My faith and my friends

[altarflame]

This day took quite awhile to warm up. Like...10 hours. But then it finally got going and was sort of ok. I give it a C-.

To nullify the parts where I slept in until people were arguing and making messes so loudly that I had to get up, and then wasted hours trudging around feeling grumpy, I'm going to list the things I did accomplish to make myself feel better.

*sitting staring blankly for far too long*

Oh! Alright.

-enforced all chores being done and all animals being attended...this is getting to be a lengthy process as we currently have three chicks indoors under a heat lamp and 7 kittens being nursed by a ravenous mama cat, in addition to the guinea pigs being pet-sat (<- ha) and Jake having chores now...
-Helped Isaac through handwriting, Jake through "g" and "h" work, and Aaron through a nature journal entry, and checked Ananda's math work.
-Made a great dinner of chicken fried rice and steamed green beans that was a hit all around.
-read The Ugly Duckling to Elise, some poems about chocolate to Isaac from a volume he found at the library, and part of the D'aulaire's Book of Trolls to Jake (our third multi-night run through this one...he loves it), at bedtime...Ananda, Aaron and I started The Island of the Blue Dolphins.

THAT'S IT.

I'm "currently working on" (I stop every couple of paragraphs to do a little more) some incredibly tedious crap to help Grant out. This is the only sort of thing re: web coding and design that I can be trusted with, I assure you. It involves color proofing and renaming dozens and dozens of tiny images that represent fabric swatches for one of his clients with an upholstery business.


and I had this epiphany that I can contemplate how I want to reconcile my faith with whatever issues and whether or not I should be Orthodox one day while I'm Catholic. I can make sense of it all and have communion every week at the same time! This seemed really profound for being so simple, and sure enough today I am already complicating it, again.

I went to St Louis's website to look at contact numbers and schedules for childrens' religious education and RCIA, and hit the first stumbling block - because it's $135 for the first child and $45 for each additional child, to complete the course. We just don't have any money for ANYTHING, right now. And I was kind of taken aback, too, that they're charging for something that really seems to me as though it should be a volunteer based ministry. But, I am trying not to be too judgemental - this is a church where they have a MASSIVE number of kids coming through and a whole battalion of people dedicated to running the program, and they seem to take it really seriously. Also, most members are rolling in money and I'm sure they're using it for good things and I also highly suspect that they let people in and through whether they can pay or not. Which I may persue. I was talking to my favorite Orthodox Christian Dama on facebook at the time of this discovery and so we got into a big thing about how the Orthodox don't do religious education because it's considered better for worship and love of God to be experiential as kids' grow and also, as it's seen as Grace regardless of understanding, even infants baptized in receive communion. There are no classes required to be taken before you get it. Which made me tell her how I'd really prefer that system as the entire Mass (or Liturgy, for the Orthodox) revolves around Communion, and just yesterday Jake was asking why he can't go have it, and so next thing I know I'm back on the freakin' e-search for an Orthodox Church I can reconcile myself to the distance and deep ethnicity of (most Orthodox parishes in the US are "Greek Orthodox" or "Russian Orthodox" with services held partially or completely in a native tongue and everyone attending being first or second generation immigrants, unless you are lucky enough to live near an "Orthodox Church In America"/OCA).

Tangenitally, wait is that a word? It sounds ridiculous. Anyway we ended up on the topic of my friends and how sometimes, lately, I find myself - for the very first time in my life - getting stressed out and exhausted by my relationships with ultra liberal people. It's a lot of little things, from one good friend who is ditching her 20 year marriage for an affair that she wants to label polyamory even though her husband is totally not ok with it, and is trying to tell everyone this has no effect on their 6 children, and expects me to be supportive, to just wishing that even one RL non-Christian person I know could TRY to curb their "Jesus Christ"ing and "Goddamn"ing around my kids and I... I remember once I had a really good friend - I mean she's still a really good friend, we'll always be a part of each others' lives. But anyway we were stupid teenagers who said things were "retarded" and "gay" to mean stupid and she was bisexual and at one point started noticing this slang as a demeaning thing. We talked about it and she actually asked me, since she had come to Youth Group with me for a long time just as a social thing and knew I was always travelling with the church and things, if it bothered me when she said JC/GD/assorted variants, and I admitted it did because I was trying to not say/think those things back then (now, I can't imagine even slipping. I kind of cringe inwardly whenever I hear them. But these beliefs were still new to me and I was raised in a totally agnostic household). So we made a deal that I would stop saying things were gay and she would stop saying Jesus Christ. She said she couldn't really promise she'd stop "Oh my God" because it's so deeply ingrained but would keep the more blatant stuff down and replace it with other words. This worked out well, until we didn't see each other for awhile and then when we did, I had stuck to my end (and honestly, now, I find it intolerably insensitive to call things "gay" - or "retarded", though that one took a LOT longer...like until Elise was born with problems and I considered it in a new way :/) but she had completely relapsed without a backwards glance and just never brought it up again.

