a dog with a bone

before the big "quest" begins on on the 1st, i thought it would be helpful to put some of the background on the site....for those of you who read this and know me, it will come as no surprise - but for anyone who doesn't, it might help to get a sense of where i'm starting, so that where i end up will hopefully be easier to understand.

so, let's start with faith....as you can see from the picture, this is not something that obsess about in any way - or you could say i'm like a dog with a bone about it.....after finishing the blog last night, i went up into my room and pulled all 8 of these books out from under my bed (which is where i hide my books, mostly).  it took all of 5 minutes to realize that this is a subject i continually revisit in many forms - and these don't include the books that i have downloaded or loaned out (including the one that started it all about 12 years ago - the idiots guide to catholicism), or shoved in the attic (where my second stash of books resides).

if i'm going to do this, i'm going to try to be as honest about it as possible....so i guess i have to start with the whole non-catholic thing....which started for me when i had jake.  i was raised catholic - but as we like to call it, mostly as a cafeteria catholic - i received my sacraments but went to church on easter and christmas - and not at all once i hit college.  when jake was born (very shortly after college), i was not married (ahem) and honestly wasn't too concerned with having him baptized - or at least baptized catholic.  i had a family friend that was a lutheran minister and was just going to go that route because it was easier.  both my parents and kris' were not big fans of that decision and as we talked it over, we figured that the TRADITION of catholicism was important to our families and we would go see the priest at our local church.....at that time we were living in arlington, and our parish was devout and mostly hispanic - and the priest flat out refused to baptize jake due to my unmarried status and lack of weekly devotion....this of course caused the normal flood of outrage that i am capable of, and ended with a nasty scene along the lines of you are going to penalize my CHILD for my choices, blah blah blah....needless to say jake was not baptized at that time.

fast forward 5 years....i now have a 5 year old and a 3 year old attending lutheran preschool and am happy as a clam....they are getting their "jesus loves me" message and all is well....until kindergarten approaches....preface here with the english major status and somewhat snooty ivy league degree.....and i find out that our public schools are going thru a phase where they are teaching our kids to read BY SIGHT and MEMORIZATION - UGH!!  the lutheran school has 6 total kids per grade and the public school is not going to work for me....so i set out on yet another mission to find the "right" school for jake.  i go to every elementary and private school in the county and very reluctantly come to the conclusion that the best place academically for jake is at the local CATHOLIC school - at which point i personally feel like  God is mocking me (in my true overly dramatic fashion)

with this decision, i have to go to my local parish (where i was confirmed) and lay out my long drama filled story to our priest - whom i've never laid eyes on before ....awesome! to my complete surprise, i LOVED him - he was totally accepting of our situation (and believe me i was brutally honest about my reasons for both rejoining the parish and attending the school) - and embraced our family.....as a matter of fact we set the record for the most sacraments ever performed by him on one day, when he baptized the boys, took our confession, administered communion and then MARRIED us - fun filled day for all. 

at this point, i now feel like Father Matt has extended himself to me and i want to make sure that i can reinforce what my kids will be learning at school, as well as show some faith in his faith, if that makes sense.  so we begin to attend church regularly, and become a part of that community....it's at that time that i began to study catholicism .... WHY do we do the things we do?  WHY is it the "only" true religion?  WHY aren't women ordained? these questions go on and on....and so i bought " the idiots guide to catholicism" as a jump off point - i didn't want my answers to my kids to be "because thats just the way it is", when often the answers didn't make sense to me. in my own obsessive way, i needed more information so that i would feel like i was making the right choices, both for the boys and for me.  i will go into detail ad nauseum about catholicism at a later date - suffice it to say - i was gathering information and doing my best to embrace the religion, all the while completely irritated most sundays by my perceived negative message and constant anti-abortion monologue....now i know i happened to attend a church with a fire and brimstone deacon, so my experience here differs greatly from a great number of my catholic friends, but it was my experience - and as with most young kids, mine hated it...and it became a battle every sunday morning to get 3 young boys to mass....but we did it - for a long time.

