Veiling at Mass

It is a little bit of a hard thing for me to veil at Mass because not only am I not a confirmed Catholic, but I'm one of very very few women who do veil.  I don't want to come across as uppity among so many faithful Catholic women who do not veil.  Sometimes, I wonder if I ought to just blend in and not stand out so, but I cannot bring myself to not veil.

As it stands, however, I have not received any negative feedback or looks or sideways glances.  It seems people appreciate the sight of the veil in Mass, even if they themselves don't feel like they could do it.  What really strikes me are the young children.  They peep over the backs of pews at me.  Little boys stare for a moment, almost emotionless in their wondering.  Little girls stare longer, with bright eyes and shy smiles.  I wonder if these kiddos think I'm a nun!  I love that they look because then I can smile at them, even wave a little if it isn't a crucial time during Mass for strict reverence.

Another reaction I have gotten to my face and behind my back are how beautiful I look.  This pricks my conscience because I do not want to be vain over veiling.  It's humbling to veil, but if I've learned anything about Catholicism, it is that beauty is valued.  Not vanity, mind you, but beauty, and veiling is beautiful.  I'm not a particularly beautiful woman.  I'll never grace a magazine cover, but veiling is beautiful.  It also reveals just how starved modern people are for beauty.  Especially for beauty that is in the context of holiness, reverence, modesty, and all that is proper and well-ordered.

I veil because I feel compelled to.  It humbles me.  It is a little scary.  I hope it is a positive witness.  I hope I can one day receive the Eucharist veiled, cleansed, forgiven, redeemed, on my knees, on my tongue, with full thanksgiving.  I hope those little girls who shyly stare and smile choose to veil.  I hope my mere presence veiled perhaps helps another woman who wants to veil, but is afraid to go against the tide, start veiling.

The Fulfillment of Catholic Prayers

I'm not sure I could classify myself as someone who struggled with praying.  I could pray and would pray often.  Simple prayers, regular prayers, heartfelt prayers, urgent prayers, contemplative prayers, thankful prayers, but mostly requesting prayers.  In the AG church, prayer was not only taught, but frequented, expected, lengthy, and very emotional and inclusive.  One would lead the prayer, usually in a highly-charged way, while the congregation "agreed in prayer" through repetitive "yes, Lord Jesus," and other such proclamations.  Praying in tongues was very common.  Silent prayer was ordered, as well, but never really silent, as you could hear the whispers, murmurs, and tongues of those around you.  Sometimes, (though preferably often) someone would come out in loud tongues, followed by an interpretation.  This would indicate that the Holy Spirit has come and has a word for us from God.  That meant we were holy enough, faithful enough, prayerful enough, worthy enough, and "doing it right" to merit His words (which were typically a general admonishment of some sort that we weren't "doing it right."  Also note that the AG church would NEVER admit this enoughness theology because we are saved by grace, not by works and nothing we do merits God's grace.  Only Jesus....and yet, they believe very strongly about merits.)

Despite all this prayerfulness, I always felt like a hit a prayer road block.  My prayers were simple, which were fine, but not ordered or....I can't explain it.  They just weren't as deep...something was missing.

I was urged (read: pressured greatly) to "be baptized in the Holy Spirit" and receive the gift of tongues.  It finally came around 3 in the morning after praying and pacing for the reception of it.  I rejoiced, thinking I found a great way to pray when I ran out of English words or ideas.  I bragged a little, but I found myself questioning it:

I just repeated the same sounds over and over again.  When I asked about it I was told that, like babies learning to speak, they speak simply.  Over time it would change to the language of tongues.  That didn't make sense to me.  I'm an adult and the Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of granting me full tongues capacity because, after all, it is the Holy Spirit through me, not myself, speaking.

I didn't know what I was saying.  That troubled me the most.  The Bible says that when tongues were spoken for the public, there had to be interpretation.  But, here in private I had no understanding or interpretation.  What was I saying? What did it mean?  How was this edifying for me?  I honestly expected that I would at least have an idea of what I was saying if not a word-for-word translation.

