Into the Lion’s Den

As I grew further and further away from my seminary studies, having successfully finished my master's degree in divine theology, and after having served some time working as a priest, my doubts about faith and god shifted further and further to the back of my mind. Those doubts, which had on many occasions kept me awake were like distant memories, and if I turned my focus from them they didn't exist at all.

At my parish, which I joined in the spring of 1998, a year after my ordination to the priesthood, I worked with our pastor Father Ed on a key ministry, care of the sick and dying. The parish was located in the southeastern part of city, near a major highway, and we had easy access to all the area hospitals. Our ministry, while focused in only one parish on Sundays, was city wide when it came to visiting the sick in hospital. We would drive from hospital to hospital, hospice to hospice to visit the families of our parish, their loved ones, and sometimes strangers.

I am a glutton for punishment. Well maybe not punishment, I'm not a sadist or masochist, I guess I should better describe myself as someone who loves the darkness, the sorrow of life. I listen to music written primarily in minor keys. In hero stories I am most attracted to the darkest of heroes (Batman for example). I have always preferred late night musings to those in full daylight, and I dwell in sorrow more frequently than joy. I was the perfect theologian to preach happily about the death of Christ. And increasingly, as I stood at the pulpit, at the altar, I focused my ministry almost entirely on the theological significance of the cross to Christians.

I knew I was personally unable to reconcile my own sinfulness to ministry as a priest. I wanted to be the most holy priest, a saint. I built in my house a chapel where I left the Holy Eucharist exposed in adoration so that I could prostrate myself before my God, the person of Jesus, beheld in the mystery of bread become flesh. I would stop at the chapel and kneel for hours in contemplation, trying to weave my own desire to end the suffering I experienced in my personal sin into the experience that was described by the Gospels of Jesus while he knelt in the garden the night before his crucifixion. My own desire to end this inability to reconcile my weaknesses to my priesthood translated strongly to my preaching.

I journaled while I was a priest, letters I wrote to a young man that I had wanted to help on his journey, I was hoping he would want to become a priest. Again I wanted to find that way to holiness, I wanted God to show himself to me, and I thought perhaps my doubts were the greatest test of my faith. In my journal to him I wrote, "I complain like a spoiled child sometimes in my own weaknesses and sufferings. Compared to my sweet savior, who carried his cross without complaint, with grace and dignity I cannot go a day without feeling sorry for myself in my very minor sorrows and sufferings......yet we must join our savior in carrying the cross to know salvation and the fullness of joy, life and peace."

On those days when we, Father Ed and I would travel to the hospitals, I would wrap into a silk lined satchel my pix, filled with the sacred Eucharist. I would tighten my collar, its gleaming white top shining above the rich woolen black cassock that I wore. I knew the white collar represented a glimmer of hope in the cloud of darkness that we so often find ourselves in. I would strap around my waist my silk sash. I buttoned the 33 buttons of the hand woven cassock each time, thinking of the 33 years of Christ's life on earth. I would tuck my prayer book under my arm, and always ensure in my pocket traveled with me my rosary, shiny black beads placed upon the silver chain, ready to acknowledge with my flock the mysteries of the life of Christ and his mother.

Most of the people I would visit at the hospital on a regular basis were there for a serious condition. Rarely did we get called to minister to minor ills (tonsils out, minor surgeries, etc.). We spent most of our time visiting the terminally ill, or visiting people who fought most often cancer. Several times I visited with a woman named Pat O'Hare who was dying of brain cancer. When I first started to visit with her, she was awake, alert, full of life and a powerful example of a woman determined to beat the disease that eating away her life. I struggled with seeing those people suffering so slowly, and what to me seemed in such a lonely place. Hospitals, with all their technology are so cold, and the beeping monitors and neutral colors are depressing. The more I visited Pat, the further she slide into the toxic depression her disease flung upon her, and increasingly she became less and less the vibrant joyful woman I met the first time, and more and more she became the woman afraid to die, not willing to let go of life. The last few times I visited her lying in her hospital bed she was no longer conscious and finally my visits were one sided. I would hold her hand, tell her that I was there, anoint her head with oil, pray over her. I would beg God that in that moment, looking at the shrunken cheeks of Pat that God would give me her cancer so that she might live. I hoped, I prayed that my life would be miraculous and I could lay in her place on the bed and she would jump up and be free.

