Undercover Protestant

Over the past week and a half, I have confirmed my initial suspicions about my new turf: If Spain has a Bible Belt, Sevilla is the buckle. Walk around the streets of Sevilla, and chances are, you'll see more of these than street signs:

That is sadly not an exaggeration. Except for Los Remedios,
where all the streets are named "Virgen de la ___" anyway.

Now, being that this is Spain, the churches interspersed between the images of Mary are mariana: Mary-revering Catholic, all of them. But, of course, we still have to go to church somehow...

And so, Operation Undercover Protestant was set in motion.
 Mission? Infiltrate "La Catedral de Sevilla", the biggest Gothic Cathedral in the world. Bam.

Did I mention this place is huge? This is one nave of five.

Needless to say, our host mom, María Jesús (Quick digression—How much more Catholic than that name can you get?), knowing our theological leanings, was a bit puzzled by our choice of worship location. To which my roommate Felippe bluntly replied (in Spanish, no less), "Well, there's only one Jesus."

Well played, Felippe.

And off we went, to an interactive, heavily liturgical service in a language neither of us speak quite perfectly. Now don't misunderstand, the Mass went well, the people were nice, and it was spiritually refreshing (and just plain cool) to hear the Word of God in Spanish. But my imagination—and what dangerously limited knowledge I have of the Spanish Inquisition—kept me tense through the entire oficio. On my way in, I kept drilling myself on all the things not to do, from the practical (Don't make the sign of the cross the wrong way) to the improbable (Don't forget to kneel) to the fairly ridiculous (Don't start humming "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" under your breath). Despite my thorough mental preparations, there was a certain small and irrational part of me convinced that halfway through my bumbling rendition of what must have been the Director's Cut/Extended Edition of the Apostles' Creed, priest ninjas were going to drop from the miraculously high vaulted ceiling and drag me away to the infant baptism and confirmation classes I missed as a child.

I can't process the amount of gold in this shot.

On a side note, I suspect that Overactive Imagination Syndrome is a real thing, and I may be suffering from it. That, or mild hallucinations have set in from this oppressive heat. It's a steady 98ºF here each day, and we're set to get to 101º by next week. o_O

The cool angel façade on the right is actually
one-fourth of the immense set of pipes in the Cathedral's organ