And how were these sounds a language?  There wasn't a spoken rhythm, cadence, or phonetic variance to it.  It was just a fast-rattled litany of the same sounds over and over again with no sentence breaks or pauses.  What was I doing?!  And how was this chaos of the Holy Spirit?!

Oh, there's always the convenient excuse from the same people who praised, "you're doing it!" of "you probably didn't really receive the Holy Spirit, then."

It wasn't until I heard from a leading Catholic priest exorcist and a couple other Catholic sources that one of the most prominent demographics of people needing exorcism are tongues-speaking Pentecostals.  It's a practice, so full of pressure, determination, and emotion that enforces "opening up to receive" that some receive demonic spirits!

I stopped.

It was evidence enough for me, that because I didn't know what I was saying, I thus didn't know who was saying it or what I was opening myself up to.  I certainly never ever felt better, at peace, or holier, or closer to God for speaking in tongues.  I just belonged to the "tongues speaking club."

At this time I was in the Baptist church where prayer isn't very prominent at all.  It is more of a formality, rushed, simple, with little reverence.  My prayer life dwindled unless troubles arose.  I didn't like that.  But, what and how to pray!  I was stuck in a rut, a dead end.

Then....Catholicism with prayer books, novenas, rosaries, Saints, etc.  It was like I was stuck with a lame chick tract and suddenly an entire library was opened up to me!  I proceeded with trepidation because, after all, Catholic prayers are pagan and displease God.  But, how!?  They were full of humbleness, intelligence, deep psychology, and most of all, Jesus Christ!  I found prayers that Saints prayed that so perfectly described those deep feelings within me that I couldn't find ways to express!  I found prayers for certain circumstances that didn't just lead me to complaining and wanting God to fix it, but that humbled me and led me to righteousness and service.  Plus, I didn't feel alone.  I suddenly found myself joined by millions of Catholics around the world, and all the Saints in Heaven!!

The Abuse of the Mind

Growing up I was taught to obey.  The limits of thinking for myself were within the context of obeying my immediate authorities.  Therefore, I learned to "think for myself" and anticipate what obedience might be required of me before asked and thus earning peace and possibly praise from achieving it.  My obedience was blind, too.  I trusted my authorities, so when they said, "because it's in the Bible," or "Because you shouldn't do that," I didn't question it.  It was comfortable for me to know what was expected of me and to do it.  My parameters were narrow and I had just enough choice within it be content.  Not happy, not fulfilled, not successful, but content.

Public school only reinforced this model.  I was the perfect student and teachers were thrilled to have me in their classrooms.  I was easy to teach, well-behaved, earned good grades, and made them look good.  My good grades and praise from the teachers led me to believe that I was of high intelligence.  The fact that I was so different from my peers by being the goody two-shoes led me to believe that I thought for myself.  Little did I know that all I was good at doing was being obedient.  I could parrot and regurgitate information.

I graduated high school 8th in my class, but with only a couple of low-fund scholarships in my pocket.  I blamed Affirmative Action when really it was the limitations of my upbringing and thought.  I brought nothing to the tables of academia but obedience.  My plan was to attend a university in Canada, staying in the strict Catholic all-girls dorm, and studying my brains out to learn and teach a foreign language.  Instead, I obeyed.  And by obey, I mean I caused my authorities no trouble at all by virtually disappearing into obedient oblivion.

This is abuse #1:  Obedience is better than thinking for yourself.  What good is thinking if you might think wrongly and end up angering God?

There were two major occurrences in my late teen years that were very profound for me, but that I did not take well.  The first was meeting my Scottish penpal and his family in Scotland.  It was very apparent very quickly that his education in Scotland was far superior to mine here in America.  He and his family were very intelligent, though in their Scottish social class, they were among peers.  I felt like a terribly unsocialized fool.  I'm sure they wondered about this lout of a lass from America.  The best I could do for myself at the time was tell myself that being intelligent and well-bred like them was useless if they didn't know Jesus like I did.  They were intelligent and well-bred, yes, but they were agnostics.

This brings about abuse #2:  Intelligence and excellent social skills do not go hand-in-hand with serving God.  Studying a variety of subjects and being among a variety of people in the world will only likely lead you astray.

