Homeless on Sunday mornings

It’s hard to know what to do with myself on Sundays. Having grown up in the church, Sundays are supposed to be for church. Even more so having grown up Catholic, because God gets mad at you if you’re Catholic and don’t go to Mass on Sunday.

But for the last five or six years, I have felt homeless on Sunday mornings, even when I’ve been in church.  What is the point of going to church? It’s like trying to get blood out of a turnip. Yes, I do sometimes hear helpful things, but there’s nowhere I can SETTLE, because there’s always some way I don’t fit in, wherever I go. I’m too theologically liberal for the social conservatives and too socially conservative for the theological liberals. My Christology is too low for Christians who are pro-life, and my pro -life stance is too strong for Christians with a low Christology. (Yes, I read a lot!)

So where does that leave me? Homeless on Sunday mornings, and spiritually homeless all the time. If I could be a “cafeteria Christian,” I wouldn’t have a problem. But I am my father’s daughter. I tend to see things in sharp contrast, rather than on a continuum. My world does not have shades of gray, so I am unwilling to compromise either my theological liberalism or the high value I place on all human life.

I have two hopes. One is Jesus, who didn’t ask anyone to recite a creed before issuing invitations to follow him. He issued that invitation to folks ranging from blustery Peter to cautious Thomas to the extravagant woman who spilled ointment on his feet. He told the criminal dying beside him, “This day you will be with me in paradise.” That truth-teller, who acknowledged that he was getting what he deserved, had said only, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Not even baptized! Imagine!

My other hope is that I will find a community that embodies Jesus’ warm hospitality of spirit. I yearn for a community that will mediate between me and the uncompromising statements of the creed, a community that will embody Catholicism or some other version of Christianity in such a way that I will be able to say “yes” to it with integrity.

Until then, I must remain homeless on Sunday mornings.

The Meaning of Life at Mid-Life

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” – Langston Hughes

So the old dreams are dead. What died? Dreams of doing something significant, of having a meaningful life. Maybe I’ve been trying too hard. Maybe I didn’t have to change my life radically, run off to the convent. God knows – GOD knows! – that didn’t work out! It’s been three times! When am I going to get the message? Yet I cannot live like an animal, eating, working, sleeping. I have to have some kind of a dream, some hope beyond the mundane.

Maybe what comes will not be a resurrection of old dreams, but a birth of new ones. Maybe it’s time to let GO of the old dreams. – dreams of doing something important, of having a significant life. I’ve been trying to jolt life into those dreams since I was 18.

Maybe, all of this time, I’ve been trying too hard. Time to let those dreams be dead and stop trying to resurrect them, Frankenstein-like. What would happen if I let my life be a tabula rasa? What would happen if I were simply aware of possibilities, without expecting anything?

What do you think?

“How do I love thee…?”

I’ve been thinking about how I get attached to beings. Until recently, I only considered people to be loved ones. Then a cat I took in about 14 years ago died. He only lived with me for a couple of years; my sister accepted him when I made a life change that meant I couldn’t keep him. I thought I had given up any right to a say in his life.

My sister’s generous spirit acknowledges my love for him. When he began the downward slide that ended in death, she let me have a voice in the decision-making about his end -of -life care. (Fortunately, he died on his own, and, as far as we know, painlessly.)

I still love this cat, and the way my sister has talked about his death has helped me recognize that. So what’s the difference between loving a cat, loving my father, loving God?  Or, in the case of some people in a nursing home I read about recently, bonding with a robot? I’m guessing the psychological mechanism is similar.

I’m thinking, then, that’s it’s important to be aware of who and what I’m loving.  I’ve attached to people whom I should have avoided. I can’t honestly say I loved them, because loving means wanting and doing what is best for the person, which in this case I did not do. Loving a being only begins with attachment; the proof of love is in what I do.

One of my deep longings is that, after I die, I will be with all of the beings I have loved.  I hope, too, that relationships with those whom I did  not love well will be healed.

Living in Hope

“I believe in the resurrection of the dead.”

I’ve recited this line of the Apostles’ Creed thousands of times since childhood. Now, as never before, I have skin in the game. Yes, I have feared death, the possible loss of all existence, but now I have a positive reason for wanting “resurrection of the dead” to be real. I now have loved ones on the other side whom I want to see again.

First on the list is my father: His death is driving this deepened longing. I want to be with him again. I want to be with him as he truly is, the real man in his essence, without the scars and brokenness that life inflicted on him.

He could be rigid and grumpy, especially during the last few years. But I’ll take that if it means I can also have the patient teacher, the one who listened to and soothed my anxieties, who asked me how my job was going because he wanted to communicate with me but wasn’t sure what to say. Even just playing rummy with him again would be enough.

I miss seeing him in his Linden-McKinley jacket, the badge of his 26 years as a high school teacher and guidance counselor. I miss hearing, “Say good-bye to your mother,” and “Be careful” as I was leaving. I miss hearing surprising things about my father, like the way he greeted his friends at the nursing home – my father, whom I thought of as a recluse! If I could have those things back, I’d be happy to listen to him complain about the sermons at Mass!

Being with my father perfected, as God created him to be, is something I hope for with all of my soul. But being with my imperfect father, quirks and scars included, would fulfill my hope in the “resurrection of the dead.

Time Warp

When Daddy died, something happened to time. It didn’t stop, but “time” for me became separate from “time” for the rest of the world. It was as if I were in my own bubble of time.

The rest of the world went on. I went to work, except for the night he died and the night after the funeral, but my spirit wanted to be somewhere else. I went to work, but being at work didn’t matter. It wasn’t the usual, “I just don’t want to be at work” feeling; it was that there was other work to do, spirit work. My “time” was all concentrated around Daddy’s death. My spirit just wasn’t present. My spirit wanted to deal with memories of Daddy and his death.

The visitation and funeral were important to me for that reason: Here was time carved out by society in which I could attend to the things that mattered. I wanted to remember my father, to talk about him, to be with people who knew him. These rituals provided time and space to do that.

For awhile after he died, I measured time the way Christians do with Jesus. I counted time from Daddy’s death: It’s been one week since he died, one month since he died. And of course, Father’s Day, and wishing I had done more for him last Father’s Day.

The sense of being in a bubble of time is gone now, and I no longer measure time by my father’s death. It seems as if this isn’t something a person should be able to get over or get used to, but I am now used to the fact that my father died.

I live in the hope of being with him again.

Daddy

When my father died on April 2, 2015, he became “Daddy” again. I don’t know why, but I would tell people, “My daddy died.” For some time surrounding his death, he was “Daddy.” Sometimes he still is.

The death I mourned was less the grumpy old man in the nursing home, more the father I glimpsed the last time I visited him, the Tuesday before he died. We played rummy, which we hadn’t played in some time. Frankly, I’d been avoiding him. Yes, I stuck my head in his room, but usually he was sleeping and I didn’t wake him up.

But that Tuesday, for some reason, we played cards again, as we had so often when I visited. He beat me twice – and I wasn’t just letting him win! Before I left, I took his hand, which I had often done before leaving. I asked him twice if he was ok. He said yes. I looked him in the eye, and I seemed to see my father again, not just a grumpy old man. We said good-bye. It was the last time he said good-bye to me.

Why am I doing this?

I’m a word person who, for some years, hasn’t been sharing words, so I’m starting this blog. I’ll give access only to selected people right now; later I might make it more public. Thank you for being willing to read what I write and to think about it.