The peace wave

We have noted a funny little phenomena at our church that I shall now record for posterity. Let me first set the stage.

In our little hamlet, there are 4 (count 'em) Catholic churches within walking distance. Granted, one of the churches serves as a worship site, not a parish, and is affiliated with our parish, but let's not get bogged down in the details. Our parish, like many of the others and a microcasm of the borough itself, it just busting at the seams with elderly folks. However, the relative size of our parish is not very large, and Masses are never too full.

Henceforth, during the kiss of peace segment of Mass, during which I generally kiss family members (and sometimes strangers; ask my cousins) and shake hands with everyone else, you will witness at our parish "the peace wave." In lieu of standard shake, the older members of our congregation will extend both arms at pew height and wave their hands back and forth, turning to the left and right, making eye contact and smiling. Their hands are shaking, so perhaps this is just an interpretation of "handshake" that I am not familiar with.

No palm to palm contact takes place. I'm not sure if this is a germ-prevention technique, or the sheer number of pews between one person and another is just too many for them to sally forth and tally ho across, but it happens. Kevin just shakes his head and gets a kick out of it every week. It is also subject to the domino effect, because if someone isn't reaching for your hand (and I've had people literally next to me refuse to shake my hand), you end up doing the peace wave as well.

Prior to this evening, when we attended Mass at another parish for the Ascension, we naively surmised that this phenomena was unique to our parish.

Not so, not so.

People at this parish did the peace wave too, with less smiling. It's a wave of the peace wave. It extends perhaps to our entire borough, PERHAPS to the archdiocese. More investigation will be necessary to determine if this is a demographic circumstance, or a geographic one.

Stay tuned.

Not really.