When I would return to my parish life after holding the hand of a dying woman, I was always at odds with the life I returned to. Most people don't experience this type of suffering very often and frequently when we do we forget, move on, return to life as it was, Focusing on our own needs, shopping, eating out, movies, sports. Life becomes so mundane, and as a young priest I so wanted my parishioners to spend their days contemplating the life they profess on Sunday, and more than in profession, live the life they proclaim. I felt so powerless being the only person in the parish, along with the other priest, Father Ed, to spend time with the dying. Sure we had a group of Eucharistic ministers who would take the sacrament of communion to shut-ins, and occasionally to the hospital bound, but they didn't spend their time praying over the dying, the sick. They weren't trained for such ministry. Their job was to bring the sacrament of communion, offer an "Our Father" and go to the next person. Yet in this parish of nearly 10,000 people, even those who were carrying the sacraments to the home bound and sick numbered only 10 or so. The rest of the parishioners would leave their profession of faith on Sunday and head home to catch a "game" or breakfast with the family. I knew as soon as I said the words, "the Mass is ended, go in peace", the parishioners would run out the door and leave the world of prayers and sacraments behind.

Increasingly over those months in the summer of 1998 I would focus my homilies on the connection that the Church makes between sin and suffering. I would emphasize that our own sins, while forgiven through Christ, still had an effect on pushing us further and further away from God. Our sins, no matter how minor, caused suffering in the world. Our sins were the cause, the reason for death, cancer, we were like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, each time we choose to move away from Christ, from God by not being holy, we cast ourselves, our loved ones, into the abyss and there we were going to continue to find death, suffering, pain, loss and sorrow. My preaching would remind the parishioners that Christ's time on the cross was meant as a sacrifice, but even in that sacrifice, we were still called to sin no more. We were waiting here, for the second coming of Christ, and until that day arrived we had the mission to join Jesus as the most holy of holy's, to be saints in our time. Yet increasingly, as I spent time with the faith filled people, I realized that holiness was not the primary goal of most worshipers. I discovered pettiness, bickering, mean spiritedness. There were lots of people who were good, kind people, but as I contemplated increasingly the life I was called too, that path I walked down, I realized that my emphasis on faith wasn't being returned by the very people I was ministering to. I realized that my preaching about needing to be holy, to be "Christlike" fell on deaf ears. My time spent so many days with the dying filled me with sorrow, but I had originally hoped as a young seminarian that my ministry as a priest would set the world on fire and people would flock in droves to support one another, to care for each other.

I know that many people did just that, cared for each other. Yet those wonderful volunteers were ever increasingly the minority. Of the 10's of thousands of parishioners, it was the same 100 or so people who did good work. Faith for the majority was an obligation to come and pray on Sunday in Church, then the rest of the week was left to be their own. My parishioners would return to their large homes in rich white suburbia, and the lonely dying woman with brain cancer would rest in her hospital bed alone until finally her body could take no more and ceased living. Those few volunteers were heroes in my parish, but even they would have their moments. Many of them did their holy work for recognition, to be acknowledged in the parish as leaders. Many would do their holy work simply because they felt obligated, but not one of them worked to expand this mission beyond their own work. In my proclamations of the Gospels, in my preaching, I would pound my fist on the pulpit calling these believers to take action, spread their belief, proclaim to the world without fear that they loved God, Christ. No one ever did. They would shuffle uncomfortably in their pews hoping I would wrap up my homily quickly.

