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Notes from Below Sea Level
“On Prayer”
I know of five pictures of me from when I was a kid. Four of them were taken on Easter Sundays between 1964 and 1969; the other, a true outlier, is from early spring, 1966, and shows me on our side porch steps hugging a large tabby and my younger sister laughing with her head on my right shoulder. Five and four years old, we both have on large, bulky plaid jackets and dark pants and, outside my sister’s radiant face just left of the center fold, the faded black and white snapshot is cold and bleak. Film was saved for the important occasions, like Easter.
Six years ago this week, my son was Confirmed in and officially joined the almost 1.3 billion adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. For the uninitiated, Confirmation is one of the seven sacraments of the church and the third of three that represent one’s growth in faith—the other two being baptism and communion—and culminates in the articulated rejection of the devil and acceptance of the Catholic faith. I remember how anxious he was in the lead up to that day, how we repeatedly went through the ritual so he could learn his responses (five “I do’s,” one “Amen,” and a final “and with your spirit.”) Still, it was nerve-wracking for him, overall frustrating, and (frankly) a bit scary. He was and still is terrified of crowds, uttering even a single word in public is painful for him, and the meaning of the ceremony was completely beyond his ability to comprehend the abstract.
My partner helped me work through his bouts of anxiety back then—ever the understanding, patient one—but was equally interested in this sacrament as it related to me. Privately, she’s found no end of entertainment in the thought of me suited up in black pants and a white shirt being nervous about banishing the devil from my life.
A few nights before my son’s Confirmation (as I recounted my endless catechisms and my eventual confirmation in my small bayou home town), she asked me when I stopped going to mass. “The day after I was confirmed,” I answered. A generations-long tradition, my parents insisted that every child attend mass every Sunday—no exceptions—until we were confirmed, at which time we were allowed to make up our own mind. Of their 11 surviving children, I was the only one who chose to leave the Church behind.
At my work, there are five project managers besides me. One is an ordained pastor of an offshoot of Southern Baptist, another is a deacon in his Catholic Parish, two others are strict, observing Catholics, and the fifth sits on his Church’s ruling board. My immediate boss—and oldest friend—is a Catholic convert and never misses mass. His boss (who is his father and the company’s majority owner) is an elder of what was, until recently, the only Presbyterian Church in town. (As a local institution, it officially closed its doors in early 2023 from lack of membership.) Religion, obviously, is a big part of life here on the Louisiana Gulf Coast and—settled in modern times by Catholic exiles and refugees—remains majority Roman Catholic.
But overall I view religion from an oblique angle. While I regularly took my son to mass or protestant service or (until we moved to this small town) synagogue, I did so more out of tradition and a nod to his mother’s wants, than a devotion to institutional Christendom. Still, I was taken with its mysteries from an early age. I even earned an undergraduate degree in religion and later turned down a place at divinity school. Despite now being a devout atheist, I still keep up with Papal encyclicals and can recite the Bible with the best of the Pharisees. I spent years delving into Eastern religions, learning Hebrew, have published on Kierkegaard and the Apostle Paul, studied the Quran, and mis-spent part of my youth pouring over the Upanishads. At the very least, I can stand firm in the light of knowing that my lack of faith is not born of ignorance or lack of effort.
And yet what will come across to some as a boastful recitation of my spiritual vita is simply the thick underbrush that hides the path I sense lies just out of sight. It serves to hide my own confusion and ignorance and unanswered questions. I easily could explain my rejection of faith in God as lack of grace or a rational rejection of those four pictures of me and my siblings in our Sunday best—but it’s not that simple. Somewhere in the explanation of my beliefs is the reason I brought my son to church all those years. In part, I exposed him to established places of worship because I had a hope that one day he too would be able to exercise his will and decide to attend or not attend, to join or leave; and I wanted him to have at least enough knowledge to find comfort in whatever decision he made.
Religion itself is a complicated matter with me, and what I’ve tried to teach my son is that we can’t understand goodness solely through the lens of a future reward or the dictates of one practice over another—that goodness can be an end in itself. As my personal articles of faith, I want him to understand that the holy isn’t housed in centuries-old, buttressed walls or vaulted prayer rooms but within our hearts and minds. That al-iman isn’t just the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen, but the courage to be judged in the here and now. That despite our temporal existence in a finite time, our worth resides in an inarticulate love that defines and shapes our souls. And that whatever the ultimate origin of our existence, we all share the blood of long-dead stars.
Given the extended fighting in the Middle East, the countless violence perpetrated in the name of this or that Deity, the dark underbelly of Christian Nationalism in my own country, and the seemingly-bottomless depth of hypocrisy I witness daily, I worry about this world and the one my son will inherit. I am not anti-religion, or even anti-church, but I do say a silent prayer most mornings that we might witness a day where acceptance of others is the norm and peace is given a chance to reign. God willing.
(April 2018 — April 2024)
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My hope for the day is that each of you celebrates life in one way or another and finds peace in these turbulent times. Be well, be kind, and appreciate the love you have in your life.
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?