The second major occurrence was in my first and only year in college.  I was excited to take English.  It was my best and favorite subject in school and I was sure to be top of the class and impress my English professor.  Instead, I barely passed.  He issued us passages of reading excellence that I simply couldn't wrap my head around.  He asked us to THINK and convey our thoughts.  I struggled.  I could not see the allegorical, the abstract, and I had virtually no experiences with which to understand what I was reading.  All I did was stick to my strict, evangelical, narrow upbringing and refused to even listen to anything outside of that parameter.  It was sin!  I couldn't!

While the professor appreciated my convictions and was sympathetic to my prison of mind, he didn't mince words.  "You write bull-sh**," he told me.  "There is nothing of your own thought or substance in your essays."  "This is how I was taught to write," I stammered my explanation.  "This is what got me A's in high school."  "This is not how you get A's in college," he said.

He tried, God bless him, he did.  Like other widely intelligent people I have met, he saw that I do have brains behind my prison bars and attempted to set me free.  He had me sign up for Psychology 102.  He was sure I could read up on 101 on my own while sitting in 102.  I left after the first day for two reasons:  1.  College psychology is tremendously secular and I couldn't stomach it.  I could not separate my belief system from other intelligences, hypotheses, and thoughts.  2.  By this time I was very sick and so deeply depressed that I slept up to 18 hours a day.  There was no time to catch up.  I barely made it though the academic year and never went back to school.

Abuse #3:  Studying, examining, exploring, or even thinking about other philosophies and such is wrong and will lead you astray.  The AG is right and nothing else matters.

Abuse #3 was reinforced when I met my husband and he explained how he (who grew up in the AG church as well) bucked the system and decided to think and study for himself.  While he ultimately decided at the time that the Christian God is the one true God, he didn't really identify himself as a Christian and certainly didn't attend church or read the Bible.

So, I in my dumbness, thought myself to be the superior.  I had the mind.  I had the answers.  I had many verses memorized.  I had my spirituality and moral character.

Abuse #4:  To show that you are truly superior you must stress about everybody else's moral inferiority.  Living in "righteous anxiety" will show God that you are serious about fixing everyone else and not letting sin win.

The problem was I didn't have the answers and I had a TON of anxiety.  Now that I was married and outside of the bubble in which I grew up I had to face big, real-world problems that I could not answer or fix.  My foundation started crumbling.  The worst was I couldn't fix anyone and in the meantime I was breaking, myself!

I'm ahead of myself just by a bit.  Before I met my husband I went through a religious spiraling where I thought my only answer was going backwards.  My AG peers had entered worldly life where their Christian upbringing was barely distinguishable anymore.  There, they succeeded.  Why?  Why were they moving forward and I nowhere?

Abuse #5:  Success (read: functioning well) in the world is failure in Christ.

Little did I know then that my backwards studying was going to eventually lead me back to Catholicism.  At the time I thought perhaps my answer was a more old-fashioned, community-oriented, isolated and insulated religious culture of Anabaptist origin.  Even so, I struggled.  It created more problems that answers for me.  And most of all, there was no peace.  Now, I was in the depths of despair.  I was so very lost.  I pretty much did nothing out of fear of doing something that might end up as outside of God's will.  This was Abuse #6.

Meeting my husband was the serotonin boost I needed to zap myself enough out of my zombie-like depression to seem like I was functioning.  Here is where my morals, beliefs, and obedience were challenged.  I displayed myself as the moral superior while acting the moral inferior.  I was lost.  So very lost, but I played a good part.

Abuse #7:  Mindless obedience is better than coming to the conclusion of morality yourself, because once you question it and search it out, once you want to know the reason you open the door to abandoning it all together.

I had questions during this period, but my authorities did not answer with anything of intelligence and thought, but rather regurgitated the, "well, it's wrong and you just don't do that," and "the Bible says _____" statements that slammed any discussion shut before it even begins.

So, now I was married, struggling in my faith, struggling in my depression, struggling in my belief systems, struggling so very much.  While I abandoned Anabaptism, I discovered fundamentalism.  Now, if only I could arrange my life into a perfect picture of religious fundamentalism I would be in God's will and everything will be perfect.  All I wanted to be was perfectly obedient and then all would be well again, but I couldn't see past my own nose.

