Centuries of Catholic guilt land on my shoulders. If this isn’t a sign from God about where I need to sort my head out, I don’t know what is.
By the time I reach the Cathedral’s great double doors, I know the service has already started, but thanks to the organ cranking out “Holy, Holy, Holy,” my steps don’t carry, and only one old biddy gives me a disapproving look as I take a seat in the last pew.
The church is packed, and it’s only then I remember that it’s All Saints’ Day.
I’m a terrible Catholic.
I have been my whole life. I’ve always questioned. Always defied. Always criticized.
I’ll go for months without attending mass. But I can’t seem to leave the church entirely.
A big, loud part of me hates the church for all the ways it oppresses and disenfranchises people. Women, mostly. Homosexuals, too. All the ways it gets Christianity wrong. All the hypocrisy. All the rigidity.
Papal infallibility, my ass.
But there’s also something about sitting here, feeling the vibrations of the organ music in my chest. The hum of voices, including my own voice as we say:and also with youthat soothes me.
And it’s not about disappearing into the crowd. It’s more about feeling held. Held by something bigger than the crowd.
Bigger than me.
I don’t know if it’s Catholic. I don’t even know if it’s Christian.
Maybe it’s greater than both. Encompassing both.
But I feel the same way in the field, stepping into the coolness of a cave or examining the walls of a mine. A presence that is both quiet and eternal.
Then and now, I reach for it. Bow to it.
Forgive me for being such a failure.
I shut my eyes and lean into this space.
In its quiet limitlessness, a hush falls over the chatter in my head. Even the certainty that I am a failure loosens its grip.
God—whatever God is—has to be more than anything I can conceive, right? More than anything anyone can conceive.
But most of us can’t get comfortable adrift in a sea of mystery. So we grab onto scraps of knowledge, old stories that have been passed down for millenia, visions and prophecies and poetry and legend, and bind them together until they make a raft that’s buoyant, if not water-tight, a place to lean back on as we stare up into an endless and fathomless night sky.
And we tell ourselves—and each other—if we just stick to this raft, we’ll get to our destination.
I can’t shake the notion that this is what religion is. And maybe not just religion. Maybe philosophy and politics too. Maybe social structures: monarchies, patriarchies, dictatorships, tribes, and governments. Maybe any ideology that tries to make sense of this life.
Most people need that raft. They need it so badly that anyone who doesn’t cling to it, who dares to let go and just float, is a threat to their very existence.
So they say,Get on the raft if you want to live. Don’t dip your feet into the water. Don’t tip the balance. Don’t try to build a better raft. Don’t examine the bindings and the bundled sticks beneath us too closely. Exist on this raft exactly the way we tell you to. If you don’t, you’ll ruin everything.
I think I’ve been in the water most of my life, holding on with one or two fingers to the edge of the raft where Mom and Dad and Bear and Maggie and everyone I’ve grown up with crowd together in the center.
The problem with half holding on is that the ride is rougher than being completely on the raft or drifting free in the water. You’re jerked around, cresting and falling with the raft, but feeling the pull of unseen currents below. All the while, your friends keep screaming for you to climb on already.
What would it feel like to just let go? I want to let go and just swim. Float on my back with the sun on my face. Kick through the swells. Taste the salty water for myself. Dive deep and see what’s underneath.
What I don’t know and what I’m a fool for not asking is if Stella’s on a raft—maybe not the same one I’m barely clutching—one that she’s comfortably atop. Or if she’s half-holding like me.
Or if she’s free in the water where I’d like to be.
What I’m afraid of is if she asked me to climb aboard with her, I wouldn’t be able to say yes.
