Gossip, and making snarky comments about the announcements that are projected overhead.
I sing in the church choir-- so the above things are mostly done during the time between when the choir takes our seats and when the service truly gets started.
And Gossip is not perhaps the best descriptor–but my church has been testing out a variety of potential new worship leaders recently. And this past Sunday, there was quite a bit of discussion about the identities of the young men playing guitar and such-- none of whom are the new worship leader, or candidates for that post, but at least two of whom are already being paid by our church to perform various duties. . . .
Trying to figure out where the door was and then where the toilet was because I had food poisoning and couldn’t bounce around singing Blessed Be the Name of the Lord.
I wrote screenplays until the person who forced me to come told me to pay attention. Then, I read the bible under the pretense than I was “looking up what the guy was saying.” After I read the entire Bible (new testament twice…I read fast) I started looking for inadvertent jokes in the bible. I found one:
Woman: Come eat with us, David.
David: Did I ever tell you I can speak directly to God?
Woman (long sigh): Yes yes we know, you looove to talk to God.
David: (to god): Help me out here, I’m losing my audience.
God: Ok, wave your hand over the basket and say BEHOLD.
David: BEHOLD! (Food appears in the basket)
Woman: Oh, so you CAN talk to god. Can we eat now?
(rim shot)
After that, I just worked on screenplays in my head and wrote them down after.
Back in my early days, I would actually listen, because I didn’t know better and I believed that stuff. As I got older and wiser, it got harder and harder for me to go. I would sit there, just wanting to jump up and yell “BULLSHIT!”.
I finally told my parents I wasn’t going to go to church any more when I was about 13. My folks weren’t too happy, and were concerned about my being home by myself on Sunday mornings. I convinced them that I would be okay, and I was.
I still can’t sit through a church service without some kind of distraction. If I get dragged to a wedding or a funeral, I’ll sit in the back and play a game on the cellphone. It pisses SWMBO off greatly, but she can deal with it.
We moved around a lot (military) so I heard a whole lot of preachers. Some I actually enjoyed. One had traveled all over and would describe the places in the bible stories. One knew all the history and would add it in. One especially scholarly one would analyze the text in various ways.
Most of them were dry though.
What I did with the boring services was read the hymnal, doing all the parts in my head. I could read music because of the years of piano lessons, and my whole family were singers, so I knew how the parts would sound. When that palled I would read the fun parts of the bible.
Don’t any Catholic churches have separate accomodations for children?
I used to love going to temple. I was part of a very modern temple (the Hundi Samaj, based out of NYC), and when services took place, the elders would listen to passages from the Gita, while the kids were taken off separately into the basement or another room to listen to mythological stories, and talk about religion in a way our little brains could understand.
It varies on the church. When I was very little, there was a daycare service in the family room during Sunday mass. It was never very consistent as it relied on teenage girls to watch the kids and by the time I was old enough to talk, my parents considered me old enough to go to church proper. Later, when I was in middle school, they started a program for kids younger than second grade to leave just before the first reading and return at the communion procession (which is a period of about 20-30 minutes, depending on the homily.) and have a more kid oriented liturgy. There was also Sunday school which happened during the mass but it either was only during the summer or during the school year, I can’t remember. Probably the summer.
I dunno about other catholic families but my parents were pretty much of the opinion that we children were capable of sitting still and quietly for an hour for the sake of their immortal soul once we were no longer infants. My church, at least, has coffee and donuts after the sunday mass so my parents had a readymade stick. “Behave or you won’t get a donut.” But the end result is that as a child I grew to hate Sundays, especially as my church shrank and mass moved from 10:30 to 9:30 to 8:30 so that the priest could hit all the churches he had to.
I don’t know about Catholic churches, but our little church had a backroom where the kids were allowed to just play while the adults listened to my grandfather thunder from the pulpit. That kept up until they found out those of us who were about 10 to 12 were playing spin the bottle. Then we had to sit and listen to the sermon. :smack:
Several years ago, I decided to check out another church, and 5 or 6 teenage girls sat together and texted each other throughout the sermon. I thought, “How rude!” but then I remembered being that age and we did the same thing, only we passed notes written on the bulletin.
I used to attend a church that didn’t want babies in the sanctuary. They had a big sign that said something like “We provide free child care so you may enjoy the service without interruption.” My tiny Episcopalian church has a nursery, and I do occasionally work there. Last time, we had 3 boys who were about 6 or 7 years old, and they turned half that nursery into a mixed martial arts ring. I figured it was OK as long as they weren’t hurting each other.
Read. Read anything. Lots of Song of Solomon (I kept trying to figure out what the big deal was), lots of Psalms, lots of the OT - good stories in Exodus and the Judges especially.
Daydream.
Practice my music-reading. Learn new interesting hymns (not the boring moldy ones we always sang over and over and over).
Stare longingly at the sound and lights crew because they got to do something interesting.
Draw in the booklets or margins - couldn’t do much of this or I’d get popped for being distracted (reading the hymnal or Bible was the only exempt behavior from at least appearing to pay attention).
I escaped into working in the nursery as soon as I was old enough (I think around 7 or 8) - I’d take my brothers in when Sunday School started (right after the music, before the scripture readings and sermons) and then the nursery would “need” me, so obviously I just couldn’t leave them and come back to church.
As soon as I was old enough, I started participating as much as I could. So I was an altar server when I could be and then a lector and a cantor, I led children’s liturgy, I taught RCIC (Rite of Christian Initiation for Children- a class for kids whose parents/family were converting to Catholicism) until my mom started making me go to two Masses every week because RCIC meant I missed part of one.
All the adults thought I was just great- pious as could be. Really, though, it just made the time go faster if I had something to do. I had long since stopped believing in God. Only problem was that this sometimes meant more church because, for example, I sometimes had to serve daily mass during the week when I wouldn’t otherwise go and I always had to go to Mass four times on Christmas Eve and Christmas because I had to sing.
Other than that, I would follow along in the missalette or try to memorize all the hymns, including the verses that nobody ever sang. My parents were pretty strict about that kind of thing.
