H
HerrZJA
Guest
No, wait, hear me out… I have a fondness for waxing poetical with topic titles.
Lately, I feel a bit like a salmon getting ready to spawn. All I want to do is get back up river, to where I was born, and fertilize some eggs. Well, mostly, to just get upriver. (Because further than that breaks my metaphor.) I find that, in swimming up this river, whenever I come to the topic of faith, I have encountered a waterfall.
No big deal! I’m a Sockeye Salmon, dang it all, and I swim up you wimpy little waterfalls I’m eating breakfast. Only this waterfall is harder than it looks, and once you’re in it, you can’t see the top. And then, there are bears on the rocks, trying to pull you out of it before you can get to the top of the hill and be Home.
The bears, of course, take many forms. Some of them are sins, and we all deal with that. Some of them are more involved. A general inability to maintain anything remotely resembling faith in anything more than short, quasi-fanatical bursts. A fear (no doubt due to extensive re-examinations) that I may or may not be making the right decision. Lethargy. Fear of the local pastor (well, not so much him as his opinion of me).
I’m not a Catholic, yet. Last year I spoke with Fr. Paul, the pastor of my parish, and he was giving me material to study in preparation for baptism on the easter that’s now passed… workbooks, mostly. Beyond having not spoken with him since either December or January, I’ve gone and lost the books, and now I’m terrified of having to ever admit it to him. Eventually I’ll have to, I suppose, or move to another parish, which sounds entirely unreasonable.
My question, though, has more to do with my other two problems. Can anyone give any advice on how to satiate my inner Thomas’s curiosity and grow in faith? I’m not expecting to be a saint… just to be brave enough to finally make a decision.
Lately, I feel a bit like a salmon getting ready to spawn. All I want to do is get back up river, to where I was born, and fertilize some eggs. Well, mostly, to just get upriver. (Because further than that breaks my metaphor.) I find that, in swimming up this river, whenever I come to the topic of faith, I have encountered a waterfall.
No big deal! I’m a Sockeye Salmon, dang it all, and I swim up you wimpy little waterfalls I’m eating breakfast. Only this waterfall is harder than it looks, and once you’re in it, you can’t see the top. And then, there are bears on the rocks, trying to pull you out of it before you can get to the top of the hill and be Home.
The bears, of course, take many forms. Some of them are sins, and we all deal with that. Some of them are more involved. A general inability to maintain anything remotely resembling faith in anything more than short, quasi-fanatical bursts. A fear (no doubt due to extensive re-examinations) that I may or may not be making the right decision. Lethargy. Fear of the local pastor (well, not so much him as his opinion of me).
I’m not a Catholic, yet. Last year I spoke with Fr. Paul, the pastor of my parish, and he was giving me material to study in preparation for baptism on the easter that’s now passed… workbooks, mostly. Beyond having not spoken with him since either December or January, I’ve gone and lost the books, and now I’m terrified of having to ever admit it to him. Eventually I’ll have to, I suppose, or move to another parish, which sounds entirely unreasonable.
My question, though, has more to do with my other two problems. Can anyone give any advice on how to satiate my inner Thomas’s curiosity and grow in faith? I’m not expecting to be a saint… just to be brave enough to finally make a decision.
