How cliche will it be if I tell you that I love my mom more than anyone in the world? Don't care. I do. She's given me everything, has made unbelievable sacrifices, and loves me even when I push her away. But why does any of this matter to this blog? Well, she's my mother so obviously she had something to do with my religious education.
She and my dad enrolled me in public schools from the start so I had only one hour of religious education a week during the school year. For a lot of parents, if they choose this route they spend a few hours each week at home with their children teaching them about their religion. My parents didn't do that, thank G-d. Instead, my mother spent a lot of time outside with me. She loves to garden, so we spent hours and hours during the spring, summer and fall, digging up the soil, occasionally cutting earth worms in half, accidentally of course, planting flowers, watching birds and butterflies, catching frogs and the like. I was one of those kids who asked why about everything. Why is the sky blue? Why are some clouds more fluffy than others? How are some flowers pink and some yellow? My mom's a smart lady but she's not a scientist. So when she ran out of answers, she'd simply say because G-d made it that way. When science couldn't take us any further, we found G-d. But she never implied to me that the way things work didn't matter because G-d created everything perfectly. Science and G-d always seemed to go hand-in-hand.
When we weren't outside, we would paint or draw at the dinning room table. Being able to illustrate the way I see the world has always been important to me. My mother read to me everyday, until I was old enough to start reading to her. When I wanted to know something, she taught me how to look it up in the encyclopedia. Inquiry was a big part of my childhood.
My mom never taught me about original sin, or many other of those big hallmarks of Christianity. In fact, for the longest time, I thought that original sin just meant having sex because "the Virgin Mary was without original sin." It makes sense, right? And she definitely never taught me that only Catholics go to heaven and that non-Catholics go to hell. She always taught me that being a good person and doing your best in life was all that mattered when it came to the afterlife.
I don't know how my mom sees herself religiously anymore. But I do know that she's not sorry she sent me to CCD and took me to church. She told me that it's important to have a framework, i.e. religious tradition, in which to teach your children about G-d. Even though she feels a lot of the same frustrations with the Church as I do, she's not sorry she made her children a part of it. And I'm not either. I'm glad she cared enough to do that for me. As a teenager and adult, I haven't wanted to be a part of the Church. But at least as a child I was a part of something. I had structure and some meaning in my little life. I belonged somewhere.
When I think about my friend's funeral in the eighth grade, I feel a huge appreciation to my parents for putting me somewhere. Some of the prayers and songs in the service were printed in the program guide for his funeral. But some of the service was just from the standard church service. The friend who I went with is not religious at all. She might have been baptized, but her religious association didn't go further than that. So we get to part of the service when the congregation says the "Our Father." We're all saying this prayer, and my friend leans over to me and asks, "How do you know this?" She was looking for the words in the program packet. I told her that it's the same prayer we said at my church. Then she looks over and sees her mom saying it. She asks her mom how she knows it and she replies "I went to Catholic school growing up." Her mom said it with such a "DUH" tone. Then my friend just sat back in her seat and looked quite confused. She obviously felt very left out. She'd only been to church a few times in her life but most of her friends were being confirmed that year. In that moment I was so glad that I belonged to something, even if I didn't quite know what that was. And for this I have my parents, my mother, to thank.
Someday, I'll have my own kids, and I want them to feel like they belong somewhere. I want them to belong somewhere. I just can't make them a part of an institution I don't believe in. I can't teach them ideas I don't believe, many of which I don't even agree with their basic premise. That's at least partly why I'm on this journey I'm on: I want something more meaningful for my kids. I don't want them to grow up to find out that they don't agree with and can't bear to be apart of the Church, or a church, or whatever. I want them to have a lasting tradition.
When I told my mom a long time ago that I thought I wanted to leave the Church, she didn't object. She asked me if I wanted to write a letter to the bishop. A letter like that would be officially leaving the church with no possibility of ever returning. I couldn't believe she suggested it, but I think she knows the pain I feel when I think about my name being on the Church's roster. As long my name is still on their list, it in someway gives my approval to their actions. I just don't want to hurt anyone. I don't want to hurt my grandpa or my brother or my niece. One day I'll have to actually deal with these things, but at least my mother understands.
hmmm....mothers, religion. I was brought up Catholic by my mother (my father was basically an atheist) but by the time I was 13 didn't feel comfortable going to church, getting instant forgiveness for my (perceived) sins and feeling no joy in faith. I told my mother I was leaving the church. After much protesting, she said that meant that she too would not be attending mass. I should have been tipped off then: it was a major guilt trip. But it was guilt beyond traditional Catholic guilt - it was Jewish guilt. A year later, I discovered that in fact my mother was Jewish. Ergo, the guilt trip. So I too - like you - am wandering.
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