That summer in 1998, I would rest for hours by the bedside of dying people. Yet I would grow angry, hurt, that on my Sunday worship services, 50% of the congregation would leave the Mass immediately after receiving communion. Here where we worshiped together, beheld what was taught to be the greatest mystery, we received and ate the flesh and drank the blood of God, yet people, more than 50%, fled the church as soon as they could. Most complained to me that my homilies were too long (10 minutes), or that traffic getting out of the parking lot was too difficult, or that the sports team that playing was too important to miss. I would preach ever increasingly that their faith was broken, that it was fake. I took to finishing my masses in the back of the Church to confront people who desired to leave early. They wrote letters to the bishop, told the pastor that I wasn't kind. The more complaints I received the more justified I felt. Yet the more time I spent with the dying the more lonely I became, clinging to a faith that I didn't truly embrace. I had hoped that as a priest the faith of the faithful would fill in the gaps of my own disbelief. Instead like dynamite it blew my disbelief apart. I discovered that people found faith only when they or someone they loved rested quietly on the bed in a hospital. Otherwise, faith was a routine event that was endured. And even in those moments of crisis, after the crisis fades, the suffering is healed, the faithful return to faithless lives.

I know I'm painting with broad strokes, and there are a few believers in Christ, in the Catholic Church, who truly embraced the life of Christ. They want to reconcile themselves to the God they've been taught to know. Yet my broad strokes are built upon a lifetime experience. As a theologian I knew that true Christian faith, the one that so many profess to hold, means a sacrifice. The Gospels and writings of the New Testament are clear about the faith. Great saints were notable because on some level they exhibited the dedication to the God that all faithful are supposed to exhibit. Instead most people who are "Christian" move from routine to routine, ignoring each other until they're forced to do otherwise. As a priest I wanted to wake up in the faithful a life of prayer, passion for God that set them on fire. I wanted the parishioners to eat of the body of Christ with me, drink his blood with me and then be so beholden of their faith that they would have to rest in the Church for hours. Yet I found this was not the case, instead the parishioners would take of the Eucharist and most would practically run out of the Church, glad it was over. I knew that from my study of the Gospels, the teaching of the Church, that the call of Christ was an all or nothing call. The lukewarm faith that I encountered was the faith that most people professed. Saints are remarkable because they are so few and far between.

If Christians really studied and knew their gospels, sacred texts both of the Old and New Testaments, if the Catholics truly studied their doctrines, they would be surprised at how infrequently they were in good standing with their own faith. As a young priest, struggling with disbelief, I became invested fully with wanting to be a saint. I threw myself, prostrate, before the altar. I breathed upon the bread and wine during Mass with such reverence that many people would weep. Yet, I would look up from my sacramental offering, and see a distracted majority. I ever proclaimed to my parishioners that it was their own lack of holiness that contributed to suffering in the world. Their sinfulness, their disinterest, their lack of genuine passion for their god was a direct cause of evil in the world. Yet upon this preaching, most people would shift uncomfortably. People would approach me after mass and ask that my homilies focus more how nice god is and less on the need to not sin. My preaching they said made them uncomfortable. I nodded then, smug, and said good, my preaching, like the Gospel, was intended to make you uncomfortable. My preaching was a challenge for them to be the Christ in life themselves. To take literally the words of their god and live them. Yet most people did not.

It was these moments, seeing people interact with each other, with me, that helped to drive that disbelief I had in my heart further home. I realized as a priest that faith was play acting for most people. Platitude's that people could spout off, yet in their "non" faith time, they could return to being petty, bickering, judgmental, hurtful. Their faith didn't matter if saw a beggar, someone of color, a gay person. They didn't need to be like Christ all the time, just when it was convenient. I had hoped as a priest creating sacraments, acting as the person of Christ to the faithful, that I would be inspired to grow myself in faith. Instead what I discovered was a faithless world of Christians going through the motions. Those small motions were the ones that made me realize how far I was from faith myself. It was seeing the gospels in action, living faith with a parish of faithful, I realized it was a myth. A story told to make us feel better about ourselves. It was a story told to give us hope when we are lonely, dying, afraid. They are stories told to control us, make us respond to those in power so as to keep them in power. No amount of gospel reading, homilizing, or sacramental life changed these things. No amount of holding dying women's hands made me see God. It was in the heart of the lion's den I had hoped to find faith, but there was no faith to be found there, instead it was in the heart of the lion's den that I was eaten alive.

A hero's sleep

Have you ever awoken from a dream and wished in the waking you could stay in that dream? The cobwebs of memory falling away, brushed aside by numb hands, a slow mind, eyes blinking back light, and there whispering to the back of your mind, to your memories a voice that says, no just stay here a while longer, don't wake up.