Abuse #8:  As AGers, our way is the only way.  I'm right, everyone else is wrong, and if they only just conform to whatever narrow model I created all would be well.  I had a pretty picture of what God's will was in my head and it was agonizing to try to make it happen.  It never happened.

Hubby and I had many friends from all walks of life.  I kept to myself, mostly.  They were too worldly and everything they did smacked of sinfulness, whether it was drinking or enjoying a cigar around a campfire or worse, philosophizing!  I couldn't relate.  I couldn't sympathize.  I couldn't contribute.  All I could do was play the protestant princess when everyone could plainly see Cinderella's rags and hypocrisy.  I honestly couldn't handle the world with any sort of strength of self.  All I could do was be anxious about it and drive everyone, including myself, nuts.  I was unhappy and lost.  My only sense of peace was a false one and that was pretending I was that perfect protestant princess in the pews.

Abuse #9:  Haughtiness is next to Godliness

Abuse #10:  Isolation is our insulation and through our isolation we are inspiration

Continuing on into my adulthood and married life NOTHING was going as I thought it ought to.  All the promises of perfection from obedience weren't coming to pass.  I gave up the world.  I gave up education.  I gave up friends.  Why was I suffering so!?

Abuse #11:  Never enough.  Never enough obedience, faith, prayer, tithing, discovering of secret sins, ministry, submission.....I wasn't receiving blessings and answers and my established ideal of God's will and perfection because I wasn't doing enough of something.

Abuse #12:  My authorities would continue to repeat the same "answers," the same "truth" over and over again.  It's a total mind-trick to try to discuss something with a Stepford robot and just get repetition.  But I questioned whether they repeated because truth is truth and there is nothing else to say or because that's all they would allow themselves to know.

Abuse #13:  Control.  Disallowing those under your authority to think for themselves and not letting them become free-thinking adults is a great neglect.

Abuse #14:  Self-perpetuating lies, despite evidence to the contrary that would hold up in the courts of law and academia, often repeated and referenced back on themselves is truth.  Any deviation is outside thinking and outside thinking is sin because it doesn't fit the worldview of the AG church, which is, after all, the truest church since Acts.

The final nail in the coffin happened recently in 3 different circumstances.  One was abuses 12 and 14 when I was trying to have a discussion about my recent studies with one of my authorities.  Another was passive-aggressive "suggestions" towards the "only" way of thinking to counter my studies outside of the AG faith.  The third was a dream I had that I needed interpretation for.  I had the dream interpreted by the AG and by a Catholic theologian and psychologist with a doctorate.  The latter walked me through the dream using psychology that is well known across the board to help people unravel their dreams in healthy, realistic ways.  It was remarkable how much my dream made sense.  The AG interpretation made no sense to me, was based on assumptions, made no attempt to ask me questions or allow me my own thoughts on the matter, and forced me into a box that was not mine to be in.  It was WAY off base.  I've had dreams interpreted by the AG before and their interpretation lead to great spiritual and marital damage.  Why?  Because the assumption falls under Abuse #11.  It is my lack of faith and my husband's apparent secret sin that this dream was apparently explaining.  As a matter of fact it had NOTHING to do with anything that was interpreted by the AG.

Through these occurrences I realized that this was grounds for divorcing myself from this faith completely.  It has damaged and if I stay in it will continue to damage my mental, emotional, and spiritual self.  My authorities don't understand why I don't just come back.  They can't see or understand the mind-mess that they have done to me!  All in good intention, I grant them that, but wrong nonetheless!  And the more I study Catholic theology, history, and philosophy, the more I see the damage done and the peace and freedom to be had!

I cannot go back.  I'm not even sure I can go back to Protestantism in any form.

I feel like I need to apologize to so many people.  I feel like I should have a do-over in life.  I am disallowing myself from feeling utterly angry about this because it would do no good, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't angry in some way.  I'm keeping it to an appropriate dull roar and won't allow it to become resentment.  I can't let that eat away at whatever is left of me to build upon. It happened.  I learned, and I grew in ways I could have only grown by going through this.  It isn't as tragic is greater abuses people have endured, but it did totally mess up my life, my spirituality, and my psyche.

