Equal Treatment

Church services this week found my daughter and me sitting in the front pew. We usually sit in the second pew, but our usual seats were taken this week. We wound up sitting in the same exact spot we did during this year's Christmas service, when I demanded equal treatment from our priest who had just hugged his family members in the front pew. ("What? No hug?" -- See my December 25, 2010 post, Christmas Hug.)

Father Tony has not preached a Saturday evening mass for a while, as retired priests have been performing the Saturday duty for him, and I was very surprized to see that the formerly clean-shaven priest has grown a mustache and goatee. I have never before seen a priest with any kind of facial hair and, knowing how the father usually shakes hands with the front row of the church during the passing of peace, I began formulating a very short comment about it for him.

The passing of the peace arrived and Father Tony went down to the first row as expected. He hugged the first woman he came to.

"I see he is hugging people again," I droned to Anne, remembering the Christmas service that left me smelling uncomfortably of men's cologne all day, and deciding quickly if I wanted to repeat the exercise in fairness. (As the representative of Jesus, if you hug one child of God, you should really offer hugs to all.) I am rather stubborn about fairness, but I was less than enthused about smelling of priest-cologne all day again. I decided to skip the hug.

Anne also remembered the Christmas service. Her lips twisted upward in a smirk, "I guess he's not coming over here, then."

Laughter bubbled forth from my belly. Thankfully, there was other noise in church at the time because I could not have stopped the bubbles of laughter even if I had wanted to. But Anne was right. Father Tony proceeded to shake hands with the parishoners behind the woman he had hugged rather than with the rest of the first row in the sanctuary.

Coincidence? Hmm. I wonder.