I've gotten this sting of how laughable/mockworthy/whatever my faith is to people I care about, from a lot of directions at once lately. I try to bite my tongue; Christianity is the default for so much of our society that there are tons of people blatantly misrepresenting it and hurting people under fucked up pretenses: I understand there is going to be a backlash against that hurt. I think it's right (for me) to turn the other cheek and to try to assume the best of people. But it's hard when it's my close friends casually laughing and shoving me in the arm about the ieda of prayer or publically posting tons of insulting and intense anti-Christian stuff where they know I'm going to see it, or what have you.

I want to be like, alright, I know I'm "supposed to have" a certain amount of white-guilt-like Christian-guilt here according to a lot of people but I'm not that hateful attacking judgemental person you're talking about, and neither is damn near anybody I've ever personally met. I've known people who adopt crack babies and people who pay my way to things as a poor teenager and people who'll walk with you in the cold rain because you're up late at night and freaked out as a pregnant teenager.

This whole train of thought has led me to how I wish I had more Christian friends again. NOT at the expense of my other friends, at all. In addition to. Other friends I really knew and could be honest with, who had the same beliefs and questions I do - not just friendly church-faces that don't go past small talk. I think I've become guilty of really stereotyping older, plainly dressed Christian people who are polite at first as automatically being:
-boring
-shallow
-uptight
-upper class and classist
-intolerant of various and sundry things about me that make no sense
-spotlessly clean at home and impossible to ever bring to my messy house

Which is ridiculous, and keeping me from forming relationships. Dama, who is a (slightly) older and generally plainly dressed Christian person, and one of my favorite people ever, pointed out to me that I was so pleasantly surprised by this other older plainly dressed Christian person at PATH at the end of last school year that I raved about it (here and to her) and haven't I ever considered that maybe lots of other people I'm dismissing on sight would surprise me, too?

Which made me realize that when I was 17? All of my best friends were middle aged pastors. Two men and two women. Like, go to their houses, write letters when they move away, cry in their arms friends who got me through extremely hard times WHILE BEING OLDER AND DRESSED LIKE DORKS AND ACTING POLITE.

I don't know when I got this idea that ONLY batik'd out belly dancers and nose ring'd henna artists are worth my time. But it is silly.

I hope this hasn't been hurtful to anyone I love: or that anyone thinks they independently inspired my rant. It really has been more than half a dozen people in the last week that have all sent this "you can't take that religion of your seriously" energy towards me so even if I am thinking of you, it's not like YOU are "the problem". Ok?

The problem is that I need people IRL who are not Grant or my sister who I can comfortably discuss things like repentance and devotions with. All of my friends are people I value because we connect on some deep level (if not many): past traumas, deep beliefs about raising children/birth, a dedication to healthy living and eating - even a similar sense of humor. I just don't like this segmentation where I have this whole other HUGE part of how I see the world, and make all of my decisions, that isn't really a part of my conversations with any of them.

...and for whatever reasons I'm supposed to just swallow it every time one of them says something that would be considered deeply offensive if I it were reversed to my saying it and it insulting their situation/religion/political affiliations/etc.