Even now, I think, "I am finally me," but in the back of my head is the abuse of the mind saying, "you're allowing Satan to lie to you in your self-centeredness and disregarding of the truth the AG church teaches.  Go back.  Go back and be safe."  But, when I think of actually going back I become agitated, anxious, angry, and disgusted.  I react not only mentally but physically and spiritually.  It sickens me!

Where Christ is There is Mary

From conception to the cross, Mary is there.

It was the Nativity, Madonna and Child that it dawned on me.  When the shepherds and the wise men bowed before their King of Kings Mary wasn't in the other room.  She wasn't on the barn flood next to the wise men bowed.  She was holding Jesus.  She was nursing Jesus.  She was caring for Him in ways only she could.  This set Mary apart.  She wasn't just another person same as the other adorers.  

When I watch The Journey Home on EWTN, one of the most common questions asked of converts is, "how did you overcome your objection to Mary?"  Everyone has their own answers.  This is my contemplation:

As soon as we were torn out of Catholicism and entered the very anti-Catholic Assembly of God Church when I was 4 years old, Mary disappeared.  She only emerged when she was dusted off for her quiet place in the Nativity at Christmas, and sometimes made a cameo for Mother's Day where she was held as an example of being obedient to God's will (with her possible age at conception of Christ thrown in as shock value).  Any hint or indication of veneration was squelched and often more greatly followed by anti-Catholic rantings about how Mary is just a humble, normal, "one of us" and Catholics are pagan goddess worshippers for even considering her as something more.

Once I started studying and contemplating Catholicism, I, too was faced with the "what to do about Mary" question.

I soon learned that Catholics don't worship Mary and that worship of Mary is heresy.  Rather, they venerate her.  When I posed that to an AG debater, they said, "it amounts to the same thing!  God doesn't share His Glory with Mary.  Mary was just one of us and never would have expected or wanted to be worshipped that way."

The Catholic Church maintains that Mary is venerated as Mother of God and an integral part of Christ's life and ministry.  She is a humble origin, yet set apart.  King David, Moses, Rahab, Ruth, the disciples....humble origins, yet set apart in their own ways in service to God.

I still had trouble wrapping my head around Mary and Jesus, Jesus and Mary and all the cooperations. There was still this separation.  Just Jesus.  Just Jesus.

Then, I took a close look at the Nativity and realized where Jesus is, there is Mary.

At agreement and conception, there is only Mary.  The angel, Gabriel, venerates her.  "Hail, Mary, favored one," or as the Catholic pray, "Hail, Mary, full of grace." 

When the Christ Child is first recognized, Mary was still carrying Him.  Her cousin, Elizabeth and her own unborn John the Baptist knew the Christ Child, and Elizabeth venerated Mary.

When Christ was born, it was of Mary.  She wasn't a spectator, an outsider.  She was doing the work!

When the shepherds and wise men came, they bowed down before Christ.  Mary wasn't among them.  She was with Jesus caring for Him as only she could.

When Jesus was presented at the Temple, Mary was also addressed.  Her heart would be pierced, too.  She would suffer in alignment with her Son's suffering.

When Jesus was lost and then found at the temple teaching, it was Mary who spoke to Him.

When Jesus began His ministry (wedding at Cana), it was His mother who was the catalyst.  The servants obeyed her to obey Jesus.

Then, we come to the cross.  There is Mary, given as mother to John.

The Pieta.  Mary holds her Son.

Mary is not Christ.  She is not equal to Christ.  She is not to be worshipped as we worship Christ.  She has no power, glorification, or authority of her own merits except that which may be given by God.  She is human.  But, she is in cooperation with Christ and God established her.  God made her, prepared her, impregnated her through the Holy Spirit, Christ was created in his human form in her.  He was cared for by her.  She raised Him.  She knew Him for who He was.

Mary, herself acknowledges that she is a humble servant in her Song.  Then, she goes on to say, "For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed."  It doesn't say, "for behold, from now on all generations will forget about me except as a figure-head for Christmas."

