Take me to mass and show me where the incense is by Amanda Nechesa

Published in Qwani 04

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I have recently taken up going to church regularly. It’s a habit that has developed gradually, and in relation to this habit, I have also started listening to gospel music every morning and praying after reading a bible verse every night before I sleep. I am curious about my developing relationship with religion. I want to know why I have taken an interest in it, and why, despite my previous mindset, I am feeling more and more drawn into the spiritual world. The result of this curiosity is this personal essay, an exploration of my journey with God written in five different parts.

I: Take Me To Mass

The year is 2024, the month is February, and the day is blue and sunny.

It is Sunday and I am walking to church. This is the first time in my adult life that I have decided, without any coercion from a parent or school or institution, to take myself to Mass. I am nervous. I keep fidgeting with my dark-grey striped knee-length dress, which, after hours of ruffling through my closet to find anything close to "appropriate" to wear, I finally settled on.

St Joseph's The Worker Catholic Church Kangemi is my destination, and thank God, only a ten-minute walk from my new house. Even so, I am late. I walk in just as the choir stops singing the welcome hymn and just in time for the priest, robed in flowing white vestments accented with yellow stripes, to officially welcome us in. He raises his right hand to make the sign of the cross as his voice booms on the sound system: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit". I say "Amen" as I sit down on an empty space I find on a backbench.

The incense is what gets me first. The priest holds the thurible, swinging it left, right and center, and when the warm and familiar scent wafts towards me, I feel my body relax, a calmness settling into me. I close my eyes for a second as the incense floods me with nostalgia, bringing with it memories of when I was a young girl growing up in Kakamega. My mother, wanting us to fit in with the other young girls, signed my sister and I up to be church dancers in the catholic church in town.

We were not very good dancers. The Saturdays we spent rehearsing at some mama’s compound left both of us feeling inadequate and never quite as belonging as the other girls did, dripping with flexibility and the joy of a dance we couldn’t grasp. But, being a church dancer did have its perks, my favourite being that during Mass, we sat on the front row benches near the choir, and what that meant was, each time the priest or the altar boys swung the thurible with the burning incense inside it, I would be close enough to inhale it fully and let the soothing scent wash over me. Even at that young age, incense had my heart.

After Mass ends, I am moved to immediately call my best friend and gush out to her how calming I still feel. I get back to my house, my energy feeling pure like spring water; fresh like morning dew on leaves at dawn. To keep up this vibrant, calm feeling, I choose to listen to a gospel playlist as I deep clean my house and make lunch. I sing along to “Bless The Lord Oh My Soul” so loudly, so unlike my usual playlist of Njerae, Maandy, Lorde, Matata, Bien, Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey, that I am sure my neighbours are wondering what happened to this sudden change of heart.

I am wondering the same thing.

The truth is, this is not how I expected my going to church, for the first time as an adult, without the coercion of a parent, school or institution, to feel. I do not even know what I expected. What took me to Mass was curiosity. I was curious about church, about Mass, about religion, about my spirituality, but even more specifically, I was curious about my relationship with God.

II - Nani Anataka Kwenda Misa Na Mimi?

God and I have never been best friends.

My relationship with Him has always been on an acquaintance level. I have always known about Him and the wonderful things He did, and still does. But when I went to His house of worship to praise Him, it was always more out of duty than the deep need to talk to Him, a duty which was mostly influenced by my schooling.

In primary school, in class six, I joined a catholic boarding school where it was mandatory to attend church every Sunday. Then in class seven, because every other Catholic was doing it, I enrolled into catechism classes, got baptised, and tasted wine and the Holy Sacrament for the first time., My Secondary school was also Catholic sponsored, so every Sunday and once on a weekday morning, we attended Mass where we, the students, were the altar girls, the choir, and the practitioners of Mass.

Home was a different story. During the few weeks we stayed for the holidays, the choice of attending Mass was left up to us. Every Sunday, my mother would take a bath, wear one of her best dresses, and attend either the first or third mass. And every time before going, she would ask: Nani anataka kwenda misa na mimi? It was never forced. If you wanted to attend Mass with her, you were at liberty to take a bath and get ready fast so as not to make her late. But if you did not want to go, you were also at liberty to sleep in on Sundays, as long as when she came back from Mass, you had completed your chores.

I rarely went to Mass with her. Not because I was questioning religion or God, but because I loved sleeping in. Going to church sounded like so much work, and the blanket and my bed were so warm. The choice, really, was undisputable. The only time I never missed church while at home was on Christmas, and that was because I am a sucker for the holiday — the decorations in church, the viewing of Baby Jesus underneath the Chritsmas tree, and the coming back from church to cook chapatis and pilau while Christmas songs played on repeat. It is, after all, the most wonderful time of the year.

So, this was my "acquaintance level” relationship with God. He was the third-tier friend in the friend group you see once in a while, who you know is good people, but you do not feel the need to know Him deeply, or question anything about Him.

III - You Are My Religion

By the time I was done with secondary school and joining JKUAT for my first year, my relationship with God had become apathetic. I rarely thought about Him. I had other things to worry about — parties, boys, girls, CATs, Exams, Supplementaries, Lectures, etc. God, church, religion, and spirituality were topics I did not spend two cents on. But all that changed in 2020, when, in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic, I fell in love with a boy who was an atheist.

