Shabbat Shalom

So after my first Shabbat, I met with one of the Hillel rabbis to tell him what my deal was and, basically, to make sure it was OK for me to come to Hillel. He asked me about my past religious experiences and about G-d, and how He factors into my life. I told him some of what's written in this blog, and as for G-d, I relayed an experience I had in the middle of my freshman year that made me change my major instantly.

 I have been planning to become a teacher since I was 16, but it was always as a high school English teacher. During my freshman year I tutored in an inner-city middle school in English and in Math. Then one winter day, one of the boys, Micah, just looked at me and said "Why don't you come here every day?" And to me, the question wasn't just limited to Micah and his class. The question was "Why don't you teach math every day?" When I got back to campus I went straight to my adviser's office, got a math content worksheet, and I haven't looked back. How can I think that moment, that question, was anything other than a sign from G-d?

The rabbi said "Wow," and nothing else for a minute. I don't know if he was shocked, impressed, or confused, but I felt the conversation change after that. I think he took me a little more seriously after he realized I wasn't kidding about believing in G-d and needing to do something with that belief. But then he said, "Now is a good time to also think about your own religion..." (how typical). That's when I explained to him about my trial period with the college church and so I'd already done that. Besides telling me he doesn't do conversions as a college rabbi, he didn't try to deter me any further. As far as the conversion statement, I was perfectly fine with that. I wasn't ready for any more major changes in my life. Later, he emailed me a list of 3 books on Judaism, which I have read most of each since then. (The books are listed at the bottom of my blog, btw.)

After my conversation with the rabbi, Shabbat just eventually became a part of my life. I got excited for it, I looked forward to it, and I was sad when it ended. I made a new friend (or two) every week at Hillel. Eventually, I found an awesome group of friends there. They teach me about Judaism but that's not all. They're not just my Jewish friends, they're my friends. And I'm so happy to have found them.

Where do I go from here...?

So now what do I do now that I'm finished with the Church? Just go back to being a wandering agnostic/atheist type? Wrong. C'est pas possible. I can't be an atheist after all that wrestling with G-d! That would be nonsensical....

About seven or eight months ago, I was on one of my intense wikipedia sessions (the ones where you start of reading one article and click on the little blue words over and over until you're at a completely unrelated topic. yeah, you know what I'm talking about...), and then all of a sudden I'm at a page about Jewish thoughts on the afterlife. Then I go to another page and another page reading more and more Jewish philosophy, theology, etc. And I'm just taking in so much of this information, thinking to myself, "Damn. That's what I think." It was so surprising to me that so many things that I took months and years to figure out, are already apart of an established religion.

To be perfectly honest, I would have never had considered Judaism as a religion for me because of it's relation to Christianity. I guess I just always thought of them as being so similar. Anyone who knows anything is thinking right now "What a dumby. They're so totally different." Yes, I know this now. But as a teenager who just generally despised organized religion, I didn't consider that Judaism might be completely different in its theology and philosophy from Christianity.

So after many days spending hours and hours reading online about Judaism, I decided I was gonna talk to an expert. That's right. I Facebook-messaged a Jew. He lived in my dorm freshman year and identified himself as a Reform Jew on his profile. And I asked him straight up, "What's the deal with being a Reform Jew?" He explained to me some of the basic differences between Reform and Orthodox Judaism and we talked about some other Jewish ideas. Of course, he then asked me why I was so interested. I told him, "I don't wanna be in my parents religion anymore but I believe in G-d. So I'm figuring something else out." He was impressed by this because, according to him, so many kids "lose religion" if they disagree with their parents. Then he invited me to the Hillel on campus for a Friday night service.

I will never forget my first Shabbat service. It was Reform and even though I had trouble finding the English translations of the Hebrew songs and prayers, I'd never felt more connected. I felt connected across time and across the world to everyone who's ever said those prayers. And I felt connected to G-d, for Hebrew is the language that the Tanakh, which has given religion to 3/4 of the world, is written in. No matter how few people pray in this language today, it has had an unmistakable influence on the world. I've talked to other non-Jews who've visited Hillel and just feel overwhelmed and intimidated by the Hebrew prayer service. I guess that I've just been challenged enough by religion that learning a new language doesn't seem like a big deal.