Sometimes I wish more than anything that I could go back to the Christian camp of my teens, where the talent show was all Indigo Girls and Radiohead and dueling kazoos played through the nose, and Jenny made a dress out of bubble wrap for the masquerade ball, and there were so many kind souls everywhere ready to provide free counseling or just let you wander through the forest if you needed time alone. I hate how complicated everything is for me, now. I hate how frustrating and paradoxical something beautiful that saved me not so much - in my mind - for all eternity as in this life, has come to seem. Where there was volunteer chaplaincy, now there are new HIPPA laws. Where there was a Disciples of Christ church there is some other congregation, now. Where my heart-rending sincerity for guided meditations of Christ was, now I have the guarded cynicism that comes from knowing too much doctrine and theology to trust anything that is done without Authority and where I poured it all out with gushing joy I now hear every.word.I say through the ears of a billion people who think "Christian" means "anti-everything, backwards bigot who is repressed and hates poor people, and women, and everyone else". There is so much charity happening only through Christianity in this world right now, and I want to be a part of it again.

I want to NOT ever make another epic God entry that leaves me with a headache.

I want to get back to that place I was in last Fall, high on the Spirit, close to God every day, when being on Eat to Live was easy and inviting Bob to come here was natural. Not this screwed up place I'm at now when I go months without church and days without praying and I weigh more than I ever have, and want to throttle my brother.


That got long so I cut it.

Comments

[medland.livejournal.com]

What are the people like at the church you want to join? Could you go to some of the social events there in an attempt to meet some more like minded people? Surely you can do that without paying the money to get baptised. Maybe that would kill two birds with one stone, it'd allow you to feel closer to the spirit and meet some people with whom you can discuss these things. A lot of what you've said resonates so strongly with me.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

If they were actually charging for baptism, that would be simony. Even charging for religious ed is iffy to me. (I did have to pay for NFP class to get married in the Church though.) I would definitely talk to the church office about getting a discount or free enrollment. If the Church isn't discounting things for larger-than-average families, THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG.

[traumerin.livejournal.com]

I don't know if there are any in your area, but Antiochian Orthodox Churches are often the most convert friendly and convert-full. There are some that still use Arabic, but most that I know of are almost all English. I think 78% or so of Antiochian priests are converts!

[carriede.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm Catholic and have worked in multiple church offices, in paid and volunteer positions.

If you really can't afford the class fees, they will likely still let you attend, either by waving the fee, or giving your kids a scholarship (just depends on what they call it). Asking for help may be difficult depending on the parish because they want to make sure they give the help to those who really need it. Likely, you'd eventually talk/meet with a priest to discuss your financial and spiritual situation. For RCIA, you'd like meet with the priest anyway.

FWIW, the class fee covers books, supplies, resources, and maybe some of the director's salary, if it's a paid position.

Bottom line, the church won't deny Sacraments because you can't pay for a class.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_delphiki_/]

This! I did volunteer work in exchange for the cost of RCIA.

[emeraldrabbit.livejournal.com]

First of all, *HUUUUUUUUUUUG*

Secondly, I love "tangenitally" because it has "genital" in the middle. YES. GO GENITALS.

Thirdly... you and my friend Diana are the two people who come to mind when determining the "should I say this? How would these two friends of mine feel if I did? Oh, yeah, that probably wouldn't sound nice to them. Okay, so I won't say it" filter on my religious views. Although really, embracing Judaism (although I say that, but I haven't converted yet, and I'm not really going to services much, so for whatever that's worth, that's what I call it) has given me an appreciation for Catholicism that I never had before. Also, tbh, seeing someone I know (you) WANT to join Catholicism, as opposed to being born into it and wanting something different, has made me consider what about it would make an intelligent and thoughtful person want to be there voluntarily, and I've started seeing some good in it. I think the problem I had with Catholicism early on was that I wanted to fall right into it and be comfortable, and I never was. I wanted it to feel easy and it didn't. It just wasn't the right fit for me. I'm learning how to see the ways it can be an actual fit for someone else.