fast forward to 6th grade.....for the most part, we have been regular church goers, and very involved in the catholic school.  its at this time, my education issues rear their ugly head, and after much angst and debate, we decide to leave our school and put the boys into public school.  to summarize, i have a VERY negative experience with the monsignor regarding curriculum and leave it there.  but now i have kids that are facing first holy communion and confirmation and have to start attending sunday school - which we have clearly never done....again long story short to which i am totally at fault -but we missed the first 2 weeks after summer break.  and again long story short, after fulfilling his 7 million hours and classes, jake missed 2 other classes and we were told he couldn't miss any more or he couldn't be confirmed....now i know I'm a pain in the ass, but i think its ridiculous that confirmation class is a 2 year deal - and i know we live in a selfish me me me society, but when faced with the question of do i want to be confirmed in my church, or continue to play travel baseball on the team i've been on since inception, my 13 year old definitely chose the latter - and who could blame him....at which point another very nasty scene took place with the lady running the program and the before mentioned deacon....and the rest is history - we have not darkened the door of the catholic church since.....

this does not mean i became a heathen overnight - and i will say that we have had some very entertaining and enlightening church experiences since - my kids favorite would have to be when we attended an easter service at another local church (where they served coffee and donuts, i might add - and people sang and talked and appeared to enjoy it - go figure) - and then i ran into the glass window that looked like a door on our way out - i would say that is definitely the boys favorite church.  but again, dog with a bone over here could not reconcile the die hard catholic with the more evangelical "do you accept jesus" approach....and that soon also fell by the wayside.

over the course of all of these years, i have had reason to explore a lot of different religions....none of which every felt like they truly "fit".....i had a friend convert to judaism (which was cool and educational), and became very good friends with a youth minister in another local church - and each instance i would wade in a bit, and then pull back when i hit the "barrier" of whatever it was that i disagreed with, or couldn't wrap my brain around.

to go back to my stupid cliches (which I'm sure will be a theme) - i always left whatever phase i was in thinking "why can't we all just get along".....why does someone have to be right? isn't everyone right??  isn't that what faith is?? believing in something that you can't prove?  well if you can't prove it, then you don't get to be "right"!!  see my problem?  i refuse to believe that if you don't accept jesus as your lord and savior that you are going to hell....im sure every jewish, buddhist and muslim person out there would strongly disagree.  and who am i, or you, or your priest or pastor to claim otherwise??  its a quandary for me....because i want to have faith - i want my kids to have faith - but i don't want to judge or be judged.  if you do the best that you can to be a good person, why isn't that enough?  maybe that makes me shallow, but i don't want my kids to do the right things because they will go to hell if they don't  - i want them to do the right thing because  their conscience tells them its right and they feel good about themselves for it.... i don't want them to judge someone for a choice they might make, or a love they might feel that isn't "approved" by their church.....if there is a GOD, i believe that he loves us all, with all of our imperfections, and just wants us to do our best......where is that religion???

on the flip side, in recent years i have met so many wonderful people who LOVE their religion and their faith.....they are comforted by it and strengthened by it - and i greedily also want THAT for my boys....so here i am, wishing i could just let it alone already and just believe in whatever i want....but somehow that seems too easy.  of course, when i started thinking about doing this i sat down with my boys - and bored them to death with all of these questions and ideas.....and i remembered that back in high school, i first heard the term "deism"- and for the most part in its most simplistic terms, that suited me best all thru that time period (and could possibly be where i end up - who knows) - deists believe in a larger power that created the universe - but then left mankind with freewill - with no interference.....interestingly simple...maybe too simple, but maybe not.

that's my faith challenge in a nutshell....should be interesting to see where it goes from here....

AS AN ASIDE:  i also feel i should end blog #2 with an apology for my lack of capitalization and my spelling of the word "thru" - both of which irritate my son and husband to no end - and both of which they commented on at the crack ass of dawn this morning.  and neither of which i will be changing :)