I have begun reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, and I think it's going to change my life.
RCIA is going beautifully. This past Tuesday I met with Father Nate, the young and dynamic, intelligent and energetic priest who leads the group, to tell him my story and my background, which was excellent. (There's something so trustworthy about a priest. Maybe it's that Confessional privacy understanding, similar to doctor-patient privilege.) Last night we discussed Scripture, the origins and the importance of the Bible. The Bible-bred Protestants in the room rocked the conversation, and I learned a few nifty new things -- such as the books that were affirmed or ratified to the canon were books that had been found to be in use by Christian communities in extremely variant geographical locations across the known world. Neat. I was impressed by a young man in the class who was appalled at the misogyny inherent in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas (since were were talking a little bit about books that didn't make it into the canon). We talked about the beauty and truth and divine inspiration of Scripture, and its usefulness in drawing us to God.
Afterward Joan and I went to Fiddler's for tea with a couple she knows from the grad school, and whom I met through RCIA. They're wonderful, intellectual, knowledgeable about Scripture, and passionate about the faith. He is Catholic, she is not, but is drawn to it the way I am. Immediately following RCIA they turned and invited me to a grad student Bible study that meets on Wednesday nights. "Some people don't like it because it's a bunch of grad students, and it's 'brainy,'" Heather said, and then laughed. "But you strike me as the kind of person who would like that."
So once Bones switches to Friday nights (DOOOM! DOOOM! Is Fox TRYING to kill my favorite show?), I'll be able to attend this excellent study. They're currently going through 1 Peter, which is a book I'd like to study, as I have a dicey relationship with it. (And lest you think me either shallow or too incompetent to manage the VCR, I will add the caveat that I watch Bones while on the phone with Leigh Ann -- it's our once-a-week show night. Geeky, absolutely, but familial and fun, because we're 600 miles away from each other and have always loved watching movies and shows together -- even though this season the network here is out of sync with the exact timing over there. Grrrr.)
And on Sundays I've been regularly attending Mass with friends.
Kids, this is what I've always wanted from religious community life. Assurance of God's love, beauty, challenge, truth, and most of all peace from the services; people to attend with; new friends; people to socialize with outside of church; encouragement in the mystery of faith; and intellectual stimulation. I am experiencing a joy that I had given up finding. I actually look forward to Sunday. I spend all week in anticipation of RCIA on Thursday. I feel incredibly free, to say what I'm really thinking, to ask my questions, and to respond to discussion questions. That's the whole point -- to explore, to learn, to ask tough questions, and to freely choose whether or not to be Catholic.
Plus I love this one thing: the option of going to Mass at 5:00 on Saturday, or 5:00 on Sunday evening.
Mmm, and September brings with it the delight of apples, and of grapes. I think I'm going to have to drag Meg and Phillip somewhere up in Michigan to smell the grapes. Sometimes something in my brain fires the remembered scent into my nose and makes my throat glands tingle.
2 comments:
Lovely. I am SO glad you're enjoying this season. It makes me remember the moment of silence we both unconsciously observed when walking together by Rockwell and that gorgeous red-leafed tree. Yay for Fall!
Gladly, Steve. :)
So, in my early youth (soooooooo long ago) attending my home Baptist church, I came under the tutelage of an extremely zealous Calivinist youth pastor. Already tending toward depression (thank you, genetics), I found myself pushed further and further in that direction by his teachings -- that man is shit, that God loves me because He is God, but regretted the constant burden I was to His grace, since nothing I ever did was good enough. Any sin I might have left unconfessed, especially when I didn't realize it was a sin, jeopardized my salvation. There was nothing in me that was good. I was a perfect example of the Romans 3 dirty rag that God even found taxing to bleach clean.
He would tamper with the Beatitudes of Matthew to say, "Blessed are those who mourn FOR THEIR SIN, for they will be comforted." (I'm sorry, where is THAT in the Scriptures?) He would say, "A true Christian WILL ALWAYS suffer." If I wasn't laboring under an unbearable burden of my own horribleness, if I felt to any degree comfortable and happy, something was seriously wrong, some hidden sin was walling me off from God's voice, because a true Christian WILL ALWAYS suffer, and if I weren't suffering, I needed to question my salvation.
This man's favorite book was 1 Peter. He loved to expound on predestination (which I believe in, by the way, but in an Armenian fashion, which states that God predestines people to be saved based on their FORSEEN FAITH, that God knows in advance who will believe -- since Romans 8 says, "Those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son") in a way that made me believe I had no idea whether or not I was saved, that all the faith I thought I had might in fact be entirely fake if I weren't predestined, and since our holiness points to whether or not we are saved, and since according to his general preaching I was never holy enough, I ran the risk every day of being damned, and I had no way of knowing whether or not that was true.
So for the past ten years I've associated 1 Peter with all the terror and the guilt of my adolescent spiritual journey, and with all the insecurities and doubts when I felt that God didn't really love me. It's been a long and slow convelescence from the poison of that strain of theology, and it's been hard not to blame it on my youth pastor's favorite book of the Bible.
But, being convinced in myself of God's love and deeply personal care, and finding further assurance through renewed private readings of Scripture and attending Mass, I find that I would like to revisit 1 Peter and view it through a new, fresh, clear lens, free of old burdens and fears.
That's my dicey relationship with 1 Peter in a nutshell. :)
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