FWIW, I had a lot of bad feelings associated with Catholicism, so that's what I've had to overcome. Mostly me at 13 reading Revelations and going "WHAT THE FUCK? WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIIEEEE!!!" for months in terror and not really having anyone I could ask about that to get some clarity, and associating my very religious and judgmental grandparents (Dad's side) with church because they used to take me there, and then after we didn't talk to them anymore we still saw them in church on Sundays and had to try to not notice even though I was very close with my grandmother, and my parents being not religious at all but faking it because "going to church is just what you do," etc etc etc ad nauseam. I was never taught to really love it, I was just told "You should love this," and I was sort of pushed in a direction. And I am very stubborn and willful, lol, so that's pretty much a guarantee that I will hate something. Also my CCD classes were occasionally taught by high schoolers and we did things like play hackey sack and say a "religious word" every time we kicked them, so, yeah. Kinda lacking in the religious education department.

Buuuuut all of that aside, I respect that you have a separate experience from me, and that's how all these interpretations of G-d ended up existing in the first place-- people need different ways of managing their feelings about G-d and perceiving G-d and reaching G-d, so we have all these varied "languages" for talking to and about G-d that we use. I can totally appreciate that people need different translations because really, like Highlander, there can be only one (*snerf*) and we're all really talking about the same thing and just bickering over the translations.

I don't get why people think it's okay to belittle your faith in front of you. In some cases I think people do that sort of thing with the expectation that a) a majority religious group isn't oppressed, so they can handle it, b) people have bad experiences and they think they have the right to sprinkle their bitterness all around (I sadly used to do this myself quite a bit), and c) they might assume most people who are of that religion are not particularly religious unless they talk about it all the time and mention G-d in every sentence. But people who are friends of yours have no excuse because you kinda write about G-d a decent amount!

<33333333333333

[mommydama.livejournal.com]

I love you so much.

[erinmdmd.livejournal.com]

First, I'm fairly certain that if you talked to the parish you want to do RCIA with, they will provide financial assistance as needed. Don't let finances alone be the reason you don't pursue this.

I have commentary about the rest but no time to write now.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

So, I'm not on the internet much anymore, on purpose, but I always make a point to read your entries. I am a total dorky Christian, but I love you :) What I really wanted to say is that while I think it would be awesome if you could find Christian friends in your area that you can really talk to and trust, I would also love to talk to you anytime, by email or phone, about whatever comes up. It's not like I'm some sort of authority or anything, and I'm sure I have as many questions as you do, but we could at least figure them out together :)

I'm not really sure what Dama meant by us not doing religious ed (Dama, do your churches really not do religious education for children or catechumens? I'm confused). It is true that we totally unapologetically believe that infants have all the grace they need to fully receive the Holy Mysteries. I've asked a Catholic theologian with a PhD from Catholic University and who works as a catechist why their baptized children have to wait until age seven to receive communion (and also why they have to wait until their late teens for confirmation, which makes just as little sense to me, historically and theologically) when it is a sacrament that does not require some sort of rational understanding. He gave me a couple of reasons that we argued right out of, and then he admitted that he really didn't know. But we do think every Orthodox Christian should be instructed in the faith. I've never known of a priest or a church who did not instruct their catechumens before baptism, and this is a practice that goes back to the very earliest years of the church when converts studied at the feet of the bishop for often a period of YEARS before baptism. They began with Genesis, as they were most often pagans and had no knowledge of even such things as "In the beginning, God MADE" (as matter was supposed to be eternal). Today, a young child would not necessarily have to do a formal program like RCIA, but there would probably be SOME sort of preparation along with their family, and then a lifetime of religious instruction through their parish and family. I know a few priests that are beginning to do a full catechism in the high school years for children that never received good religious instruction.

I find this site really helpful for finding churches. We drive an hour every week to our awesome, beautiful, family-friendly (children's choir during communion, EIGHTEEN altar boys, great Sunday school) church but I wanted to find a closer church for weekday services and Saturday Vespers. This thing came up with a ton of churches that I never knew about after two years here!
http://orthodoxyinamerica.org/

What's your zip code? I could sort through the options for you and let you know if some seem promising.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