I'm there now. My mind is slowing waking up, I'm struggling to come back to reality. I don't want to wake, I don't want to get up. There is the comfort of fantasy in dreams that just is so appealing. I feel my pillows of life beneath my head and I just want to lay there. I don't want to face the reality of the life before me.

You see, many years ago I folded up my hero's cape, my power to fly, my super strength, my hero's breathe into a steamer-trunk, locked those memories away, and fell asleep. I was like sleeping beauty, or maybe a bit like Odin when he slumbered in his odinsleep. The sweet lulling melodies of a dream world rocked me into slumber, and the mind in all its greatness dozed. And there while dozing, all of who I was passed and I become a sleep walker, almost a zombie. All my super powers were gone, at least those I thought I had. I walked into a dream world where I dozed, snoring softly into life.

I had been a priest. I was a lover of God, passionate, full of faith, inspirational, inspired; proclamation of God's words fell from my lips like the drops of water from a fountain. My eyes believed they could see The Lord - my heart thought it saw angels dancing. I placed my lips on the edge of a silver cup and whispered with the greatest reverence, "This is my blood." I lifted into heaven the unleavened bread, lowered it down to the top of the altar, and bending over it held between my fingers like the most delicate of petals, my priests' robes gently falling about my arms and shoulders like the pall of a funeral coffin, I would whisper, "This is my Body."

I was a good priest, maybe one of the best for a short time. I prayed constantly, daily, hourly. Every time I walked with audible steps on the ground, the sounds of my shoes reminded me of the sounds of Christ's steps as he carried the cross on his shoulder. Seeing a child running to his mother I thought of the Virgin Mary scooping up her Christ Child. When I held the hand of a dying man, his family wailing around me I believed I was like Christ, anointing his head with oil, asking Christ to take the illness of the dying upon himself, to carry the man and his suffering from the bounds of earth so that he might be free to rejoice with God in heaven. I would weep with the family, tears of anguish felt by them pouring from my eyes.

I held the hands of a woman going to hospital the next day asking me to pray for her, to anoint her head with oil. We prayed together, she could not let my hands go. I drew her close to my breast, and held her while she sobbed. I kissed her head and told her that God loved her, that no matter the outcome, she would be free because the Christ had released her from sin in his death. His suffering was her suffering. Her time on this earth was a memory, a shadow and that memory, shadow would pass in the light of the rising sun.

I ran my fingers though the hair of toeheaded children, seeing in their young bright eyes the future of the Church, little bears of God's word and love to the world. I held plump little Mexican babies on the harvested fields in Northern Colorado at migrant camps and believed that each one of them represented the Christ child. I was nervous when their grandmothers would bend and kiss the hem of my pants, but understood too because from the breathe of my lungs, the Words of God would spill out and the plain and ordinary could become divine, the unleavened would rise, the wine would become blood and together we would all live forever.

I believed that while I stood at the altar, with God before me in bread and wine, that I was a time traveler. That while I beheld those mysteries before me resting in silver and gold on the altar, that is bread becoming living flesh and wine becoming living blood, I was standing not only on earth, but one foot was firmly planted in God's holy court. I was a pontiff, a bridge between heaven and earth, and the angels of God walked up and down my shoulders singing holy songs of praise.

I struggled with my own humanity, writing once, "I have failed The Lord and have not answered that honorable and beautiful call to bear witness to The Lord. How easily I fall into sin myself and I look at the armor of my faith and see the tarnish and dents and marks of my own sin upon it and I nearly weep. I should rather to die than to sin, yet even in acknowledging this I still sin. I seek to be a warrior of the Light, but in my sinfulness I plunge the dagger of my own weakness into the very heart of my faith. I should rather die yet I do not."

Yet in struggling in my humanity I was proud, happy to a great priest. I remember the feeling of absolute power knowing that the faithful parishioners clung to my words, sat enraptured of my preaching the Gospels. I sought to anger the faithful, calling them lazy in their love of God so that they would confront me. There in confrontation I would act like their Jesus and flip over their tables of pride in God's house, daring them to fail to see that if they are full of faith they could not but help to abandon all they cling too and fall before God at the altar. I never lost a single argument - but I never made any friends.

