Seining

I just read a story online emanating from Huffington Post regarding television star Leah Remini and her pain involved with leaving the church she had been part of since her time in the cradle, in her case the Church of Scientology.  She relayed that her mother was a follower and advocate of Scientology and her children were raised in the community of those beliefs.  Over time Remini has come to doubt what that church stands for.  Surely an energized debate can be raised over Scientology, but let’s save that one for another day. 

The power of the truth that Remini’s consciousness was honed in so may ways under the influence of a church her parents followed, takes me back to my own roots in Roman Catholicism.  My folks were ardent church goers and participants in all things Immaculate Conception parish for all the years of my youth.  My older yet still-teenage-then sister made parish history by chairing a booth at the summer festival staffed by youth.  Her stuffed animal venue had candy canes made out of carpet tubes fixed to the corners with an amazingly huge stuffed animal raffle instituted to raise even more money.  The kids had something to prove, and did very nicely, I don’t mind saying. 

I used to hang around the school building after hours, sometimes even before and after the year to see if I could help any of the teachers, mostly nuns, with chores.  I washed many a backboard and clapped dozens of erasers chalk free.  Shoot, I even walked some of my teachers ‘home’ across the play ground to the convent where they lived.  And in my own teen years, chaired along with a buddy an upstart Teen Club committee that matched young workers to parishioners needing various tasks completed.  I helped out in the CCD office for a few summers, too, along with another buddy I still call a good friend.  

Back in the day of the Latin mass, I studied prayers well enough to be put on the schedule as an acolyte.  I can’t do the ‘Orate Fratres’ from memory anymore, but I can still sing an Easter response refrain in English I learned in church choir sometime around freshman year.  ‘And very early in the morning, after the Sabbath /  They came to the sepulcher at sunrise / Alleluia.’  Very melodic.  And very grounded to what was learned as essential in life.  

As kids, we knew a handful of pets, lots of sibling rivalry, too many of Mrs. Wise’s cats howling in our bushes at night, seining for soft craws with Dad in the Stillwater river, and then fishing for hours at Englewood lake.  I thought my bicycle was my airborne vehicle to freedom on summer evenings.  I loved baseball but was pathetic at fielding.  Couldn’t hit, either.  I played some CYO football, according to my older brother, just to impress Dad.  I’ve thought about that for years.  Could be.  

But over and above anything we knew about life as kids, first and foremost — even considered before our parents — was Church.  Jesus.  His Father.  The Holy Spirit.  Truly, the three men I admired most.  Everything in life was considered in the aura of the Trinity.  God may have been Love, but she/he demanded accountability for all actions, whether spur-of-the-moment or contemplated.  Jesus may have been my brother, but he surely wasn’t going to put up with any of my shenanigans.  

And, I guess I’d have to say, such an upbringing and subsequent living a life has brought me to a place in consciousness that I am happy to occupy.  But in finding this place in the Universe that I comfortably inhabit, there are things I do and thoughts I accept that wouldn’t have been kosher back in the day.  I could tell you about the darkest, but it still makes me uncomfortable enough that I can only write about it in my journal, surely not a document that the whole world might get a look at.  Some of that stuff gets hidden in my poetry, as well. 

I would have to say I am an eclectic assemblage as various spiritual concepts learned over the course of my sixty-five years.  I think I prize hours sitting on my back porch either in meditation or idea-writing just about the most.  It’s birdsong and a chorus of suburban ambient sounds as my mind roams — or not — in that space.  Sometimes I push thoughts away in mindful meditation.  Other times I bolt for my poetry notebook and let the words form themselves for me and everybody else on the page.  

There are many days I feel I could depart from all churches and become one of the growing number of Americans who don’t consider themselves part of any organized religious organization.  I’ve heard of many others who feel as I do:  One main reason to attend is to be in the regular presence of other people who mean to do well in the world.  I’ve thought about this plenty and conclude that if I didn’t attend church, where would I find those people?  Yes, other organizations do good work as well, but they don’t have that same deeply rooted Home of the Truth sense learned as kids intuiting the search for safety and security.

Last night Cindy Lou and I talked about a member of our church who isn’t around anymore because she perceives our congregation too liberal.  Heaven only knows there are plenty of more conservative groups all over the congregational map.  All I know is, if my downtown church ever goes more conservative, I’m out of there for the opposite reason.  Then maybe Audubon will have to be enough.  

And maybe that’s the point of this writing:  Truth is, I am not settled in my Faith, whatever that is supposed to be.  I always liked the poster down at church that had an image of Jesus saying, ‘I never asked you to leave your brain at the door.’  And because of that, I realize my work trying to figure out the major Truths of living in our Universe is not going to come from one place.  

I am still seining, though now in other waters trying to find the nuggets of importance in whatever time I have left to search.  

Today’s elder idea:   The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. 

John Muir 

image:  I figure 1955 from our mother’s photo collection.  That’s Patty Jo in the Immaculate Conception uniform on the left with grade mate Michael John in the middle.  That’s trouble ready to happen on the right:  Tommy.   :-)