Falling in love was beautiful. It was all what songs and movies and books had promised it to be. My boyfriend and I were among the few people that had remained in Juja when JKUAT shut down due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and boy, oh boy, did we make the best of times out of the worst of times. Juja became our little paradise where we created our own little love story: Our Love In The Time Of Corona.

This love was majorly sponsored by three things: alcohol, smoking, and great conversations. From the moment I first talked to my boyfriend, I was drawn to his mind. His thinking was on a different wavelength than anyone else I had ever met before. It was like he was on level ten, while the rest of us were barely on the first level. I loved that. I loved his mind, his dark humour, his love for Metallica, his generous spirit, his ability to call bullshit on things that did not make sense, his great relationship with his younger brother and his mother, his hair, his lips, his eyes, and his passionate contempt for religion.

When he first told me he was an atheist during one of our initial hangouts, I could tell that he was expecting me to react adversely to his confession. But the truth was, like everything else about him, his atheist beliefs fascinated me. I had never met anyone who was openly against God before. I wanted to know everything. What did God do? How long had he been against Him? Was their relationship always this rocky? It was like I was fishing out for some gossip and he liberally provided me with all the answers.

It was through him that I slowly started to unravel the dark side of religion. We binge-watched on cult shows, laughed at anti-religion jokes and memes, and criticized the shitty music in the neighbouring churches and crusades. I slowly learnt how religion could be used to manipulate the masses, how churches could become political weapons and how your spiritual beliefs can be turned against you.

But, if we were being completely honest, I did not care about the topics as much as I cared that I was learning them through him. I loved the fact that being with him gave me an edge. Suddenly, I was this girl who listened to hard rock music and talked shit about God while drinking and smoking a cigarette. It was like I was in a 90s punk music video. And the feeling was exhilarating.

IV: The Over-Correction

In season 8, Episode 10 of my favourite American sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Barney is dating Robin’s sweet co-worker, Patrice, but Robin is convinced their relationship is not real. She is right, of course, but we don’t know that yet, and so Ted offers a theory to explain Barney’s behaviour.

You see, Barney’s previous relationship was with Quinn, a hot stripper that was as naughty as he was and who he often did not trust. After they break up, his next girlfriend is Patrice; sweet and nurturing Patrice who could be seen as the total opposite of who Quinn was. Ted calls this over-correcting. According to him, Barney was over-correcting by embarking on an intentional relationship with Patrice to distance himself from his Quinn behavior, a symbolic dare to transform himself.

Over-correction is not a phenomenon that only exists in How I Met Your Mother. It is a real psychological syndrome where one party, once realizing they might have made an error in their previous judgments, throws themselves deeply into the opposite side. Many people experience this syndrome, some without knowing that what they are doing is an over-correction.

Say, for example, someone who was previously a hopeless romantic gets cheated on. They might overcorrect by swearing off relationships entirely and never trusting anyone else enough to let them in. Or, let’s say someone was raised by an overly-strict parent who did not allow them any freedom to pursue their hobbies or passions. This person, when they get a child of their own, might overcorrect by being too lenient on their child and giving them way too much freedom. Or, someone who is a workaholic and lives off their work, but something in their job ends up not going as they had planned. They might overcorrect by quitting, moving off grid, and basically becoming an anti-capitalist junkie.

Let us bring this closer to home. Say a certain girl who was previously apathetic about religion gets into a relationship with an atheist. When that relationship ends, they might overcorrect by throwing themselves deep into religion and spirituality in an effort to distance themselves from the opinions they previously entertained. I officially broke up with my boyfriend in November 2023, and on December 2023, a month later while I was home for the holidays, for the first time in my adult life when my mother asked: Nani anataka kwenda misa na mimi, I said: ME, and accompanied her to mass.

So what is the verdict? What does the jury say? Am I over-correcting with religion? Is my whole curious journey and rediscovering of my relationship with God just another way to distance myself from my last relationship? Is this all a symbolic dare to transform myself?

V - Show Me Where The Incense Is

The truth is, I have no idea if all this is an over-correction. I know only the simple things. I know that when I said yes to going to Mass with my mother that December, I stepped into church and the scent of incense was like a warm familiar hug. I know that I felt calm. And I know that I vowed to attend church more often, a promise I did not keep until the next year, in February of 2024.

I know that when I prayed for the first time as an adult, it felt like I was in the presence of a loving Father whose divine presence has been with me all through. I know that when I read the Bible, the verses are like poems gently guiding me through my days. I know that I love going to church. I love the holy procession when the priest is walking to the altar accompanied by altar boys and girls, carrying a cross and a thurible with incense. I love it when the choir sings hymns that sound like angels singing in heaven. I love it when we all kneel down to pray. I love it when the priest preaches. I love it when I rise and join the cue to partake in the Holy Sacrament.

But most of all, I love how the incense makes me feel calm and peaceful, a feeling I carry all through on my way back home. Almost like I have undergone a renewal of my spirit. A weekly saving grace.

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Photo by Ron Lach