I would tell the faithful that their baptisms in water and spirit pulling its wondrous power from the baptism of their Christ made them apostles, great, greater even than those first twelve. I asked a young man once to allow his spiritual power act like a saint, reminding him that his prayer while only a whisper on earth was a shout in God's ear. I begged him to whisper on earth so that God could hear his shouting, pleading to him, please, please dear son, whisper to God for me.

One day I stood at the altar of God, holding in my hands unleavened bread, breathing breathe on wine, and waited to experience a divine mystery. My gold lined robes of priesthood, weighing heavy against my shoulders. The silver cup blinding me in its brilliance. And I waited. I looked out over the rim of my eyeglasses, slipping in sweat on my nose, and spied God's holy people kneeling. Most thumbing through prayer books, some reading parish news bulletins, some asleep, some checking their watches. Then suddenly there were no angels dancing on my shoulders, there was no divine air blowing out of my lips. There was only me. I was coming awake. I placed the stale unleavened bread on its silver paten, hand trembling as I moved the cup of wine, and I knew I had been deceiving myself. There was no God on the altar before me, there was fermented grapes and flour.

That dream was ending, and waking so slowly, seeing the life around me I realized I had been sleep for a very long time, but I didn't want to stop dreaming. I wanted my power, my hero's cape, my power to fly, my super strength, my hero's breathe. That dream I didn't want to end and for a long time I clutched at those dreamy memories, and hoped to stay there, standing at an altar dressed in fine golden treads with old women kissing my hands and feet. But like all sleep that ends, you cannot lay in that bed forever. Sleep eluded me there, and I had to get up.

And so I pulled off, tugging them over my head, the robes of my priesthood, those holy garments setting me apart from the rest of humanity. I packed into my trunk that fine silver cup, my chalice, my vessel of God's blood. I wrapped my white collar representing eternal life in circle of black cloth representing death of sin. I closed the lid of that trunk, and turned back to my bed. I laid upon the soft covers of a life that was easy and dull. There I fell back asleep, and this time my sleep was more dreamless.

You see in my mission, my life as a priest, in my life in God, as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, I had purpose. While that purpose may have been false, not real, at least for me, I was guided. I had a mission, I was going to save the world, or at the very least I believed I could save me. But when looking at the bread and wine, at the faithless faithful, I knew I had been dreaming. But rather than allow myself to wake up, I went back to sleep. For nearly fourteen years I've not thought once of my life as a priest when I kissed the dying, visited the lonely, feed the hungry, clothed the naked, tended the sick, sang with the children, gave to the poor. In fourteen years I've done nothing but lived my life for me. I've given my love to one or two, but as a human on a planet that is broken, dying, lonely, hungry, naked, sick, needing song, is covered with poverty, I've only managed to tend to me. For all my altruistic up-bringing, for all my education, for all my love of service, I have slept for fourteen years caring only for myself.

But I am waking up. I don't want get up just yet, because that dream, that selfish dream of taking care of me is so tempting. That bed is so comfortable, it's too easy to say to myself, just 10 minutes more, please that's all I need. But the last time I woke up, from my dream of Gods and men, I knew I had to.  I knew that my fantasy life as a priest wasn't really rewarding, that I would cause myself to suffer. But rather than fully waking, I rolled over into a new sleep - and it has been almost as unfulfilling as pretending to be god.

In my last 14 years of sleep, I have dreamt of love. I have dreamt of happiness. I have dreamt of knowing peace and joy. I have touched it with my lips on the face of my husband. But those fleeting memories of reality, haven't sustained me. And so I have to ask myself as an atheist, who at one time believed he breathed God's breathe on to bread and wine so as to make it flesh and blood, can I again be inspired to serve? Can I be a great humanist who desires not just to rest in his own bed to dream his sweet dreams but make for this world room for us all to rest and dream? Dare I ask my lovers in life to journey with me into waking, to stumble out of our drowsy sleep and brush the cobwebs of memories away and blink back the sand in our eyes and look at the light of the world dappling our lives around us? I think I can, but I still have to wake up. I have to get past my fourteen years of not being here and rediscover what in that last dream so inspired me to give everything I had away.

