Sunday Mass   I ask myself each time: Why am I here amid familiar faces, with these men in dresses sermonizing, preaching fear   of God and promises of paradise, and all these trappings of the past two thousand years, these icons of Jesus on every wall,   saints in every window, and how it’s been like this for all my life, the way time crawls and then expires?                              Next week I’ll ask again.     © Michael Fleming Dummerston, Vermont June 2022