That first night at Hillel was truly a life changing experience for me. I went back the next week and almost every week after that, until school ended for the year. [I also went to the Chabad house twice, for a very traditional Jewish evening ;) ] I made so many great friends, who upon learning that I'm not Jewish instantly started teaching me whatever it is they feel I need to know at that moment. The great thing about Jews is, they love questions. For once, I don't have to be scared to be confused or just curious.

The G-dmother

I've mentioned that I have a brother, and I've mentioned that he has kids. I failed to mention that when his first child was born, a daughter in 2005, he appointed me as the G-dmother. Way to throw a wrench into an already broken machine. I held that beautiful bundle at her baptism and promised to teach and to show her the ways of a faithful follower of Jesus. Another promise I wasn't sure I could keep.

This wasn't really a problem during high school because she spent most of the time either with her mom and the in-laws or in London with my brother. My brother's in-laws are very religious so my niece went to church with them. I didn't have to worry about doing any of that. I mostly took it upon myself to be invested in her regular education and fostering her creative side (art, dance, etc.). But once my brother finished up his years of service and finally lived in the states continuously, I started to wonder if I shouldn't be more invested in her religious upbringing. After all, I am her G-dmother.

Before I could teach her anything major, I had to learn it myself. So I took it upon myself to really learn what a Christian is and believes. At the end of my senior year I made a promise to myself (and told someone about it to ensure I followed through) that I would learn about religions, so that I would be able to guide my niece as she got older. In college, I learned so much about Christianity, from the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant to taking an English class reading the most influential English translation of the Christian Bible (The KJV). I asked my roommates tons of questions, too. After a while, though, I stopped this, as I grew tired of getting laughed at. I knew that they were thinking all the stuff I was asking about was so basic. I should have learned all that at CCD, or I just shouldn't have been asking.

I even went to church with them for a few months fairly regularly at the campus church. But I knew from the beginning it wouldn't last. Although I automatically crossed my self and genuflected upon entering the pews, I felt so out of place. People at this church were different in so many ways - happy and sincere - but the same in so many. What made them the same as the church back home, really had to do with me. I didn't fit in. Every time we said "peace" to our neighbors, I looked around and felt outside the moment. I didn't feel peace. I just saw everyone saying it to each other.

Even though these situations made me feel sad and out of place, I believe I did the right thing in making an adult effort. I even printed off my own copy of the Nicene Creed and attempted to memorize it. Like in my childhood, I couldn't memorize the prayers because the words weren't written in my heart. I knew them not to be true.

Knowing now that I honestly can't guide my niece in her Catholic faith is upsetting. I can help her with her faith in G-d, but that is about all. I guess I can still offer the stories about Jesus I know from CCD, but I can't explain how it's possible that Jesus was a person and a god. This probably seems a strange thing to do: telling the stories about Jesus but not really believing in their truth. What should I do, though? Tell a six year old what she believes is bogus? As someone wise once said to me, it is better to live a contradiction than a lie.

Celibacy, Gay Marriage, and Secular Societies

This post is just about non-theological issues of why I am not and cannot be Catholic. In regard to the big controversies, I am not on the Church's side. I'll try to keep this brief...

Celibacy. Celibacy is unnatural and it is not divine law. Simple as that. How does it make any sense that an institution that preaches the prime importance of the family doesn't allow its main leaders (priests, bishops, cardinals, popes, monks, and nuns) to have families? Did G-d not say, "Be fruitful and multiply"? Celibacy didn't come into play until the twelfth century and should've been undone in the thirteenth. But here we are 11 centuries later and priests are still celibate (sort of...).

Abortion. My parents and I are very liberal. We are pro-choice. I really despise when people say I'm "for abortion." I am not in any way for abortion. I just believe a woman (and her partner) have the right to choose not to bring a child into this world, especially for medical reasons. I think it is OK to be pro-life. I just don't like when people try to make pro-life laws in secular societies. Being firm in your beliefs and allowing your faith to deeply influence your life is awesome; but you shouldn't force your beliefs or faith on others. The choices I make in my own life - I do not expect others to make those same choices.

Gay Marriage. This is an equal rights issue, people, and I'm in equal rights type of girl. My dad and I were both thrilled when New York finally got it together. I was not thrilled when I learned that the Catholic Church is now no longer accepting donations from any of the legislators who voted in favor of the bill. The bill doesn't force churches to perform same sex marriages, so this makes no sense to me.