My hero's cape, my power to fly, my super strength, my hero's breathe, these things aren't fantasies; my cape is a flag of equality beckoning us to recognize in each other, beckoning me to recognize in each of you, how we under heaven are equal. My power to fly is in the spreading of the words of love and justice with my brothers and sisters. My flight comes in the form of knowledge - that will leap from mind to mind, heart to heart, eye to eye. My super strength is my husband - in my ability to love, his arm to lean on when I am weak, his strength to support me when I am tired. My hero's breath is my power to speak out against injustice. To raise my voice and proclamation freedom for us all, to proclaim that love does not have gender, to proclaim that equality does not have a color or creed.

Be careful now I am waking up. I was great once, if only for a moment. I can be great again, I know it. But first I have to brush the cobwebs away. Wake my numb hands, quicken my mind, look into light, and shout at my own mind, in a voice that just says yes, get up, don't sleep here any longer.

Somewhere between Heaven and Hell

 

 

I must say today is bright. The sun, for the first time this spring in New York City is showing her bright, smiling face on us. My week, was hectic, busy, and overwhelming.

Today, Holy Saturday, marks that time between the grandeur of rituals of the Catholic Church surrounding the Passion of Christ, his death. Today, in the Catholic Church, they commemorate his burial, his rest in the tomb. This was always one of my favorite days as a priest. There was almost nothing to do from a ministerial point of view; preparing for the Easter Vigil, reviewing my sermon for Easter Mass - which was traditionally meant to be short, you know the "Easter/Christmas Christians" weren't used to my lengthy sermons!

Today the Christians, still fresh from the brutal murder of their savior yesterday, take time to catch their breath. Hope is crushed; it is waiting, pushing against the dry dirt laying against it, hiding it from the sun if only by a thin veil of minerals and stone. As I have journeyed in life, I think in many ways I've been stuck in Holy Saturday. Not much movement going on, my previous life, as a seminarian, as a priest, as God's lover, ended on my Good Friday, in October of 1998. I laid that life in the tomb, stumbled out of the suffering I had endured, and rested, in my nearly 15 plus years of a Holy Saturday. I have been fresh from the brutal psychological trauma I put myself through for all those years. Of course I wanted to just sit here, on this quiet, sunny Saturday of life. Nothing much to do, a little preparation to live life, to just get by.
Holy Saturday is a time in the Christian world to prepare oneself for the resurrection of a savior. In my world, I have no savior, no one is coming to save me. I love the song by Jay Brannan, "Goddamned" and it so eloquently reminds of me of the life I had entered into as a believer who no longer believed. When I was undergoing my de-conversion, I didn't have Jay's song to sing or sweetly remind me of the broken path that I was walking down. But now, in my journey, as I sit on Holy Saturday clutching my Liturgy of the Divine Hours, his lyrical poetry reminds me of the time between heaven and hell, when so many people, Christians, are waiting for a savior. "But something tells me, No one's coming to save you." These words I remember them that first Holy Saturday, only two days after my life of faith ended, I thought about the man named Jesus and realized he wasn't coming back, if ever he was real.

 

God, it sounds so hopeless doesn't it? So dark, so sad? But in all this time that I've been sitting outside the tomb of my faith, maybe wondering if it would ever resurrect, I've not encountered darkness. I've not encountered suffering. I've been sitting here waiting all this time, wondering what to do with my life. What pieces of that world I knew before should I pick up, how should I move forward? I look out my window, the spire of the new World Trade Center casting its shadow across my neighborhood, the memory of smoldering ashes is fading, we've moved on, picked up, rebuilt. We've not forgotten, but we didn't sit there in the ashes. It is my time. I am not dead. My life is only just begun. It's time to roll the stone back from across the entrance of the tomb to open it and let my life back out.

