Fools believe they know everything.
The wise understand they know very little
and are ever curious about the unknown.
I was angry. Damn angry! I’d been rummaging around in my childhood memories about church. As sometimes happens, I connected with painful experiences I thought I had long discarded.
It was early on a beautiful blue-sky Sunday morning. I sat on our deck, looking out at the garden’s June abundance and considered my options. Going to church definitely was not one of them. A clergy woman, whom I knew, once said that “church is stand up, sing loud, sit down, shut up, listen.” The last thing that I needed was words, words, and more words. Listening to some sermon where responding was not permitted.
I could spend the morning weeding. There always are a few invaders that have their own ideas of what my garden should be. But then I risked more painful memories surfacing and floating around in my head — and further feeding my anger . Something I had learned was not particularly useful or productive.
Perhaps I could take my favorite spade and go back into the corner of the yard where we compost leaves to enrich the soil. There I could dig a deep hole and dump all these memories in the hole, along with my anger. Cover the hole and stomp on it. There, damn the whole lot! But as I considered the pleasure of stomping on the past, I knew it would not stay where I put it.
Maybe I should leave town for the day. Go to some place where I could hike to clear my soul. But I did not want to risk contaminating any of my favorite places with leakage of damaging memories from the past.
On a whim, I decided to go to an alien version of church. Sneak in the side door of the Catholic parish near my home. Whatever Catholics did on a Sunday morning, I knew they didn’t worship like Protestants.
Off I went. As an invader, I figured I needed to camouflage myself. Like clever weeds in my garden that often choose to grow near desired plants that look similar to them — to avoid being seen long enough to gather up strength to strangle my carefully cultivated perennials. Even though I wasn’t thinking of strangling Catholics or anyone else. Just my past.
I slipped in as people were gathering and found a place. The walls were stark white. The warm wood of the pews softened the open space. Other than a few candles near the altar, it was unadorned and covered with a simple white cloth. The cross too was bare, and draped with a long piece of white material. There were no stained glass windows in this light filled place. This space that did not fit my preconceptions of what “Catholic” looked like.
Paradoxically, it was a place of silence, even with the sounds of people finding their places. Then the music began. It was not the familiar hymns I had sung all my life. This music was different, personal, intimate.
I watched very carefully. I stood when other people did and sat down when they did. I listened to words they used in responses unfamiliar to me — and pretended I knew these words. Words everyone else had said all their lives.
Lay people, not the priest, began by reading scripture, lots of scripture. When I thought Catholics never read the Bible. Lots of music was woven around words everyone sang. And the choir didn’t perform an anthem, like I was used to. Then the priest preached a sermon, puny in length compared to what Protestants consider to be a good sermon. So this is it. Short service and I was ready to leave.
Wait a minute. What in the world were they doing? Folks settled down in the pews as though all of this was merely the prelude. The liturgy became even more foreign to me. Lots of words and responses, but I had quit listening. Something else was happening here and in my soul. I was fascinated — and never noticed my anger had slipped away.
After the bread and wine were blessed, everyone flowed forward to various places, where lay people offered the bread and wine from a communal cup. And they looked you in the eye. It all was very personal. In my Protestant church, only clergy served communion and laypeople never touched the communion-ware. And when I took communion there, I kept my head bowed and did not look at anyone.
I joined the holy parade. My mistake! No, not because I was treated as an invader. I was included in some mystery my head did not understand. My mistake — because I went back the next Sunday. And the next. Acting on a whim to distract myself from hurtful memories, on a fine June morning, far-reaching changes in my life were set in motion. Something way beyond any differences in rituals people use in their worship together.
Little did I know that my lifetime understanding of words was about to be transformed. It was a first step that moved me to the time ten years later, when I ended my work as a psychotherapist to explore creative gifts that had laid dormant within me.
With this simple act of venturing into an unknow tradition, my world was turned upside down. I wonder if I’d known what would happen within me, if I would have run in the opposite direction. As fast as possible!
But then I never would have claimed being a writer or become a poet. Nor would I have embraced gifts hidden within me to become a fine arts photographer.
