I work at a midwest Jesuit, Catholic institution. I came here from Salt Lake City, Utah, famous for its Temple, Tabernacle Choir and a child to adult population ratio among Mormons that rivals marginally developed nations. I grew up near the Southern California coastline, which is dotted north and south with Spanish style Catholic missions settled earlier by Father Serra's peace seeking Franciscan monks.
My childhood church life was spread between Trinity Presbyterian in Camarillo and several Southern Baptist places of worship in California's Central Valley. Presbyterians are muted, sedate and reserved in their worship. The minister reads from the Bible and speaks in metaphors, informed by book learning and life's experience. Southern Baptists sing with every decibel of vocal power inspired by a hymn's messages, people file to the front of the church to surrender to their faith in God and and publicly ask for grace. And Preachers dunk the most faithful, fully dressed, dolled up followers head to toe in clean, blessed water. I'm fairly certain Aunt Bea, Aunt Nea, Aunt Wanny, Aunt Chick and Aunt Gay had their sins washed away at some time in their lives, but I can't think of anything they had ever done that was sinful. Whichever way it goes, I have never heard voices so loud in praise or song as my beloved aunties.
When I went to church with Mom, I remember three things--that she looked pretty, I sat between my brother and sister, and we had trouble keeping ourselves from laughing--mom included. I know more than that happened, but those experiences connected faith to putting your best foot forward, being surrounded by people I love and laughter.(Dad didn't go because he was watching "game films" or believed he had enough church during his youth to last a whole life).
When I went to church with my aunties, I was delighted for their attention and embarrassed by the way that everyone could hear my Aunt Wanny's baritone "Amaaaazing Graaace. . ." above every other pew's chorus members' and the preacher with the microphone. There, too I had trouble keeping myself from laughing, though I know and respect that for "insiders" it was then and is now serious business.
These experiences shaped me as a "person of faith". I joined the Presbyterian church sometime between the age of ten and thirteen--much too early to know what or how much I was committing--yet I still identify with that church and Presbyterianism. I identify with my aunties and Granny through their deep faith in God's principles and lived devotion to them. I do not believe it is any accident that in my work life I have landed in places where faith and spirituality are supported.
In rare instances, strangers and family members alike have tried to influence me into some kind of religious "conversion". Yet in eighteen years at a Jesuit-Catholic institution, no one has ever offered to convert me or tried to. Despite that, I have been invited to mass, spiritual retreats and an immersion trip in Mexico, all of which helped me connect my work to faith. I am fully accepted, in fact, welcomed lovingly here and do not feel pressure to make any kind of conversion. I wouldn't if I did, anyway. I am a person of great faith in God--the One who belongs to everybody--not only "true believers". I pray all the time, especially when I have an issue that's twisting me up. I know that in due time, that prayer will be heard and answered in a way that will only make sense in retrospect. I feel like I receive God's grace all the time. I am contented in this universe of spirituality without walls, weighted in place with lessons of love, devotion, song, humility before God, patience, laughter and unreserved acceptance.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
Wow... that was enligtening. Now i see why u exposed me to presbyterianism but also left me to my own devices to discover my own spirtuality. Thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteYep. . . and there IS a God, and faith--however you find it is there when everything else seems not to be. Love, Mom
ReplyDelete