Crying while singing is a good exercise in breath control
I’m going to rant about this, because the only sure way to get me to shut up and move on seems to be for me to right my thoughts down in an inelegant fashion.
I’ve come to the realization that I hate my religion, but I’ve been fluctuating on why and how. I’d been fairly certain it was the Father Don Debacle that did it for me. I was sure that learning the beliefs I held dear weren’t necessarily the beliefs of the church, that seeing people I cared about being stripped of their community and vocation, of watching my mother cry through masses and needing to rant all the way home just to have the strength to go back the next week did it. I thought crying though Easter that year would be the worst of it, that losing my parish would end it, that by forgiving Don for being an obsessive, irresponsible, incompetent, shallow, and toddler-like man would free me from it so I could heal. It didn’t.
I just cried through mass again. I cried because I miss Blessed Sacrament, because I miss singing church music with a group in parts with Nancy and Father Kane and the space itself. But at the same time, I realized I didn’t just hate my religion because I watched my first parish die.
I hate it because I can’t trust it. It was formed not by God, but by man. Men are swayed by societal rules, mistranslate things, and change over time. They steep themselves in tradition and struggle with their own flaws while trying to sway others. How can I trust a man and all the men who come before them to be right when I know some of it is wrong? How can I believe in the God I learned of when he doesn’t always mesh with the God in the Bible? Heck, how can I be having this rant in earnest when I haven’t even read the Bible in its entirety?
I hate how I know people who have been called to a vocation they cannot fulfill, and I can no longer truly believe it’s worth it.
I hate how when I meet people who have faith and firmly believe in it, I think they are crazy.
I hate how when someone makes an insult about my religion, I am the first to laugh and the last to defend it because I don’t feel like I can defend it anymore.
I hate how whenever I feel I’ve made peace with God, my religion, or anything, I find out I haven’t and that it is expected I probably won’t until I’ve died.
I hate how I felt closer to God when I was a child than when I started to seriously pay attention to my faith.
I hate how I feel guilty all the time for not being better, for missing mass, for being upset and not bringing peace to the Middle East and being ashamed to admit I am Catholic. And then, when I try to do the right thing, I often feel worse and not better.
And I hate how in all likelihood, I will always be Catholic. Its ideas, its morals, the idea of an all-loving, powerful, present, and knowing God are so part of who I am that I am incapable of believing otherwise. Even if I stop going to church, find another religion, claim to be agnostic, whatever, I’ll still at heart be Catholic.
And I hate it.
And I feel I’ve given up hope of changing anything, that I’m stuck being this whiny, crying, loathing child for the rest of my life, and I haven’t even been around that long. People have lived through disaster and kept their faith, and I can’t even live through two decades of easy life in suburban America?
My priest today invited undergrads to write essays about being Catholic, about how to find an individual experience in millennia-long tradition. My answer was to cry, laugh, and ignore it the best you can. That’s not good enough.
I’m sorry for anyone who read that. It was ridiculously long and probably nonsensical, but I needed to get it out of my head.
Anyway, for something cheerful:
- playing chimes is fun, even if I'll probably never be a chimes master
- I'm glad I can actually make people feel better by giving them hugs
- someone made these wonderful snow animals outside eco. There was a T-rex first, and now there is a stegosaurus and what appears to be baby dinosaurs between them, a llama or giraffe, and a chicken. It's lovely
- I have wonderful friends
- Riccardo is learning to make these delicious tiny apple tart-pies and is letting us eat them as he tries to get them right. It is goooood.
- Thee world is dichotomic and that is what makes it interesting