2001-12-08 - 4:03 p.m.
I've spent huge chunks of my life trying to get to the bottom of my spirituality. Study it. Define it. Name it, put my finger on it, wrap it in a big old bow and call it mine.
I'm still not there yet.
I was raised Catholic in a community that was decidedly not Catholic. They were Southern Baptists. And Church of Christ. My mother was denied several jobs because she was Catholic. I was asked. Repeatedly why I worshipped statues and why I couldn't talk to God directly and had to go through a priest. I've been told so many times I was going to hell, around the school lunch table that I forgot to even care. Someone asked me once why I believed in nuns.
I never knew that towns weren't run by Southern Baptists. We weren't allowed dances at my high school. With the exception of prom. And it was boycotted by several churches who instead, told their teens to go to a Senior Banquet that allowed them to dress up, but didn't focus on dancing. We couldn't wear shorts and the main activity on Wednesday and Sunday nights was to go to Bible studies. We were never. Ever. Taught about evolution, all of our classrooms had the 10 Commandments on them and we were given Bibles at graduation. Out of the 300 people in my graduating class, two of us were Catholic.
My childhood parish church was small and was mostly there for retirees, people who had moved into the county from other places and for the summer tourists. The bishop attempted to forget that we existed and would only come to do confirmation classes when we got a good sized group together. Which explains why I was confirmed in the fourth grade and why it is that more people in the parish listened to my mother than to the priest.
I was baptized, confirmed and married in the Catholic Church. Two out of three of those were at St. Pius X, which always feels a little like home to me.
One Christmas Eve, my favorite priest replaced the familiar wise men, Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus in the creche set in front of the altar... with pictures of starving children. I remember crying in church at the sight of that. Because that made sense to me more than the figurines did. I've never been able to live up to the ideals I set for myself that night surrounding religion and social justice.
Outside of the parish walls, I was taken to Southern Baptist revivals by well-meaning friends and babysitters. There's a fearful power in those spaces and I was saved three times by three different Southern Baptist preachers in an attempt to allievate that fear and to grab onto that power and the whole congregation would be moving in one, sweaty, breathing unit and you could pull yourself out of it. And release that sweet tension. By just stepping forward. And submitting yourself to Jesus. And. I don't think I've ever been able to live up the powerful release that I found in religion and the total sense of being human that I found at that revivals.
In college, I attached myself to a man who had a Muslim father and I wanted to know more because I knew nothing and so I took classes. As many classes as I could about Islam. Overview of Islam. History of Islam. I wrote papers in other classes that compared Islam to Catholicism, the presence of Islam in France. I read every book the university library offered on this religion that seemed so "other" and yet so "simple" to me. There is one God and his name is Allah. And that made sense to me. And there's a set and defined path to getting to him in this world and in the next and that. That clearness makes sense to me now.
In New York, I eventually found that I could no longer go to Catholic churches. The bishops in New York hadn't forgotten their parishes the way ours in Kentucky had. The heirarchy seemed to way down on me so heavily that walking in the door was an exercise in pure will and desire to find a spiritual comfort. I went from parish to parish. Old St. Patrick's Cathedral in Little Italy which was on my corner and had seen more than three saints actually grace it's door. One was buried in the cemetary. And later I'd end up at St. Francis Xavier's in Chelsea. Where I stayed the longest. And they had listings in their bulletin for groups such as "Catholics living with HIV/AIDS," "Prisoner's Social Justice," "Gay/Lesbian Catholics". They had a book at the front of their altar that listed every member of their parish who had died of AIDS. It was a thick book.
I used to tell my husband I was going to church, and I end up at St. Francis. I'd sit on the steps and just stare. I couldn't go in most of the time, but I like that it was there.
Once on the way to St. Francis, I met two angels. Literally. It was Gay Pride in the Village and these two beautiful gay men had dressed as angels and they stopped me. And asked me the direction to 16th Street. And I told them. And they skipped down the street with their halos and wings bouncing and they yelled "HAPPY PRIDE!"
And I never went back to a Catholic Church again. After the angels stopped me that day in the Village.
Which would be a nice way to end the journey. Just stop it there. Because it's such a little epiphany. I mean. Angels. On the way to church and all. But. There's more. And when I get a few more minutes, I'll write it.
*grin*
