Losing my religion: Mother Talk Blog Bonanza

I have wanted to write about my struggle with my faith, but I always flinched away from the topic, allowed myself to be distracted. Well, thanks to the good people at Mother Talk for asking people to blog about religion and faith, inspired by the book Parenting Beyond Belief as part of the Mother Talk Blog Bonanza.
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Sitting in church every Sunday morning for years is probably very good training for a future writer. Think of it, those long sonorous sermons holding people captive just long enough to get a foothold in your imagination—people who all look like they have secrets (especially to an imaginative kid). Once you’ve got the responses/movements down, you are free to be carried along on the waves of emotion/repentance/ecstasy that break over the congregation, called by the priest’s powerful chant.

I don’t want to imply that I spent all of those Sundays daydreaming. Growing up Catholic was very important to me, so much so that I used to tell people that being Catholic was the most important fact about my life. Stepping inside the hushed, cool church, with the light making jewel colored shadows on our faces—it was like coming home, and I’d have to swallow hard past the tears that inevitably came. My parents viewed my religious fervor with approval, if a little confusion. They were (are) good Catholics, who observed all of the holy days, abstained from meat or attended church according to the Papal calendar. I don’t remember being taught my prayers, or the responses in Mass. Those were things I always knew, and that was because my parents made it that way. But they didn’t stray too far from conventional interpretations of the Bible, and they were pretty content to keep Catholicism unambiguous and comforting. Whereas I, with all of the enthusiasm of adolescence, sought out St. Therese de Lisieux and St. John of the Cross and Matthew Fox and Meister Eckhart—as well as the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao te Ching, the Heart Sutra. And the more I learned, the more it seemed like this brand of mystical ecumenical Catholicism was my own church, Catholicism with a capital C, instead of the more pedestrian little-c weekly Mass.

And yet, I have not been to church in over a year. I have not baptized Madam. I’m unsure as to whether I ever will.

The disillusionment started in college, as it often does. I sat and listened to my more brilliant, atheist classmates systematically prove that the Church was a harmful influence on humanity. Inquisitions were mentioned. The Church’s treatment of women, of black people, of Jews. And I realized that, a lot of the time, I didn’t have a good response.

I was also swimming in a sea of beautiful poetry, philosophy, and literature. They gave me that transcendent ache I used to equate with my faith. I started to see the Church from the outside, and even though I used to console myself by remembering my “own” brand of Catholicism, that was starting to sound a little hollow.

But so much still pulled me back to the church. Whenever I came home from school, I would attend Mass with my parents, and it was as much a homecoming as that first moment when I would walk into my bedroom. Catholicism is intertwined with Latin culture a lot of the time—baptisms, Quinceañeras, confirmations, weddings—a quick sign of the Cross before any major endeavor (or just leaving the house)—novenas to the Virgin to ensure a good grade on a test, or a new job. A priest coming to bless a new house, a new car. Candles lit to St. Jude, whether or not something could be a considered a lost cause. My mother had a small altar set up in her bedroom, with a prominent painting of Jesus looking tired and loving, arms open in perpetual welcome. I used to sit there with her, watching her as she muttered her rosaries. It comforted me to know that she was asking for me, for all of the family. I was certain that when my mother was praying to God, God was listening.

Things changed, definitely, during my wedding. My dream was to get married in the same church that I had attended for years, the church where I made my first communion, where my nieces and nephews had been baptized. But the only priest who would deign to marry us had serious issues with the fact that my husband was not Catholic, and would not be converting. During his homily at the ceremony, he went on about how it was my duty as a good Catholic woman to “show him the light” and also about how marriage was just “pain and suffering.”

I was livid—not just at him, but, irrationally, at the whole Church. Hadn’t I stayed faithful, in spite of serious misgivings? Hadn’t I defended the Church against so many worthy accusations?

It didn’t matter.

Although I made brief stabs at returning to the faith, it was never the same after that. I kept straining my soul towards that sense of connection that had always sustained me, but nothing connected anymore.

And then I got pregnant, and everyone told me that NOW I would find that missing emotion. And I tried. It felt important to give my child that same sense of spiritual union that I had grown up with, that sense of being beloved by something much larger than yourself, or even your family. I tried to go back to my readings, reminded myself that TEG always said that we would raise our children in both of our faiths (he was raised a Hindu, but attended Catholic school all of his life). But he’s not the slightest bit religious—he just wants to make sure that she understands the cultural importance of the Hindu rituals.

I want so much more than that for her, but whenever I reach out, it is like grabbing through mist. I am empty. And I’ve been that way for a long time, even through the fear of her NICU stay, and the strains in my marriage. I still pray, but without that feeling of union that I remember from those times with my mother.

Now, finally, I am feeling some faint religious stirrings again. But they are not leading me back to Catholicism, but rather towards Buddhism and Hinduism. How will I reconcile these longings with my desire to immerse my daughter in her Latin culture—and in her grandparents’ tradition? How will I create a place for faith and practice in our lives without TEG’s participation? How will I learn enough to feel like I can teach her these faiths without feeling like a dilettante?

I’m not sure. But I’m open to all suggestions. Even divine ones.