Choir Rehearsal

I sing with a choir. There was rehearsal tonight. We're called Our Lady's Choral Society. So we have a pretty holy name to start with! (Though they tend to use OLCS of late). And the archbishop is our patron or some such so we're a Catholic choir. Though one of my best friends in the choir ain't a Catholic and they let her in and she enjoys it.
I find choir is my mass. I don't attend mass any more, not even at Christmas so choir is my weekly ritual, my time for concentrating on just the one task for almost two hours and it happens to be Christian. We sing Requiems and Stabat Maters and such from the big composers - Mozart, Dvorak etc. Religious-themed stuff. We often have a Thought for The Day at the end, though it can be a bit cheesy or the reader tries to be funny so it doesn't always work. I feel humbled by the other people there, many are so lovely and kind and open and honest and all manner of good things. And the marvellous thing that everyone else is as or more serious about it than I am.
So, to summarise the elements of choir which are mass-like for me, in the best sense:

• the routine of going
• the ritual of what happens
• the theme or the content
• the other people there
• the conductor - who guides the ceremony! (I'm sure PO'D would love to be aligned with the role of a priest...)
• audience participation
• paying attention / not falling asleep during the boring bits