Intersection

I went to my first reconciliation service Sunday.  I've been to confession at the regularly offered time before, but this was my first group confession.  Not that we confessed as a group, there was half a mass and then we all lined up to get down to business.  Five priests who had joined with Father Dan were sprinkled around the church.  It was interesting that some priests had more fans than others.  I picked mine because I used to live in that priest's parish.  

I'm always surprised at how different Catholics approach these moments differently.  Some of us stood there making some small talk.  Some were nervous, constantly making little motions.  Some were bored.  I was trying to remember all my sins and making sure they were represented on my Mea Culpa App.  Some sins are easier to remember than others.

I liked the group experience.  The honesty of all that steaming shit I didn't know the details of, and the embarrassed relief as each person finished their penance, made me feel more completely part of things.  We were all in it together.  It was a good thing to know.

Only One Way To Go

I'm making progress on the whole forgiving people thing.  I was recently shopping memories for  short cut story about my childhood that would demonstrate its toughness and the way it taught me to stand up for myself.  I settled on a great story from fourth grade, until my inner voice spoke up.  "You can't tell that story, she's forgiven."  And it was true!  All the dramatic tension bitterness lends to something like that had leached away replaced with a face that I'm happy to get updates from on Facebook.  It's a new world for me, a new direction.

institutional bitterness

"You're Marguerite Donnelly's granddaughter," a stranger might say to me back home in Western Maryland.  Living side by side for generations, that said a lot.  It meant I was a Durr.  Durrs are prized for their intelligence and empathy.  They are derided for their emotionalism and vanity.  The next thing to figure out was the relationship between our families.  No one  pulled out guns, but if there was bad blood things cooled off.  Even within families offenses festered.  My great-grandfather didn't speak to his twin brother for thirty years.  He'd stepped off his train because he believed in the union, and his brother had stepped right on because he needed the job.
Living like that is frightening, but it becomes engrained, a point of honor.  It was everywhere I went, just like the pure mountain water.  When I became a Catholic I realized that those habits had to change.  I had to find a new way to live.
"Go forth to love, serve and forgive one another." is one of the things the priest says after mass.  For a while it was so convicting that I thought he said it every week.  Everywhere I went in the Church, I kept bumping into forgiveness and I started to try.
I tried a lot of things, but struggled until I drew on another Durr strength--storytelling. I had a nasty habit of reviewing wrongs and framing them up in such a way that the listener would be moved to take up arms on my behalf.  In the middle of such a reminiscence, common sense said, "This is not forgiving."  So, right there, where the story was most juicy, I forgave.  I forgave all of it, even the emotional impact.  It has turned out to be a very worthy exercise, and my heart is much lighter.
We all have accreted prejudices of many kinds, but those supported by the communities that support us are the worst and most difficult to relinquish.

Until Epiphany

I hate hard deadlines.  I feel so flustered, and there is nothing in the year of family life with a harder deadline than Christmas.  You have to gather it all up, decorate it all up, and party it up before the 25 gets here.  When it's past midnight and I'm still wrapping, it feels as though only death has a firmer though unknown end point. I was chatting with a friend about Christmas work, when it occurred to me that I'm a Catholic now--a Catholic Christmas starts Christmas Eve and keeps right on going into early January.  My timeline suddenly felt generous.  I find that deadline extension comforting, even though I'll still need to get the presents wrapped and the fancy clothes organized by the day, I will have a luxurious amount of time to reflect on the meaning of the season and Christ's place in my life.
Sometimes preparing for death seems as crammed and crowded as Christmas.  We have so much to do, to be, to share, and things get behind.   My first priest said that Purgatory is an acknowledgement that we die with sin and that that must be cleaned away.  How comforting!  I'd hate to show up in the Lord's presence still dragging this crap along.  A chance to "shower and change into his righteousness" is just the thing.  Purgatory is a deadline extension. a chance to reflect on the meaning of life and Christ's place in it.