Birth Control. I recently read a survey that said 98% of Catholic women have used or do use some kind of contraception. Kids are expensive. Responsible adults can use BC if they want. Obviously 98% of Catholics don't care about the Church's stance on this. Also, if non-religious teens and young adults are having sex, they should be using birth control. Bringing a child into this world before emotionally, intellectually, and financially ready is a great tragedy, for so many reasons.

The Secular Agenda. The Pope and a lot of Protestant leaders in the world like to throw punches at "the secular agenda." Of course there's a secular agenda in secular societies! And clearly, there are religious agendas in secular societies. It's OK to have a religious agenda but not a secular one? I love that America is a secular society. Basically, I love America. As Eboo Patel brilliantly stated in a recent article, America is sacred. And she's sacred because she's a secular society. We don't always live up to our core values of equality across all spectrums, but we work for it in every way in every day. It's freaking awesome.

The Sex Abuse Scandal. As my father said, the sex abuse scandal is maybe one of the worst things in the history of the Church. There are a few others, but this is really up there on the list. The worst part of it all wasn't finding out about the rampant abuse, it was finding out the way the Church covered it up and dealt with it. These priests should have been excommunicated on the spot. Sexually abusing a child is in no way consistent with the teachings of Jesus or of the Church. Instead they were kept safe by the Church's money and offered therapy. However, the Church only took 4 months to excommunicate Fr. Roy Bourgeois who ordained a female priest, ending his 36 year career.

Soo, I didn't keep it that brief... Sorry.

Post Confirmation: High School Experiences

After confirmation, one concept of the ceremony became increasingly true in my life: I was treated as an adult in regard to religion (for the most part). My mom slowly stopped waking me up on Sunday mornings. She didn't tell me that I was a sinner for not going and not wanting to go to church. I was finally allowed to make my own decisions. My brother and many other kids had stopped going to church in high school, but more so because they didn't want to wake up early and were sick of being told what to do. These kids still went to church on important holidays and occasions. One such occasion is the graduation mass held for all graduating seniors in the parish. My brother happily went to this mass. When my invitation came, I put it in the recycling pile. My mom pulled it out and asked me if I had seen it. Of course I had; how else did it get into the recyclables? She asked if I wanted to go and I responded by asking "Why would I go? I haven't been to church in years." She sighed. I'm guessing she was holding out hope that I would get over my rebellion and go back to church. I wasn't a rebel without a cause, though.

Although I quit going to church, I didn't stop wrestling with my faith or with G-d. During the many nights when it took me hours to fall asleep I would ask myself questions about the nature of G-d: Is He like a person? Does he stretch out like elasto-man to be everywhere at once? Is He Jesus? 3 pieces? 1? Is He our consciousness? Does He even exist? It was extremely difficult for me to understand G-d outside the Catholic teachings, so for a long time I went back and forth. Sometimes I believed there is no G-d; essentially I was an atheist. Other times I prayed to Him fervently. I would feel guilty about praying but not going to church. Why was I praying when I didn't believe in or follow the teachings of the Church?

It is very important for me to mention here that in March 2005 my brother was deployed to South Korea and I did not see him for 13 months. We constantly read and heard about the nuclear threat from North Korea. I have no idea if the time he spent there was more dangerous than other times in the past ten or twenty years, but it sure seemed like it. The anxiety and fear I felt necessitated I reach out to a higher power. I didn't want my brother to be sent home in a box. And so I prayed.

It was the times that I knew everything was fine, because my brother told me so, that I would begin to feel guilty about the way I prayed. He was fine and nothing was going to happen to him so why the heck was I praying to a being I didn't even know existed? After Korea, my brother went to London for 3 years. There were tons of terrorist attacks there on trains, buses, and elsewhere. What else could I do but pray? My brother's time in the Army is when my faith developed into what it is today. G-d is a unity who is ultimately incomprehensible to humans. A three pronged god conflicts with the nature of a truly higher being who has created and continues to create the universe. G-d is not a Christian and you don't have to go to church to communicate with Him and to be close to Him. He took care of my brother so that he could take care of his family and take care of me. When I look at my brother's children, I see G-d in the purest, most wonderful ways. It is incredible.

But as I grew closer to G-d, I grew further from the Church. I couldn't help but to despise the hypocrisy I saw and felt. I felt it from the people in the parish I grew up in and I saw it in the history of the Church. Why was the church always butting heads with science? To me, science and math can show us the nature of G-d. Why does the Church think and act in the opposite way? The oppression that has occurred at the hands of the Catholic Church is, to me, the greatest disappointment. I know from the stories I grew up hearing about Jesus, that he wouldn't approve of the behavior I saw and read about.

