A sign of faith

I'm Catholic. Growing up we were the family that was 20 minutes early to church EVERY Sunday. I attended CCD K-12 and my confirmation program was 2 hours every week for two years before I was confirmed. I can remember cowering outside the confessional booth in second grade waiting to make me "first confession". I don't remember what I confessed but I know that I had this horrible scowling priest that terrified me and made me feel the need to tell him my deepest darkest sins like the time I squashed the mosquito that was chewing on my arm because if I didn't tell him that I "had killed" I wasn't going to heaven.

I remember first Communion when the twins in my class turned around in unison to make a "yuck" face at the congregation after they tasted the wine.

I remember how Archbishop Charles meeting with us at 7 in the morning on our confirmation day calmly and kindly reminding us that this was OUR choice, if we didn't want to be confirmed, if we didn't feel ready, if we wanted to explore more faiths...do it as it was OUR choice. THAT is the moment my Catholic faith took it's room to run and did.

This is a sign of my faith. The revelry in New Orleans is calmed down, Fat Tuesday has left the city not only the destruction of Katrina to clean up but the confetti, beads, and booze left overs of those troopers that made it there to party. That means today the faithful gathered to begin the season of Lent. Not by any means the most spectacular of religious periods. Lent is a period of introspection, sacrifice (more than just sweets), and preparation for what I have come to believe is the most fabulous of weeks...Holy Week. To mark this period of preparation we mark ourselves with the ashes of the previous year's palms to remind us that from dust we came and from dust we shall return, a sign to remind ourselves to turn away from sin.



I loved the way this picture turned out. It shows a few things about me. My eyes are closed, not in prayer but in an "I'm about to fall asleep but I have to get this picture taken" closed. The hair...that's what it looks like after spending 10 hours scrunched under a surgical scrub cap. But at the same time, it's peaceful. The cross barely a smudge in places, darker in others. Just like one's faith...at times, solid and strong. At others, questionable and fragile. Those are the charicteristics of my faith reinterated through the experience of Jesus as fully human during Holy Week...from his march into Jeruselum with trumpets blaring and palms waving when really it was a set-up to give the government cause to "bring him in" as we would say these days to the panic and then awestruck joy in his empty tomb on Easter morning.

My best friend from high school has called me a "left wing" Catholic. I think it fits. I chose that morning in April of my junior year of high school to confirm my beliefs in the Catholic faith but i DIDN'T claim to agree with ALL that is the Catholic law and tradition. Archbishop Charles instilled in me the ability to be comfortable with questioning my faith. I ended up studying "faith"; I say "faith" and not religion because a very wise Father Peoples told us in Theology 101 never to ask another person's their "religion", ask them what "faith" they are. I chose to study Theology in addition to Biology in college...yup, I studied both Darwin and Genesis and have beliefs and doubts in both.

I have chosen to be a Catholic of exploration. I am fascinated by beliefs and faiths and value systems of all those that claim any of them. A faith is a set of values, traditions, laws, and experiences that one can find comfort in. A Catholic tradition is that...a tradition that has expanded from a basic story composed of both historic fact and fables that teach lessons. That's MY definition. I have argued with some of those laws, have a tendency to relate more to the "human" Jesus (even think he very well could have had a "relationship" with Mary Magdalene...he was human and male, right?), and take great joy in celebrating Holy Week at the end of Lent because it allows me to have a focused set of masses, rituals, and stories (fact and fiction) that you can relate to the human experience still today...joy, friendships, betrayal, suffering, hope.

So there, a bit more about the personal side of me. I'm Catholic, I don't go to church EVERY Sunday. I'm Catholic but I disagree with some of the "laws". I'm Catholic but think Jesus COULD of had a girlfriend. I'm Catholic and female and I don't think women should be priests. Wow, lots to argue with me about, uh?

But more importantly I hope the picture represents a peaceful, kind being that grew up with enough moral qualities that she turned out to be a not so bad person. Whatever your "faith", take pride in it, learn about it, question why it is the way it is, have the courage to try to change things about it if it doesn't seem right, and find the comfort you need in it.

Happy HNT to all.