Layer Cake

As mentioned previously, I've been working on a forgiveness project. At first it was a pretty obvious deal. There was a list of people who'd hurt me in various ways and I was working on forgiving. The more I worked on forgiving others the more my conscience, and in one case the good rebuke of a friend, began to motivate me to seek forgiveness. The experience is like ancient boiler plate falling off. There's a new flexibility. It feels good to say "I forgive you, Papa Smurf" and mean it. It feels even better to say, "I'm sorry I screwed up" and mean it.
As that winds down, I'm discovering whole new layers of stressed out I was too busy with the other stuff to notice before. The first time I played a game based on The Hiding Place I was three. There was a large gathering of moms and we kids were turned loose to play. The girls went into one of the bedrooms and pulled all their tea table chairs into a circle. For an hour or so we sat as quietly as we could hoping the Nazis, aka the boys, wouldn't hear us and we'd live. Any noise we made the boys began banging on the door, yelling mean stuff and throwing pillow bombs through the transom over the door. Being three, it was frequently my fault that we were discovered. It was a lot of responsibility. At five the devil came to my little Wednesday night class to take everyone to Hell who wouldn't deny Christ. The theology on that was pretty bad, but it still had me waking up screaming for a week or two. Just when I thought it was safe to return to class they decided to do a lesson on how Chinese communists were torturing and killing Christians. The next week they were going to cover another region, but I decided not to go back. At six I was avidly reading Buried Alive for Christ. When I was eight we made time lines of how the world would end while those whose parents had let them watch Thief in the Night told the rest of us about the head rolling down the stairs. At ten I went to a camp where twice a day a preacher terrified us about the end of the world and how soon it would be. I was a very grounded and spiritually confident kid, but I went forward every night. Our favorite games were about surviving the end times, the nazis, the communists, rebel groups in Africa, we were always surviving what was always coming. Four square had its attractions, as did cowboys and indians, but that was just playing--concentration camp was practice. As I grew older there were movies about how the credit card was actually a tool to soften us up for 666 on our hands or foreheads. The UN was a very bad idea. Every nation added to the EU was mourned.
I'd never noticed before how deeply that fear had settled into my mind. I'm trying to figure out what to do about a mind that automatically picks up survival tips. I'm trying not to be terrified by not being terrified. I'm trying to get to know God as more than the guy who makes your vitamin oil last until you are released from your concentration camp. I dropped most of the ideology pretty quickly, but the theology is still a bit of a muddle. I no longer think our infallible leaders are infallible. A mother was asking of the Jr. version of Left Behind was a good gift for her nephew and I very quickly and emphatically said no. My kids know that Christ will return. I think that's enough, especially if my favorite theory that says it all happened in AD70 is correct. Whatever the truth is, I'm still trying to get past the anxiety all of that causes me. It's the next layer of my journey.

A Greater Work

My conversion was long and slow and then somewhere in the middle of RCIA classes it just took off. The thing was, my husband couldn't buy it. He wasn't/isn't ready to convert and I respect that, but when the oil was dry and my guests were gone I couldn't help wondering if I'd missed a step or screwed something up. How did I end up alone?
My thoughts and feelings since conversion have ranged from anxiety to fear with the occasional moments of certitude that even if I'm alone I'm doing the right thing. I was asking God about it, and there was an inner turning that brought to mind the powerful healing I've been experiencing sitting there alone in the pew. My sister says that I'm the kind of person who would allow an elephant to stand on my toes without saying anything because I'd be sure he didn't mean to and I didn't want to embarrass him. It's true. Sometimes I wonder if I have any toes left. The evangelical world I grew up in was tightly knit and gossip spread like fire. From a very early age I was aware that my behavior and our family's imperfections were dangerous and had to be guarded. I learned from fighting bullies that the best way to keep from being hurt was to be the scariest person in the room. It's funny that I used to trip over "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" because that's exactly what I most needed to do. But I had no place to do it, until St. Mary's.
For those who've read Tales of the Kingdom, entering the church is like crossing the Circle of Sacred Flames, who I really am--good, bad, and ugly comes forward. I've begun to be comfortable with that. All those imperfections that were dangerous are simply the ordinary stuff of living. I'm free to admit I'm a sinner, my family isn't perfect, there are things in my life you don't want to know. In the quiet of St. Mary's, far from the maelstrom of painful people and memories I can listen to God and God only.
I'm beginning to see this quiet time as a special retreat--a much needed retreat. I'd come to the end of my usefulness. There was/is so much that is too broken to do anyone any good. All those painful days and nights when my world was torn apart for reasons that still just seem stupid to me. Everywhere I went before now all of that went with me. But at St. Mary's no one knows anything about me or my family or all those tiresome ins and outs. They just know me, and they know I like to sit quietly, third row from the back, chapel side. I wish I could show them how much that grace is purchasing in my soul. I used to be afraid to be alone, but now I see that time alone is preparing me for greater work.

Finding my Temper

Often we talk about losing our temper, but lately I've been busy finding mine. I've had a tendency to deny that I've been injured, and so I've been carrying around the anger that results from injury without any way of acknowledging and dealing with it. The result has been a low grade anger that seems merely a product of a crabby temperament. The more I explore my conscience and all the mismash of things that I've had in there as guides for my understanding of life and morality, the more I am discovering these injuries and thereby finding a home for my temper.
"Ahhh, that's why I'm so upset," I find myself saying over and over. This of course makes possible the requisite forgiving and releasing of the anger. Pretending that my life has been perfect most certainly does not make it so, and recognizing and dealing with its imperfections seems to be the fastest way to inner peace. I thought that by denying that people I love have hurt me I was dealing with the issue in the most charitable and Christian way, but in reality I was doing both of us harm. They weren't allowed to apologize, and I wasn't able to forgive. Life is not perfect. The people I love are not perfect. Recognizing and accepting that is actually the better way of grace.