I was born and raised Catholic (Roman). For me the experience was tremendously Christian…very Christ like. How to accept everyone, find the best in them, and to always help a brother in need. For me, the relationship between myself and Christ was
entirely an awe at his ability to wonderful leadership.
However, in the years i was going to Catholic School and Church, i felt, and was taught an entirely different way of life, and it took many years of self battery to find out what was missing from my faith journey. In schools we were taught the big picture. From the Pope down, comunity, togetherness, and so on. The largest term used was “A Christ centered comunity” that eventually made me entirely blank at it’s meaning.
When I looked for help, i was rejected in many forms. Personally by priests, teachers, and a lot of laity. I felt shunned my whole life at the honestly i reached out for answers to. The church was correct, and i was to obey, and to do otherwise delivered many a noses and turned faces from me. I was asking about Christ, they refused to see my comparisons…i was seeking him IN the church and could not find him.
Yet at home, i prayed to him often, asked him questions, saught his cover and comfort…but the man i had come to know, was not taught about in the church and i was so very lonely in finding fellowship and guidence.
THIS is where the church failed me and many others. To be a child of Christ, one must KNOW him. NOT ONE taught us how to find and deliver ourselves the friendship and love of Christ personally. So when i was down, i would go for help and be rejected. So i felt the church and it’s people make me feel unworthy of their club. A club made from his teachings and people used it…like rape, taking what they wanted for personal ajendas and self gratification (and being a past victum of multiple rapes, i know this hollow feeling left behind)
It was the most empty feeling i ever felt being in church…and that was not of GOD, but of human interaction. This is where i went wrong. I was taught to respect my elders, and the elders including the church, and i expected the priest to be Christs representitive. I had not placed the interpretational wedge there. God was God, and the Church was an institution run by humans and therefor falable. There was a difference finally. I should never allow any formal person of the church to steal from me the hope at Jesus knowing exactly who i am, and my worthyness to him.
The gift of religion is delivered in teaching a child how to hope, and give him the tools to find his own salvation. Not to just follow, but seek to KNOW GOD, and Jesus’s soft words came to me many a time, always alowing me the proof i needed. Never once has this happened in church.
I know i am wierd, or the odd duck in my family, and group of friends, but i have such deep love for Jesus, and the strength he has given me through an enormous amount of beatings, rapes, delivery of a child of rape, and the enormous gift this child was to me for 19 years, and with terminal illness, and eventual death. The church did not give me the endurance and still come out hopeful in life…Jesus personally gave me this.
I asked , and i recieved…and just as i do not feel my son at his grave, i do not find Christ in his house. Oh…i KNOW he is there, but how can you see, hear or feel his presence amidst the talking, joke telling, kids with electronic toys, food in lunch bags brought to stiffle tempertantrums etc. And i am going deaf, and can not find peace there at all.
Yet i can sing to God, and find myself in a wirlpool of peace, and running to see Jesus in the garden…and i am a child then watching with adult eyes at her interaction with Christ. His beautiful eyes as i hold his face trying desperately to find the truth in his words when i do not believe i am worthy.
So yes, i am torn, but i do not punnish the Catholic church by blasfeeming it, i am what i am, and my reputation must be firm in not trying to prove to others my worthyness of this title.
Think of parenting, or motherhood. To do so is to teach and give them the tools to survive in the outside world. How to seek strength when all hope is lost. That is Religion, that is Faith, that is godly, and how we can seek dieing to self and accepting his plan. That has taken many years for me, and i am still a work in progress…but i am on my own, except a few friends who have been more Christ like than the institution has ever been to me.
Reverence is missing in church, and HE can not be found in all of the noise…
Lana
