Sabbath observances

Went to fairly amazing Eastern Rite Roman Catholic church today. Basically it's the Eastern liturgy but in communion with Rome. The actual Eastern Orthodox Churches are highly offended by the existance of such an entity, I think. This particular congregation met in an elementary school gym, so the basketball hoops contributed interestingly to the general ambiance, but they brought in some portable icons and things. It was about 2 hours of constant chanting. Even the gospel reading was chanted/sung/whatever you say- sort of between those things. A cantor stood at the back-- he had a very odd and irritating voice-- and let the congregational segments. It was cool hearing things I'd read about and talked about with Hatjig and things I'd sung in Russian Choir. My favorite part of the liturgy is just before communion is served when the priest chants "The holy gifts are for the holy!" [pause where presumably people are thinking to themselves "snap, that disqualifies me"] and then the congregation sings "Only one is holy!" and takes communion anyway.

Every time I try to write this damn paper I find some other book or article I was supposed to read first. Here is an example sentence from the oozhasny thing I'm reading now: "Whether we think of it as religious symbol or life-giving, cosmic element, it passes across the threshold between phenomenon and noumenon."