally different note, Mike and I went to Mass by ourselves Saturday evening. As you can imagine, this is a pretty rare occurrence. We had dinner plans with some friends, and the restaurant is right near our parish, so my in-laws came over to watch the kids, and we went to Mass and then dinner.

I rarely go to the vigil, preferring to attend Mass Sunday morning. But Mike likes the vigil better when he goes to Mass, so I'm happy to oblige. Right away I noticed something relating to a post from last week: the dress of the attendees. The vigil clearly attracts an older crowd, and all were dressed nicely.

Mike and I were talking about it as we walked to the restaurant, and I noted that this was a big contrast to what I see at the Mass I usually attend at 10 am Sunday mornings. That's the "Family Mass" and draws a younger crowd. At that Mass, I often see shorts, flip flops and tank tops. When I mentioned that, Mike stopped short and made what I thought was a comment that summed things up nicely:

"If it's a chore to dress nicely for church, you're going for the wrong reasons."

I think he's totally right. I do think there's a "at least I'm here!" attitude that plays into this a bit (and my friend Karen mentioned this in the comment section of the post from last week) and that's just a shame. Going to Mass is about a lot more than simply meeting our weekly obligation, but I know that I've been guilty of this mentality in the past, so I'm not casting any stones. I don't know what the solution is, but I will just mind my own business and focus on what *I'm* wearing. That's all I'm accountable for.

I will say at when I attend Mass in the Tridentine rite, it's a breath of fresh air in this regard. Not only is everyone dressed nicely, people downright go all out, wearing beautiful dresses and head coverings, men in *suits*! It contributes toward a feeling of reverence, that we're participating in something special, and I truly appreciate that.

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