We humans put more stock in favorite politicians, celebrities, sports stars, even our pets!  And yet Mary is placed in obscurity, feared even to be considered, spoken of, or thought of in case we accidentally "worship" her like "those pagan Catholics" do.  I cannot be a part of that nonsense anymore.  There is more to Mary.  So much more.

Loving October

When I was a child and we were torn from the Catholic Church and put into the Assembly of God Church, Halloween was removed from our celebrated holidays as it was "the devil's day."  No more cute costumes.  No more trick or treating.  No more candy stashes to horde or share with friends.  No more parade at school or party.  In fact, we were kept home from school.  No substitute was offered. We just sat quietly all day, since our father worked third shift and was asleep.

If that wasn't bad enough, there was an even greater issue that I only just recognized this year!

Recently, I was driving through the valley enjoying the sunshine making the colored leaves glow and blaze.  How beautiful October is!  I love October.  I love how it looks, how it feels, and I love the sense of spiritual deepening.  But, this is the first year I recall truly enjoying it and allowing myself to feel this way.  So, I dug deeper and realized something horrible.

It wasn't just that we couldn't celebrate Halloween in my youth.  It was this permeating atmosphere and attitude of HATING October.  For the entire month, I felt that I had to live in "holy anxiety" over the coming Halloween.  I felt that if I didn't live in stress and angst over every one else celebrating "the devil's day," I would not be pleasing God.  It wasn't good enough to just ignore the holiday.  I had to hate it.

October seemed grim.  The leaves and baring trees were just part of the macabre of the holiday.  I remember riding in the car and looking out the window, averting my eyes from the decorations and feeling utterly stressed to near exhaustion over the evil of it all as if my anxiety would get God to change the hearts of millions of Americans.

Then, Halloween came, and we would sit in the darkness of our home, listening to the increase in traffic and hoping no one tried to knock on our door.  We couldn't watch TV.  There were Halloween shows on.

I didn't feel quite at ease come November 1st, because this was "that Catholic Pagan holiday" and all the kids came to school with evidence of their candy stash and spray-dye still staining their hair.  Plus, I was exhausted from 31 days of stress, and I missed the beauty of October.  Now, November stood, bare, damp, dark, and grim.

But, this year is different!  I'm loving every bit of October!  No anxiety over silly decorations.  I'm not trying to placate God with my "holy anxiety."  I'm not fretting and wringing my hands.  I'm just enjoying.

My Home is My Convent

It must be so that many women come to a point in their lives where the vocation of cloistered religious actually seems an appealing alternative to the hustle and bustle of the layity, especially the married with children.  I have certainly fantasized about a religious life behind walls with women of the same mission, the same vision, the same purpose, the same personalities....

Wait, what?

That's the fantasy.

Reality is nuns are not carbon copies of holy perfection living in perfect harmony.

I watched a few documentaries on religious sisters/nuns and one thing that stood out to me was their joyful obedience to loving and serving each other despite personality difference, faults, misunderstandings, and even envy and hatred.  They are human, too, after all.  The vowed faithful are no less likely to be plagued with the ways of the this world than anyone else.

I brushed it off, though.  After all, they took vows.  They entered seriously.  They HAVE to or else it is spitting upon their own selves.  If I took such vows, if I lived behind walls in a close-knit community, I'd be better able to live like that.

Then, it dawned upon me.  I did take vows.  I do live behind walls in a close-knit community, and one that I created!!  My vows were my marriage vows.  My community is my family.  My cloister is my very home.

My home is my convent.  My marriage is my vocation.  My wedding vows are my vows.  My husband is my Priest.  I am Mother Superior.  My children are my postulants.  My home is indeed my convent where I am to live out my religious life.

I can and must be kind, loving, and serving; I must be ordered, religious, prayerful, faithful, disciplined despite differences of personalities, willingness to serve, skills, abilities, walks in life, faithfulness, etc.

It gives me an entirely new perspective on my home and vocation within it.

Going with a Different Perspective and Purpose

Saturday evening, my husband asked if I wanted to go to Mass and then just have a day at home since our usual schedule was cancelled for that weekend.  I said that I would like to go to Mass (I had not been in months).

