Last Saturday, I went to mass for the first time since returning to this island wasteland. Admittedly it was a Catholic mass and all sorts of denominational flashpoints could be ignited if one really felt like it, but I thought it was something I desperately needed to do. I've been spiritually parched ever since I came back: the same doctrinal and philosophical torments have multiplied a thousandfold in the rather blistering environment of Singaporean Christianity, my work has taken up most of my brain-space, while my close proximity to the Smilodon has raised all sorts of issues about my worldly priorities. A couple of weeks ago, before heading off to Bali, I asked a colleague of mine about the church she went to; this led to further conversations with another colleague, who sent me an email about a Latin mass at the SJI International chapel. Something told me I really had to be there and I pulled myself out of bed earlier than usual on a Saturday and went.

It was very different from what had moved and comforted me in Oxford. The SJI International chapel is very beautiful and very modern, with high ceilings, fish ponds and a fountain in the garden just visible through the window behind the altar. The air conditioning kept blowing the candles out and there weren't any proper pews, but there was a stillness and peace about the place, an architectural harmony that seemed to resonate with contemplation. A far cry from the old stone, stained glass and hallowed wood of Mary Mags, of course: there was less of a sense of historical weight, of the awesome time-transcending power of the Almighty. By its very lightness and airiness I felt relaxed: relieved, almost, as if I had escaped an oppressive outside world and found myself in some gentler, quieter inner sanctum. It was as if the oppressive pressure of this wasteland had been lifted and I could once again breathe, pause and find my centre.

The liturgy, too, was different. Many of the phrases and settings I'd come to know and love sprang up in different guises: the penitential rites were different, the Agnus Dei sung, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo intoned by everyone. The homily also seemed amazingly short. I blame my threadbare religious knowledge, but until then I had not entirely experienced the difference between the mass as laid out in the Book on Common Prayer and the Roman rite. It was as if I were seeing the Eucharist through new eyes. Still, I must admit that I missed the old mass, the words that had been inscribed in my mind and engraved on my heart after more than a year of Sundays: "them's good words" as Dolly Winthrop in Silas Marner would have it. I missed the Psalmist's "purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow" - those lines in the Collect have always spoken to me, despairing sinner that I am. I missed sitting in the pews and listening, breathtaken, to the strident sweet power of the choir's voices in the Sanctus. I missed the answer and response of the Sursum Corda, the plaintive tunes of Fr Peter singing the Eucharist liturgy. There was something oddly resonant about those words and those melodies and I thirsted for them; unfortunately, the cherished rites, the sights and sounds and music I had come to associate so strongly with the presence of God, weren't quite there.

But no, by no means was I completely out of place. There was enough of that resonance left in the bits of the mass that I recognised, albeit in the unfamiliar strains of Latin. The Agnus Dei may have been sung, but the words were the same and the sentiment eternal: "grant us thy peace", "have mercy on us". The joy and adoration in the Gloria in Excelsis was there, as was the same reverence in the words of the Eucharist: "do this in remembrance of me". And it all culminated in the Lord's Prayer, the same words, the same tune I had sung in Oxford and among the thousands of other faithful in Rome, the same tune that they sang on Saturday and will keep on singing as long as the church will live on and worship and remember. That did it for me, I think. Every time I sing the Lord's Prayer - and the melody of it has this strange haunting quality, I don't quite know why - I get that sense of awe. The same religious thread that connects believers of all space and all time is in that prayer, all of us singing the same tune and saying the same heartfelt words. Intoning the prayer brought back that weight of history and the universal church, the unity of belief and its strength.

I won't romanticise things and say that all Christians are alike and denominations don't or shouldn't matter: they do and, more importantly, they should. Being in a Catholic church does make me somewhat nervous: no, it's not because I belong to a denomination that could properly be called a political splitter (imagine the word "splitter" pronounced in a Monty Python Judaean People's League way). I have my doctrinal issues with Catholicism, just as I have my massive, massive doctrinal issues with Christianity, though admittedly I really just don't know enough about it and should really take the time to learn more. But what gets me about the Lord's Prayer is that, despite all our infighting and our divergent theologies and our disagrements over interpretation and ethics and legitimacy and whatnot, that profession of hope, mercy and justice is the small patch of ground that we share. It's a very small patch of ground and all the more impressive for that.

The mass was just what the divine doctor ordered, though. By the time the priest said "ite, missa est", I felt refreshed, almost as if I had found some small oasis in a parched desert. The rhythms of the mass and its verses made so much more sense to me than the two-chord pop choruses of youth hymns and the clapping and shaking of more spirit-driven services. Those have their appeal to some and if they move them, then it's just as well. Maybe I'm just an oldy at heart, but I can't abide them: they make me feel lonely, cut off, even angry at the simplifying of God. Like Scobie, I worry that Jesus has become too populist. So it's a mass like this that I draw comfort and sustenance from, that my mind does not rebel against and that my heart is filled by. There weren't any intimidatingly friendly people pressing me at the end of it to join some cell group or other and there weren't any creepily happy people holding forth about their personal lives. It felt good, like walking into the oasis and then leaving with a spring in my step and some fresh water in my mental oilskin flask.

Perhaps I shall visit St Joseph's this Sunday and reconnect with Anglicanism at St George's at some point. Perhaps the Smilodon and I will get married one day and I won't have to live in conflict. Perhaps I'll be able to resolve my objections to Christianity and find a happy via media for my religious and secular lives. Ah well. One small step at a time.