It's Lent again, and I'm taking another pass at giving up nail biting. We'll see how it goes.

It's also time for me to come up with some sort of thematic series of posts. Not sure if this will be less of a mixed bag than the previous ones, but at least it'll be different. Presenting:

40 Days, 40 Churches

Day 1: St. Mary Star of the Sea, Beverly MA

An easy choice to start, this is our current church. We've been lucky to find a place we like so quickly, given how long it took us to find one when we were living at Babson. It also helped that it was within walking distance of our apartment (and now our house).

The history of the church is pretty interesting, given that most of the priests have been of Irish descent while the parishoners tended to be of Italian or French-Canadian background (there are Italian and Franco-American social clubs within walking distance of the house as well). Most of these folks came to Beverly to work at United Shoe, which was still a going concern when I was a kid. Getting back to the ethnic divide, there's still a preponderance of Italian and French names among older parishoners, and the priest in charge is still of Irish descent. The other priest, however, is from Ghana. As you might imagine, that's a first for us.

The church has had some recent renovation, thanks to the sale of some local property. Now the interior looks fantastic and we're in less danger of having a beam fall on us during Mass, which is win-win.