 

Today from the Liturgy of the Hours, the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday the following passage from an "ancient homily" struck me as moving. "Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep." In reading the words I'm reminded of two things, the Norse God Odin and his odinsleep - Odin, the great god of magic, who upon being mortally wounded would sleep until healed, the great heavens would be quite. Secondly I am reminded of myself. Who is my king? Who is my ruler? As I am on my emotional and mental knees before the tomb of a life I lost, left behind 25 years ago, my arms are hanging at my side and there they allow my finger tips to brush something. Here in the great silence, resting, I feel beneath my fingers my crown. At this time in my life, as I rest between heaven and hell, I lift the crown and place it upon my head. For I am my own king. Time to wake up.

 

My belief in the divine was never a reality, it was only a construct that I was trained to believe as a young man, and somewhere in the dark hours of remembering the Christian hero Christ, I realized it wasn't my faith. I tried for so long to embrace that life, that faith, but it wasn't meant to be. I was ashamed of allowing my life to be lead in that way. I was ashamed that I stood before faithful believers and prayed with them, all the while I was dead inside. I was resting in my tomb, the prison of faith. The barbed wires surrounding my hope, my own vision held me back. For so long I tried to deny that I wasn't a faith filled lover of god, and then even in breaking free, seeing that my faith was dead, I simply sat down outside the tomb and waited.

 

I'm not waiting anymore. I am no longer resting between heaven and hell. I'm walking away. There is no heaven, there is no hell. There is only the warm sun shining its smiling warmth upon my face. There is no great savior, no hero; I am my own hero, I have to be saved from no one but myself. Today on Holy Saturday I am putting the crown on. I am king. I am alive. I am resurrected.

 

Passing Over

Not growing up Jewish, nor having ever met any Jewish people until I was an adult, the idea that Jesus was Jewish didn't resonate with me on any level. I had absolutely no frame of reference other than my Christian experience of Judaism to relate to Jesus and the entire experience of his people over the centuries. I had heard of the horrible suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Hitler, but when during that last week of Lent, Christians would reference Passover, the Last Supper, Jesus and his friends celebration of some long traditional feast of his people, I wouldn't be able to relate. The entire Exodus story was exotic, kind of thrilling, but not spiritual.

Finally when I was in college we studied Judaism quite in-depth. Learned from the Torah, read the Old Testament from the point of view of the people for whom it was written, studied word by word these ancient texts, and when the Jewish festivals and holidays would come around, we as a group of theological and philosophy students would honor these feasts and celebrations in much the same way our Jewish brethren were doing.

My study of theology and biblical history and biblical exegesis was on many levels my own Exodus. Almost from my first class regarding Biblical study I was awakened to its own contradictory nature and lack of logical flow. Until this point in my life I had be given snippets of the bible, taken in piece meal, and then in my first Old Testament class I learned that the very first book, Genesis, in its very first two chapters has not one, but two creation stories I realized any literal interpretation of these texts wasn't possible. Still, even after what was a huge realization, most theological studies further down the course of my education would insist that yes, while some parts of the bible aren't meant to be taken in a literal sense, some parts of the bible, the New Testament for example, contain texts that are literally true (for example when Jesus taking the bread says: "Take this and eat it, this is my body." Matthew 26:26) My mind sat back on its heels and the thought arose, how insanely hypocritical. Why would the Christian revelations of the New Testament hold more sway, more "truth and Truth" than the Old Testament? Then upon further consideration, why would the Judea-Christian understanding of God have more sway than the Hindu, Islamic, Shinto, or any other faith system? Doesn't the entire process of determining divinity seem rather ethnocentric?

My faith crisis did not lessen with time or with further study. In fact, the more I learned about the theological application of biblical and religious tradition in my own experience as a Catholic, in my own experience as a Christian I realized the absolute self centered nature of faith, and that the divine, and the study of the divine, the tradition of the divine was mankind's own attempt to understand a universe that is not comprehendible by the human brain. The enormity of the size and scope of the universe makes absolute sense why we, as a self aware species would attempt to sum the limitless depths of space and time into unseen, unknown, but all powerful divinities that we can define. Yet, what makes no sense, is that as we as a specifies have expanded our ability to see beyond the confines of our own solar system, in some sense our own limits, we have clung to ancient and fantastical notions of divinity. We allow ourselves to hold onto two stories of creation - one that a God created the universe, and two that the universe has always been and shall always be, a force of nature and as we know it moving from a Big Bang.

