Fold

And some time in the middle of praying and candlelighting the bitterness that was always there is lifted, the division I always felt is healed. I look around. These are all mine. All of this has a claim on me. I do not resist it. These people are as much mine as anyone else. There is no sentiment here, but a wonderful discovery. Like it or not, and i often don't. I am a Catholic. I was the first of my friends to loudly and decisively leave the church. Most of them ho hum about it, thinking about not going, not knowing how they feel. The truth is that Catholicism, or, for that matter, Anglicanism, anything ism has little to do with isms and everything to do with the people around you. Are you tied to them, or not. It is hard for any two people to get along. Three's a great challenge. Anything more than five and you've got a mess on your hands. But churches are hundreds and thousans and millions depending upon how you define church, and they exist for not just a year, but centuries, millenia. To feel the tie of two thousand years, to love the people around you despite everything, is to enter into the true mystery and lose all anger.

Fold

Something happened in those three days, the Triduum. Something happened amidst the candles ,the incense, the ritual. Not just the rituals in the Catholic Church, but in my Anglican one, and in my house, on my own. Something happened this Lent.

I became a Catholic again.

I thought that my issues with the church were only about a couple of years old, but I realize I have been bitter my whole life, and now, suddenly, the bitterness is lifted and these people are my people. That is really what religion is about. And so, with a great deal of trepidation, I admit to being Catholic again.

This does not mean that I will

1. become a Conservative
2. attend the Catholic parish anymore than I did in the past

or

3. pretend that the church isn't just as mysoginistic, homophobic and behind the times in its doctrines as it always was.

What it does mean is that:

1. religion is more than what's on the page of the cathechism and
2. Faith is not cerebral or logical.

What it does mean is that

I am not bitter.

Sacred

The tub is cleaned. I am about to make the bath with the salts and milk, with herbs and
incense. This is a bath of purification.

Today we don’t eat. Eatings not always necessary. The normal way isn’t always
necessary. Sometimes it muddles the mind. It is the Eve of Purim, it is Maundy Thursday.
It is the beginning of the Full Moon. Which am I celebrating? I don’t know. Silence.
Silence and peace. This is not a fast. Yom Kippur. Eat nothing, drink nothing. That is
fasting. Today we drink tea, water, juices. It is a day of purification. Cleanse my will, my
mind, my heart, my flesh. Prepare me. What am I here for? I don’t always know as I pour
the water. Maybe it doesn’t matter that I know. Maybe it only matters that I am here.

Feet

I did see you Sunday, in the palm procession. you looked like a mouse, or a rabbit, with those huge eyes and that sort of woebegone expression. You look like a Charles Dickens character. I always want to give you a bowl of soup or something. I didn't speak to you or touch you. I chose to ignore you. I had forgotten the one reason we are in this world is to love. We ought to show love at every opportunity. Every moment we have. Me, I thought, nothing has ever come of me showing love in this place. Everytime I put my hand out, my wrist is slapped.

The choir is singing before all of us as we go into the church. My God, it is too cold out here. It's snowing. Too cold for this.

And I am thinking, "Why should I do anything? Why should I even acknowledge him?" He looks as if he needs it, but if I don't do something, someone will. My God, my God, when will I learn. It isn't my responsibility to make everyone happy. This once... I will not do anything. Nothing I've ever done, especially for you, has ever lead anywhere.

Today I read in Sharon Cameron's book:

"Observe the impatience of your mind. Your mind wants to get ahead of where it is. Let me put it to you (plainly)... there is no destination to speak of.." Sister Dassaniya... said, "If you keep your attention on your feet, you can't be conceited."

Reading Left 2

By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what other erase when I speak.
(Anzaldua 169)


There was Joyce and then Nicole and then others. My life couldn't be protected for very long. Friends never seem to let me be protected from anything. Everyone always wants to come out to me, and so there it is, for me to deal with, and how I feel and how the Church feels. The Church has already told me what is right and what is wrong. All of the Christendom that I grew up with told me. The Bible says so, we've been told. I know right from wrong. If my mind knows then why doesn't my heart care? When Nicole and Jennifer are in a fight, why do I want the fight to resolve? Why do I think what they have is wholesome? Why do I want them to have a happy ending. I need to know there is another way. I don't want it for myself, but I want to know that it exists, that it is valid, that the walls that were set around us are put up by men and not by God. The world I was brought up in was full of a goodness tinged with bigotry. Good girls like good boys. But the world I live in is becoming one where good girls like good girls and I like being left alone and seeing my friends happy. I read a book, to read if there is another world, a truer one, a place with more options.

He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big... I laughed and grabbed his head... But this time when I touched him something happened in him, and in me which made this touch different form any touch either of us had ever known... Joey raised his head, and we kissed.
(Baldwin, 14)


To be straight and especially religious and straight, to read Giovanni's Room is to leave behind one sort of innocence and enter another. The moment I consent to read past chapter one, without reservations, without headshakes, without drawing a line between myself and the sexuality of the character is the moment I at least in part consent to be gay for the duration of the book, to hear a voice not heard before. Here I am in the course of two days, reading the most passionate love story I've ever read.
And then, in the end, Giovanni is dead. Giovanni is Baldwin's first overtly gay character but not the last. Whatever innovation the Black and bisexual Baldwin might have flouted, the one he never flouts is that having engaged in the heady world of homosexuality, someone must pay, someone must die. There must be a tragedy.
I look in on the window of the party.
Jennifer and Nicole are still fighting.
I need another way.

Why do I need another way, Dean?
Until you are free, I am not free. Don't you see that?