Faith, heartache...
Mar. 10th, 2011 02:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameI suppose that it shouldn't have a big effect on my own beliefs, as none of it changes my own personal faith experiences, but the truth is that I'm sort of heartbroken and confused in the wake of several people I never expected leaving their Christian beliefs behind. It's had a lot to do with my own doubts and troubles over the last year.
One of them is Anne Rice... I came into Catholicism directly following reading her book about returning to The Church, Called Out of Darkness, as a long time fan of hers. I follow her on facebook and we have even chatted there a couple of times, and...well...silly as it might sound, she has been very influential in my life. Her vampire books were some of my very favorites as a teenager and her witch/crossover books are some of my very favorites now. Her deeply researched and beautifully expressed reasons for returning to her childhood faith really touched me, and when we were talking we seemed to have a bizarre lot of things in common (she was starting the Eat to Live doctor's Beans and Greens diet and wrestling with her faith vs her (anti-Catholic) friends, and had always wanted to write, and was with one man most of her life, and is really pro-gay rights and anti-abortion but has such a hard time with religion and politics...) I've always found it comforting and inspiring that she didn't START writing until her 30s. Anyway, it really rocked my boat in a big way when she publically, loudly decried Christianity and said she would not be a part of it anymore.
Then someone else, who I will not name, but who I thought of as a real living saint of the Orthodox faith...who has inspired and moved me and countless others and had bishop approval for their writing and who I had had long conversations about, with several other believers, and had traded emails with...found out that their bishop, the one they had been directly interacting with for blessings, prayer and counsel, was sexually abusing children. It was very painful and this person left Orthodoxy and is still going to a (different sort of) church, but it is painfully obvious that they are much more ecumenical and are also reading about many other faiths, and open to practicing them, and...I am not judging them! It's just a completely different path and definitely not the same one I'm on anymore. Everything this person says makes complete sense to me, still, as they try to sort out where they are and what they need and deal with persecution from those who feel they should have stayed the course with Orthodoxy...and that is...hard, I guess, for me, as someone in RCIA classes.
Those two things happened very close together, along with my ex, my baby daddy 1.0, so to speak, telling me he regrets his own Catholic conversion and feels he's agnostic at this point. I mean part of me wants to be really judgemental because of our history and say agnosticism is just more compatible and convenient with his lifestyle at the moment...but if I'm honest and shrug off the baggage I understood everything he had to say on the topic very well. Which is...jarring, I guess? Because we went to church and youth group and church camp as teens and attended bible study and prayed and grappled with premarital sex guilt together, and I told him all my deep dark spiritual secrets and just, I don't know. First kiss in a prayer circle and all this. I mean he kind of led me to Catholicism and to Humanae Vitae, several years ago, too. So it's like, damnitt, now you pull the wool out from under me??
The biggest whopper, though, the blow that leaves me winded and makes me tear up to think about, is Mother Theresa. I've read just about everything you can read, by and about her, and been so moved - I truly believe her words are as powerful as the gospels and that's what made the idea of saints make sense to me. Her obedience to The Church and all she accomplished in her life, through it, blew my mind. There is really no way to overstate this. Her ideas about seeing Christ in everyone and being Christ to others are the foundation of my beliefs about what it means to be a Christian (they'll know we are Christians by our Love).
But the Vatican let this whole somewhat unethical, breach of confidentiality book be published, of her letters to her mentor priest guy, her confessor. Private letters she never meant for the public. ANd in them it's revealed that she went MANY DECADES without ever feeling the presence or love of God. That she lived nearly her entire life in the proverbial dark night of the soul, lonely and miserable inside.
This is "supposed" to make me feel really comforted about the times when I don't sense or feel the presence of God, like, oh, well, even the great nearly beatified Mother Theresa herself had those times of doubt and despair! It's perfectly normal!
But...it doesn't. It makes me feel like if SHE was just going through the motions, if SHE was just forcing herself through what the faith dictates without that real emotional conviction, if she could sacrifice and give and pray and devote herself on that level and still feel like the sky was empty and it was just her doing the good work....If she could give lip service to others about how great the joy of knowing God was while she was not at all joyful...
Well fuck.
I mean, really, FUCK.
Does this make sense?
*sigh*
Last night my mil was on facebook chatting with me and she was talking about how she missed our old Disciples of Christ (female) pastor, Robin. And I understood what she meant, but I was thinking of all of this already, and so I could not help but recall standing 20 feet from the live nativity scene we were putting on by the highway as a teenager, with her telling (horrified) me that she didn't think it mattered if Mary was ACTUALLY a virgin or Jesus was TRULY conceived by the Holy Spirit. That the faith itself, the comforting metaphor, the belief in something, was what mattered.
Well, that is not good enough for me. I need it to be real or not be real. I am not someone who can respect and adhere to rules and rituals for the sake of themselves.
I am still deeply in love with Jesus Christ; all He said and did, everything He stood for. I'm deeply disillutioned with His followers and not so sure about anything being done in His name. I'm even curious about whether or not He's quite who I've typically been thinking.
I was out tonight, and feeling a little pang at every smudge of ashes I spotted on someone's forehead. I feel I need to throw myself into Lent, and then I feel like I just can't, or don't want to, or don't understand why I should. Then I go back to feeling I need to just do it. Because there is this pure love I can't help but feel in spite of all this consternation and grief, when I see the icon I'm using for this post or even think the word "Christ". There is a real longing in me for God, even when I can't bring myself to repent for anything because I'm just not sorry. Not even sorry I'm not sorry.
I guess that for now that has to be enough.
