Saturday, April 16, 2011

To some, the following will probably seem as though i have unzipped my skin and revealed a glowing, totally alien, interplanetary self: I don't feel Catholic. Sorry, I never really have, with the exception of those times when I'm on "Catholic Autopilot;" I can recite the Niocene Creed when called upon, and perform other minor miracles under similar conditions, but I have never felt any particular compulsion to eat fish on Friday, or do any of the other things righteous Catholics are called upon to do. So Who is my God, then? Lemme put it this way; He's a more wrathful, Old Testament sort. He falls more in line with my own temperament, and, I suppose explains more within me. Saturdays are not about another day to work with me, they're a day to rest, and think. Bottom line? I feel more Jewish than anything else. I had relatives, as I have now found out, people I would have called aunts and uncles, who died at Auschwitz and Minsk because they held to their convictions, and were Jewish even when Adolf Hitler didn't think anyone should have been. That's where my soul is at. But of course, after a lifetime of Catholicism, this is not going to be some overnight change, it can't possibly be. I don't even know if I ever could convert, even if I wanted to. It reconciles things a little bit to think that Christ was referred to as "The King of the Jews," and was Jewish long before the mere idea of Christianity came along. It does little to explain a string of  Baptist belles who have been the loves of my life, which is, perhaps, another puzzling part of this whole "Who's my God?" question, but that's neither here nor there at the moment. And I'm not certain what the Catholic stance is on at least one, ahem, particularly male rite, but there it is, staring back at me in the shower every morning. I've never had any particular fondness for ham.....bacon, that's another story, barbecued ribs, same thing. But I actually have successfully picked bacon off a sandwich before biting into it, as I have vowed to do for lent this year, so I guess I could adapt, as an homage to those relatives of mine who did hold to their convictions, when the world around them told them not to. That takes real guts to me. I don't know what anoyone's going to think of even the particular revelation I have made here, insofar as I have made it thus far. I sure as hell don't know what's going to happen if I take things any further in an effort to reconnect with my real self, insofar as I have spoken it here. Baby steps. That's all I can think at the moment, and.....well, I guess we'll just see how things go. No disrespect intended to anyone, in terms of the way in which I have lived my life thus far, but something in all this feels like it was very much meant to be.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is so weird. Yesterday, a friend of mine actually commented that she'd seen you on my FB wall and she thought you were Jewish. I was teasing with her about you having a soft spot for Baptist womenfolk. It's weird to be reading this post written just a few hours later! :)