I've not been very religious i a conventional sense up to this point despite attending a Catholic grammar school and college. I guess on the most honest of levels I seized an opportunity to keep a morning schedule instead of allowing my sleep cycles drift into the 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. zone and figured that attending church certainly couldn't hurt things.I have started to look forward to Tuesday masses when the school's students are brought in because it seems like the priests bring their A game for that one. There's more exploration, more explanation and it's a good refresher for me as I get my religious feet wet.
Despite mandatory religion classes along the way, there was too much focus on getting the grade or having the lessons disappear as just another class to get much out of them. It has to sound strange to people who attended public school to hear that in first grade "religion" was taught on a schedule just like math or science.
I think that after years of struggling to get a handle on things that they are finally starting to come into focus a bit. While I'm almost sure that the search for one's personal faith is a lifelong path, I'm unsure if there's ever a point where things reach true equilibrium.
The funny thing that I've experienced - especially in college - was that the more study you put into the Bible the fewer answers you seem to have. When you add doses of history and science to that, things get more murky.
Besides, how much trust can you put into an institution that refused to accept fossil records and carbon dating? Intelligent design proponents remain one of the most damaging groups with regards to my ability to accept the church as a serious entity.
As a cynical punk in my early 20s, I was positive that religion was a dangerous mix of fairy tales for adults and a healthy dash of crowd control. Without a God as an interdimensional cop, what would keep people from murdering, stealing and running amok? If actual, earthly punishment couldn't scare people straight, what could be more intimidating than an eternity of some horrible fate?
It was the same college-mandated coursework that turned a lot of my friends off to organized religion and my experience with seminary students that made me even more skeptical. I had an RA freshman year who told us how the "fish on Fridays" principle was an offshoot of an ancient pope who had a fishmonger in the family.
Armed with that information, my roommate and I resumed eating whatever the hell we pleased on Fridays in lent, comfortable to ignore the church for the remainder of our natural lives.
It was essentially the same story after I spoke with one of the priests, who explained how there was nothing wrong with personal celebrations of faith and that Mass wasn't for God's benefit, but for the people in the congregation. I took that and ran with it, choosing to go to church when no one else was there, usually on weekday afternoons when things were quiet.
Knowing what I know now, I'm starting to come around on organized religion and to appreciate what it brings to the community. I found it pretty hypocritical to shake my head at fundamentalists, while holding to the letter and not the spirit of the law with regards to my own expressions of faith.
I wanted the church to be part of the modern world when it came time to accept all involved, but would balk at collections that would be used to fund legal teams to protect rogue priests who assaulted children.
I've realized that I can't have things both ways.
One of the reasons I like our current church is that it is a few blocks from the apartment and tries to take an active role in our neighborhood. The same dated practices of tribalism I used to get nervous about - mainly based on the idea that history is written by the winners and that the church still felt a need to bring the biggest gang to the fight - have given way to seeing that the church that provides for its community is something I'd like to support.
Rather than trying to get away with as little as possible - "Wait, God said I only need to be here once a week on Sunday morning, when there's nothing to watch on TV? And I'll be out before kickoff? Sold!" - I'm slowly learning that there's more for me inside a church than some cheap peace of mind and warm smiles from the elderly.
I'd heard a while back that if you ask God for patience that He doesn't just give you patience, but rather opportunities to be patient. So, while I am still a ways off from being fully back in the fold, I have found enough to keep me coming back each morning.
Regardless of whether I believe that false idols really toppled over or that Jesus actually turned water into wine, I can find a great deal of value in daily reminders to be thankful for what I have, especially in a society that preaches , "Too much is never enough," or to be patient and accept that some things are out of your control, no matter how much you hustle. Whether it's out of my hands and in God's or just out of my control altogether is irrelevant once you come to accept the first half of that premise.
With core valuesof community, forgiveness, thankfulness, love and acceptance being reiterated every morning there are worse places to spend 45 minutes a day. My faith doesn't need to be rock solid to take away something valuable from those discussions.
It's just the rest of the mess that needs to be straightened out.
(Image from: NationalCenter.org)
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