While all these things I've written here today are the truth, I don't think I've quite conveyed the frustration I felt during high school. I fought with my parents a lot, especially about religion. I didn't want us to call ourselves Catholics. No one even went to church. Why does Jesus hang on our walls when we don't act like him or ever ask ourselves WWJD? And then when I'd get really upset, I'd yell "What good did Jesus even do this world? What were we saved from? Terrible things still happen. Wars still happen and people still suffer." When I was around 16 is when I'd really had it. In one of these fights with my parents, I ran into my room to get away from them, but they followed me. In a complete rage, I went to my wall, picked up the Precious Moments cross and threw it across the room. It broke in half, and no one ever fixed it.

The cross has never gone back up.

Faith & Confirmation

So, as I mentioned in my first post, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church in 2005. I also mentioned that we had to pick a confirmation name and write a report on it. What name did I pick, you ask? A name that now could not be more ironic: Faith. Even at 14 I didn't have very much faith so I obviously didn't pick it because it described me. I picked it because confirmation names must be picked in honor of a saint. There are over 10,000 saints and not one of them was named Buffy. Quelle suprise. There is, however, a saint Faith (I have no memory of what earned her her sainthood, so don't ask). I wrote my report on her and in my statement of why I chose that name, I very clearly stated that it was because one of my favorite characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was called Faith and she was totally badass. OK. I didn't say badass to the church. But that pretty much summarizes what I did say. Now, I laugh every time I think about picking this name because in the religion which requires the utmost faith, I have none. I don't have faith in the theology, the system, or most of the people.

For my service project to the church I acted as an usher for about three months. Basically, all I did was collect the money and release people from their seats for communion. I had to go to church anyways so standing up and walking around during the mass was totally worth my service hours. Best part about ushering: the couple who was in charge of it have a beautiful son. He is a year older than I am and I got to sit next to him for three wonderful months. Of course I was secretly hoping he'd want to "go out" with me, I was a 14 year old girl, people. (I'm 87% sure he's an atheist now, so church did us both wonders.)

I won't go into detail about the trinity again, just going to reiterate that it was a serious problem for me. I just kept hoping and hoping as we got closer to the actual ceremony that it would finally click. I had anxiety over it. Then I just gave up and resolved that I would understand it when I was older - like it was a calculus problem or something and I was only ready for algebra. Well, I got a 5 on the AP Calc test and I still don't get it. And I finally figured out, it simply isn't possible. The solution does not exist, DNE.

So you might be wondering now, why did you go through with it? Why not just say no thanks and not be confirmed? Easier said than done, mon amis. How am I supposed to tell my Italian father and grandfather that I don't wanna be Catholic? If I had, they probably would have just laughed and said I was 14 and that I didn't know what I wanted. This wasn't like not wanting to go to school. If you're not ready to make a life long commitment, then you shouldn't do it. No one would have let me get married. So why did I have to confirm my faith? But that's not the way things work in the Catholic Church or my family. To my family, and to a lot of other people, the Catholic Church is about tradition, and you don't monkey with tradition.


However, I did make one attempt to get out of it, but it wasn't the most well planned strategy. It was sort of an accident. About three or four weeks before the ceremony, my mom took me out dress shopping. I was very cranky and didn't like anything she/we picked out. Then we saw the director of religious education - a woman who to this day does not like me; the feeling's mutual - and I was not thrilled. So then in the dressing room I'm getting really agitated by it all and my mom looks at me and asks, "Do you even want to be confirmed?" Almost immediately, I responded with wide eyes, "No." She sighed. The next month I was confirmed.

I don't think I will ever in my life forget my confirmation. I was sitting on the left side of the church, about four rows back and my confirmation sponsor was sitting on my left. She was wearing blue and I was wearing pink. When the bishop got to the part about becoming adults and what a huge step we were all making, I peeked to the right and looked at everyone. Did I really think that anyone was going to jump up and say, "Forget this!" and walk out? No. But I wanted to see if anyone else looked as doubtful as I felt. To my surprise, everyone looked so calm, sure of themselves, and excited for the next part of their lives. "Crap," I thought. "This is it."

There was a party back at our house afterwards. And everyone congratulated me. At least there was food.