Have you been here? It looks promising: http://stgeorgemiami.org/

[aranel.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that it isn't that children don't have enough grace to receive Communion, nor that they necessarily *need* intellectual understanding, but that the Church believes for whatever reason that it's better for most to wait until they have reason and are old enough to participate in the sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation/Penance. We are (traditionally) big on confessing frequently if you're going to be receiving frequently, so starting kids on Confession around the time of First Communion goes along with that. FWIW, I believe babies receive Communion in Eastern Catholic churches, and I know that babies who are near death receive it throughout the RC world. Like married priests and whether we receive "under both species" or not, it's more a question of church discipline and custom than of dogmatic theology.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

This is more or less what Dr. Curran told me. But the parts that don't make sense to me:

1. I am totally on board with confessing frequently if one is receiving communion frequently. But if a baby/young child is baptized, and thus washed clean of all original sin (we have a different understanding of original sin, but I'm trying to use Catholic understanding here) and is not yet at the age of reason where they have to confess, why deny them communion? A newly baptized baby is guilty of no sin, original or otherwise, but is a full member of the Body of Christ. It seems like it would make sense to have them receiving communion because there is nothing to keep them from doing so, and then beginning confession when they reach the age of reason. (Our kids generally start confessing around age seven, although priests use their discretion here).

2. I know that Eastern Rite Catholics commune infants, so this seems to imply that there is nothing intrinsically wrong about communing before the age of reason. If there is nothing *wrong* with it, why would baptized Christians be actively denied the Eucharist?

This discussion with my friend came up because he was interviewing another Catholic writer on his radio show (while I was feeding his kids breakfast in the next room) and the interviewee related a story about a priest friend of his that attended an Eastern Rite mass and witnessed babies and young children receiving communion. Afterward, he approached the priest, shocked, and exclaimed, "How can you give the Eucharist to babies?! They can't possibly know what they are receiving!" The other priest looked at him bemusedly and replied, "No, they don't. Do YOU?" So after the radio show was over I was like, "So, Tom, explain this to me." And we didn't get too far. The confirmation thing makes a tiny bit more sense given that Catholics want to retain the practice of only the bishop confirming, but it still seems pretty strangely backwards to me to have people communing for years without being confirmed Catholics. I'll have to go back and look, but I seem to remember the Catechism not really explaining this well either.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

Well, I think another piece of the answer to "why do RCs customarily do it that way?" (as opposed to "is that the best way to do it?" is that for centuries before Vatican II, laypeople received only the host, not from the chalice, so giving Communion to infants would have involved "starting solids" as it were (i.e., you don't want a baby to gag/choke). The timing of First Communion/Confirmation stayed about the same after Vatican II, though I believe there have been some efforts to get Confirmations pushed earlier.

I am curious about the timing-of-Confirmation thing too. It's not something I know a lot about.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

I actually really like that Catholics have a ingrained system of training their children in the faith at the two particular ages - at 7/8ish and the teen years as they prepare for confirmation. Those seem like good ages to shore up their knowledge of the faith. I just don't think they should be tied to the sacraments. I was the nanny for the aforementioned catechist's six children and the eldest made really great strides in her faith formation during her year of preparing for first communion. I would love it if our churches had some sort of formal instruction like this. I'm fully planning on doing it myself for my own children, but there are an awful lot of children in our churches who really miss out on faith formation, I think.

[ariellejuliana.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, the confirmation thing got pushed back because only a bishop is supposed to confirm/chrismate (the Orthodox hold onto the idea by chrismating with oil blessed by the bishop, which sends his blessing for the priest to chrismate in his stead). As the church grew, bishops could not be present for every baptism, which the priests could rightly do, so they waited on confirmation until the bishop could come and do a whole bunch of confirmations at once. Not sure how it became that he didn't confirm until the teen years. Seems like it could have been solved by visiting a church once a year and confirming all the babies baptized that year just as easily.

[aranel.livejournal.com]

This is interesting -- apparently we didn't even start doing First Communion before Confirmation until the past century, and it's perfectly allowed for bishops to confirm children at 7, but most won't--and while I thought 13-14 was the normal age, apparently some dioceses don't even confirm until 16-17! I wonder if it's partly the influence of Protestants, who see Confirmation more as a coming-of-age ceremony, like the Bar Mitzvah. I do think American Catholics would revolt if you took away the First Communion day with the kids all dressed up, which is maybe a sad commentary. :)