I remember my first Seder Meal in college at Conception Seminary. The preparation for this feast was amazing, and the excitement built around it was impressive. During Lent the common Christian Practice is to fast, limit oneself, give something, or somethings, up. This meal, this marvelous feast celebrating the freedom of God's chosen people would be a chance to let our hair down, in the final moments before we relive those last moments of Christ's life and death, and finally his resurrection. It was a special time because the seminarians were joined by the monastic community, a rare and always delightful treat. In my college, we always took meals, Monday through Thursday in a formal fashion. Meals were taken at table, with waiter service (we would take turns waiting on one another). We had table clothes, cloth napkins, and proper distribution of courses. The Seder was no different, and the feast was laid out in a grand fashion. The difference was the service of food type, sticking with the traditional Jewish foods of unleavened bread, bitter herbs, charoset, leafy vegetables dipped in salt water, lamb, hard boiled eggs, and four glasses of wine. The Abbot, then the kind Abbot James Jones, would allow the youngest seminarian to ask the question, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" It was magical, it was fun, it made me love for a minute the faith of which I was a member.

Seeing now these memories, the grandness of the traditions, the warm feelings and sense of belonging, I understand the attraction to this life. I understand the ability to set those doubts of god and faith away, and allow oneself to be wrapped in tradition. The stories, the meals, the companionship, the sense of believing we are the most important things in the universe is very compelling. Growing up as a child I always wanted to be special, to be different to be recognized. The faith traditions that I was given allowed me with my brethren, to be special to be recognized. Ultimately I think faith, belief in god is egotistical. It is an indulgent practice that helps us justify our experiences of fear and aloneness. It is a practice that makes us feel rather huge in a universe that is without limit. The microscopic reality that we represent is more grand if we indulge the fantasies of faith, if we indulge believing that our god(s) care enough to personally involve themselves in our lives.

Ironically though, if you're on the wrong side of that divinity's attention, say for instance the Egyptians during the Exodus event, your days are limited. The divinity and the divinity's people who may be in opposition to you will destroy you. The concept of a merciful loving creator is no longer relevant if you do not bend to his will. Even those who are innocent, say the first born sons of the Egyptians, will face the wrath of a divine being who is anything but merciful. I am of course opposed to any sort of slavery, oppression, murder; I am opposed to revenge taken to destroy those who may have wronged us. In reading the story of the divine reaction to a Pharaoh's stubbornness to release the Jews back to Moses and Aaron, I read about a greedy leader, but the rest of the sons of Egypt, they were not the oppressor, and the punishment meted out was smacking soundly of humanity's vanity and need to recognized. The biblical tale of the death of the first born sons of Egypt reads like revenge tale that would be better suited for network television than for a grand faith tale of how much a god loves his chosen people.

Reading the story of Exodus, that God set his angel of death against the first born sons of Egypt so as to "set his people free", struck me all those years ago as a hateful tale. Following my first Seder meal, I was in prayer, and in thinking about the revengeful and murderous act of this alleged divinity, I realized I could not, I would not believe. These tales of unleavened bread becoming the body of Christ (not figuratively but literally), this story of the sons of Egypt being murdered in their sleep by a divinity, all smacked soundly of mankind's ego, our own need, our own desire to be special. This need, this desire to be special sometimes indulges our ego, and sometimes allows us to fantasize about the destruction of those who don't agree with us, who don't believe like us, don't love like us. These faiths that celebrate the murder of those who may not be like us, who may even oppress us, are not faiths to which I can subscribe. I realized that my own goodness is not the result of a passion from a divinity, it is the result of being human. My first celebration of Passover was my last really. Its intoxicating story of revenge, divine intervention, all seemed so convenient, contrived, too compelling. This faith is too easy to deny my humanity so as to indulge my ego.

I sat in that chapel all those years ago and realized the answer to the question, "What makes this night more special than any other night?" The answer, absolutely nothing.

Exodus Chapter 11, Verse 5

And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts.

Chapter 11, Verse 29
At midnight The Lord slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first born of Pharaoh o the throne to the first born o the prisoner in the dungeon, as well as the first born of the animals.

Did the Angel of The Lord weep?

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