Sleeping like the dead

Today is All Souls Day and they are holding that haunting and beautiful High Latin Requiem Mass downtown at St. Anthony's Church. At 7 p.m., if you happen to be in the area. And even if you are not you might want to go, if even just for anthropological reasons.

You do not often get a chance to witness a rite like this and I think you would remember it for the rest of your life. Just slip into a pew near the back or whatever. No one will bother you.

Last year on All Souls Day I took the picture up above. It is interesting for me to read back on what I wrote. The other day we were talking about looking back on where you were a week ago today. It is even wilder to look back on where you were a year ago!

That All Souls Day picture was the first picture I ever took for this Web log. I did not know what that bier-like thing was called and my friend Ward told me it was called a catafalque. That is a beautiful name!

And back then I realize I did not know yet that Leonard Pennario had been baptized at my church, St. Anthony's. I like that coincidence, that right before I met him, I started going there.

Now, whether I will get to the All Souls Mass tonight is iffy. Because I just OVERSLEPT THREE HOURS!!

After we gained that hour and everything!!

Luckily we have this group home on our street and the We Care van pulls up in the morning and BLASTS the horn about 20 times. Howard and I used to want to complain but now we have decided it serves as kind of an emergency alarm clock. It worked for me today. Were it not for that van I would still be asleep.

As it was I heard that horn and I opened my eyes and the room was flooded with sunlight. That is an unusual experience for me! I am used to getting up when it was pitch black.

And this is funny: I had been dreaming of being kept from working on my book. In my dream I was being dragged to the movies, by people I didn't even like. The movie was dumb and it was the second time I had seen it, too, how about that? I was actually sitting there in my dream thinking, why have I been hoodwinked into giving up my book time TWICE, for this dumb movie, with people I do not even like?

Then I wake up and I realize that my alarm not going off kept me from working on my book.

Oversleeping with me is like an airliner crash. It happens rarely and there is always an investigation. It turns out when I was re-setting my clock yesterday the thing defaulted to PM and not AM.

In other words it was set on ZZZZZZ.

So. If you go to the All Souls Day Mass tonight, and I am not there, say a prayer for me. Oh, who am I kidding, I will probably make it.

Do check out the All Souls Day link. It is full of arcane information about Purgatory and Sexagesima Sunday (one of my favorite Sundays) and when the feast is celebrated by Catholics in Spain and Armenia. And here is my favorite phrase: "At the time of St. Isidor." I was wondering that, how the situation sat at the time of St. Isidor!

A classic paragraph:

Of the dioceses, Liège was the first to adopt it under Bishop Notger (d. 1008). It is then found in the martyrology of St. Protadius of Besançon (1053-66). Bishop Otricus (1120-25) introduced it into Milan for the 15 October.

Catholicism, gotta love it.

And now, gotta run.