One of them is Anne Rice... I came into Catholicism directly following reading her book about returning to The Church, Called Out of Darkness, as a long time fan of hers. I follow her on facebook and we have even chatted there a couple of times, and...well...silly as it might sound, she has been very influential in my life. Her vampire books were some of my very favorites as a teenager and her witch/crossover books are some of my very favorites now. Her deeply researched and beautifully expressed reasons for returning to her childhood faith really touched me, and when we were talking we seemed to have a bizarre lot of things in common (she was starting the Eat to Live doctor's Beans and Greens diet and wrestling with her faith vs her (anti-Catholic) friends, and had always wanted to write, and was with one man most of her life, and is really pro-gay rights and anti-abortion but has such a hard time with religion and politics...) I've always found it comforting and inspiring that she didn't START writing until her 30s. Anyway, it really rocked my boat in a big way when she publically, loudly decried Christianity and said she would not be a part of it anymore.
Then someone else, who I will not name, but who I thought of as a real living saint of the Orthodox faith...who has inspired and moved me and countless others and had bishop approval for their writing and who I had had long conversations about, with several other believers, and had traded emails with...found out that their bishop, the one they had been directly interacting with for blessings, prayer and counsel, was sexually abusing children. It was very painful and this person left Orthodoxy and is still going to a (different sort of) church, but it is painfully obvious that they are much more ecumenical and are also reading about many other faiths, and open to practicing them, and...I am not judging them! It's just a completely different path and definitely not the same one I'm on anymore. Everything this person says makes complete sense to me, still, as they try to sort out where they are and what they need and deal with persecution from those who feel they should have stayed the course with Orthodoxy...and that is...hard, I guess, for me, as someone in RCIA classes.
Those two things happened very close together, along with my ex, my baby daddy 1.0, so to speak, telling me he regrets his own Catholic conversion and feels he's agnostic at this point. I mean part of me wants to be really judgemental because of our history and say agnosticism is just more compatible and convenient with his lifestyle at the moment...but if I'm honest and shrug off the baggage I understood everything he had to say on the topic very well. Which is...jarring, I guess? Because we went to church and youth group and church camp as teens and attended bible study and prayed and grappled with premarital sex guilt together, and I told him all my deep dark spiritual secrets and just, I don't know. First kiss in a prayer circle and all this. I mean he kind of led me to Catholicism and to Humanae Vitae, several years ago, too. So it's like, damnitt, now you pull the wool out from under me??
The biggest whopper, though, the blow that leaves me winded and makes me tear up to think about, is Mother Theresa. I've read just about everything you can read, by and about her, and been so moved - I truly believe her words are as powerful as the gospels and that's what made the idea of saints make sense to me. Her obedience to The Church and all she accomplished in her life, through it, blew my mind. There is really no way to overstate this. Her ideas about seeing Christ in everyone and being Christ to others are the foundation of my beliefs about what it means to be a Christian (they'll know we are Christians by our Love).
But the Vatican let this whole somewhat unethical, breach of confidentiality book be published, of her letters to her mentor priest guy, her confessor. Private letters she never meant for the public. ANd in them it's revealed that she went MANY DECADES without ever feeling the presence or love of God. That she lived nearly her entire life in the proverbial dark night of the soul, lonely and miserable inside.
This is "supposed" to make me feel really comforted about the times when I don't sense or feel the presence of God, like, oh, well, even the great nearly beatified Mother Theresa herself had those times of doubt and despair! It's perfectly normal!
But...it doesn't. It makes me feel like if SHE was just going through the motions, if SHE was just forcing herself through what the faith dictates without that real emotional conviction, if she could sacrifice and give and pray and devote herself on that level and still feel like the sky was empty and it was just her doing the good work....If she could give lip service to others about how great the joy of knowing God was while she was not at all joyful...
Well fuck.
I mean, really, FUCK.
Does this make sense?
*sigh*
Last night my mil was on facebook chatting with me and she was talking about how she missed our old Disciples of Christ (female) pastor, Robin. And I understood what she meant, but I was thinking of all of this already, and so I could not help but recall standing 20 feet from the live nativity scene we were putting on by the highway as a teenager, with her telling (horrified) me that she didn't think it mattered if Mary was ACTUALLY a virgin or Jesus was TRULY conceived by the Holy Spirit. That the faith itself, the comforting metaphor, the belief in something, was what mattered.
Well, that is not good enough for me. I need it to be real or not be real. I am not someone who can respect and adhere to rules and rituals for the sake of themselves.
I am still deeply in love with Jesus Christ; all He said and did, everything He stood for. I'm deeply disillutioned with His followers and not so sure about anything being done in His name. I'm even curious about whether or not He's quite who I've typically been thinking.
I was out tonight, and feeling a little pang at every smudge of ashes I spotted on someone's forehead. I feel I need to throw myself into Lent, and then I feel like I just can't, or don't want to, or don't understand why I should. Then I go back to feeling I need to just do it. Because there is this pure love I can't help but feel in spite of all this consternation and grief, when I see the icon I'm using for this post or even think the word "Christ". There is a real longing in me for God, even when I can't bring myself to repent for anything because I'm just not sorry. Not even sorry I'm not sorry.
I guess that for now that has to be enough.
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Re: delurking....
Date: 2011-03-16 10:33 pm (UTC)I wonder all the time about how incredibly difficult Christianity must be for gay people - I stress enough just about Christian takes on homosexuality as a straight person. It hugely concerns me as something one of my kids could end up struggling with one day.
I wonder if there aren't networks and websites specifically devoted to gay-friendly churches, for when someone moves (or is travelling, or thinking of converting...)? If not, there should be!
"disagreed with Rome but still loved the faith" - yeah.