Over the course of the evening, I thought about it.  I was a bit apprehensive to go because of my last experience at Mass.  I had felt a great emptiness and like I was a phony, just there to glean something from the aesthetics and pretend I had something I didn't, was something I wasn't.  After soul-searching and going through some things, including profound dreams, I came to understand that it is OK to be myself.  To love what I love.  To worship how I prefer to worship.  To dress how I prefer to dress.  None of it is outside the bounds of Christendom.  I have a conscience.  I feel my convictions strongly.

It is not a sin to attend, participate in, and enjoy Mass.

That hurdle overtaken, I moved on to the next issue, my appearance.  I felt very strongly that I should wear a mantilla.  I know that if I were a confirmed, practicing Catholic that I would most definitely veil at Mass.  I have always felt strongly about it.  But, it was bad enough I dress to Vatican standards for Mass and I'm not Catholic.  Should I "upstage" the Catholics and wear a full-on veil, too?

It wasn't until I realized just how humbling it is to go against the flow, AND to realize that for the most part other people aren't so easily scandalized or worrisome over such things.  Besides, if people can shop Walmart in their pajamas, I can wear a veil to Mass.  Just like with everyone else, it is between me and God.  I got to Mass and I didn't notice if anyone stared at me, and I didn't dart my eyes around judging everyone else.  I was there, God and me.  That was enough.

Oh, and what a gift Mass was!  They had an organist and a canter who had a clear, heavenly soprano.  She placed herself in the organ loft, which I far prefer to them being up front because I can just listen and not be distracted by any "performance" intended or unintended.  The hymns were classic pieces that really mean something deep and profound.  I was in heaven (pun intended).

The homily was special, too, and gave me a better understanding of Our Lady and her role.  My mother argues that Mary would NEVER agree to the veneration Catholics give her.  No, indeed.  She knows her place as a human just like the rest of us.  But, she also knows her place as given to her by God.  The veneration we humans offer her is not because she demands it, but rather it is a gift.  When Mary said she'd be called blessed, she wasn't exalting herself, but recognizing basic Truth and humbly accepting the gift!

The father of the prodigal son venerated his wayward and returned son, not because the son deserved it, but as a gift, a blessing, a joy, a praise.

I originally intended to leave at communion.  It is incredibly humbling to feel that I ought to dress according to Vatican Standards, and veil, and be the only one to do so, and not be Catholic, and not be able to go up for the Eucharist. I felt it would be better to just slip out.  But, then the organist started playing Ave Maria.  The canter sang it beautifully with such feeling and worship, I just knelt and cried.

Oh, crying.  I hate crying in front of others.  I went to a church where emotions were drummed out of us and I would leave drained and sick from the roller coaster.  But, this was different.  It was humbling to cry, but I felt so filled, and it was so beautiful to let the tears fall.  I didn't feel drained and worn out.  I didn't feel it was forced out of me.  It was just so natural and I was able to let me go and let worship happen.

After Mass, I walked out into the cool, October air as the bells of the other Catholic Church on the hill rang out over the city, over the valley.  I just sat in my vehicle and listened to them.

This.

This was church.

This is how I've dreamed church to be.  This is how I love to worship, and yet I allow people and theologies and opinions and modernism to take that away from me.  I allow them to tell me I am wrong to feel this way, think this way, believe this way, need this way.

I want to be Catholic.

Did you ever read a book or watch a movie or TV show that inspired you to be a better person?  That just made sense to you and filled you?  You walked away from it glowing, filled, inspired, with a vision.  That's how Catholicism makes me feel.

And yet, I am told it is wrong, displeases God, and I need to submit myself to a church that leaves me barren because it is "more right" than other churches based on the general theology of those who claim to know better than me.

Yes, there are Catholic beliefs that I am unsure of.  There are beliefs that seem very odd to me and that I question.  I've tried.  I've tried to go back to my evangelical roots, yet I am in agony when I submit to them.  However, I feel tremendous peace when I submit to my Catholic roots.

But, how?  How can I become Catholic?  It would cause such a scandal in my family.  Am I willing to lose my soul, though, my personhood to please others?  I've already done so for almost 40 years!  I am profoundly unhappy in my current state.

For once in my life my unhappiness is outweighing my fear.

I need courage.  I don't need to pretend, anymore.