Angry Much

FOLLOW ME at www.thefaithofmars.com

 

Recently I created a bit of personal online drama when I "unfriended" some folks from Facebook, including family members.  My reasoning was this "family" was mostly extended (though did include some immediate members).  I receive a kind letter from my mother, edited below as a response and I wanted to share my thoughts to her in a post as they seem pertain to many atheists who often hear the words, "you're just angry at god or the church."

 

Dear Thomas,

 

I enjoyed your blog about death and dying. I started a comment, but I lost it before I finished.

 

I know you care about humanity.  You are compassionate.

I feel you are angry about where your life has taken you thus far. Hasn't been easy I know. Do you think the Catholic Church lied to you and made you beleive in a god and forced its rules on you?

 

I know you dislike being judged and so do I. I do not care that you are gay and atheist. However, I worry about anger.  I know you are a good man, love yourself.

 

Love you,

Mom

 

My response to my mother:

 

Dear Mom,

 

I'm sorry you have the impression that I'm angry with where life has taken me. I think you must be reacting to my recent strongly worded reply to a Facebook post you liked, the one about sharia law as posted by a religious right Christian group based in Arizona. What makes me angry is when people, even people like yourself, repeat rhetoric they've heard.

 

I'll give an example of this that you and others have all expressed in the last few months via liking posts on Facebook or directing posting graphics on the topics of Islam, Muslims, in which these "memes" imply that in some way Muslims and followers of Islam or their basic beliefs are wrong or bad, and that they wish to cause harm to Americans, to Christians and are actively trying undermine society.

 

 

My "anger" about this comes from blatant ignorance. My point in responding to you as I have is that you are espousing and repeating opinions given to you by others without your own critical evaluation of the information as it is presented. The truth about the specifics of Islam is that most Muslims, like most Christians, seek peace, love, happiness and security for themselves and their families. They find this through their communal worship of Allah-just as Christians do through  communal worship of Christ.

 

It seems we have been taught as American Christians (most of us) that our enemy is any person or persons who do not espouse Christian/American beliefs. So yes, this way of thinking does make me angry. Not because others don't have a right to their opinion, but because the distrust comes from something someone else told them and this information is often accepted blindly and without critical review or thought.  If we all made the effort, as Americans specifically, to better know and appreciate cultural and religious differences we would be more at peace and ease with those differences between us. In fact, we would embrace and encourage these differences.

 

You're right to assume I can be more critical of Christians in America, of those close to me such as yourself and the family. I am more critical because I myself espoused those opinions and beliefs at one time, based simply on what I was told, taught and how I was raised culturally as a Christian and an American.  My assumptions once held were not based on what I learned or studied but were simply assumed to be true.

 

I simply am at a point in life where I cannot tolerate hypocritical thinking and erroneous belief as a part of my life or to influence me. This perhaps makes me seem angry. But I am not angry at religion, faith or belief systems.  More at intolerance and bigotry those systems can lead one to embrace.

 

I hope you do not think I am regretful of where life has taken me .  Indeed, I have met some of the most wonderful and interesting people from all walks of life and from all faiths. My journey from boy to seminarian to priest to married man has been glorious. Perhaps I do feel some regret in that I did not study zoology or physics, topics I have always enjoyed.  I wonder how things would have been different had I not chosen to study philosophy and theology. Still, instead of letting regret make me bitter I'm using that energy to study and learn those wishful things now. Who knows, maybe someday I'll have the chance to study primates or learn more deeply about quantum theory. My point is this,  I have discovered that I must avoid my own hypocrisy and that I must be true to myself and my own formed opinions and notions.  Ideas presented to me by others deserves review and evaluation before acceptance or rejection.

 

The Catholic Church didn't lie to me in that the beliefs espoused by her members, you and I included (me at one time), are the result of theology and philosophical evolution on the theories of a universe created by a god; indeed for those theologians and philosophers, these theologies go beyond theory and become their Truth. I was raised and indoctrinated in this theology much as you were; being born into a society that simply assumes much of, if not all of, its tenants and beliefs to be true without personal critical evaluation, critical study or review. I suppose that this is the dark side of a cultural theological community such as ours. It was when I began to study religion and philosophy at Conception Seminary College I was amazed to learn from the educators, from the monks, that religious belief was globally diverse. I learned that Christianity had only been practiced for less than 1% (.008%) of human history (we as a species has existed approximately 250,000 years or so). Learning that much of the world, if not the majority of the world is in fact not even Christian, well, what a revelation! My mind immediately questioned the validity of the belief system I had been culturally raised in and I discovered that evidence for and of the system of belief I had been taught and raised in was simply and totally hearsay based upon theological and philosophical theory. This realization was the seed of my atheism.

 

Now of course as a young man and young seminarian I thought, "but my whole family believes this so it must be true and that "faith" would give me insight."  So I continued to live in and attempt to embrace the Catholic Christian Faith. Now, looking back, I deeply regret my ordination to priesthood because at the time I was ordained I knew I didn't believe in god, Jesus, or faith. But still my hope was that by emerging myself into a Catholic community of the faithful as a priest that faith would awaken within me. That didn't happen and instead found myself more at odds with Christianity and theological belief. It was cemented for me visiting Jerusalem.  There I witnessed a place of pure hatred stemming from theology. Jews hating Muslims, Christians hating Jews, and Muslims hating Christians and all visa versa. It was shocking to my naïve eyes that these three faiths which all teach a system of belief in peace, love and harmony so outwardly act from a place of hatred and anger toward each other because each insists and believes they are the full  embodiment of Truth as they see revealed to them as their god showed them.

 

Once back home from Israel I spent my days listening to Catholic Christians confess petty sins such as pride, doubt of faith, white lies, sexual fantasies while at the same time they refused to help the poor, the disenfranchised, the lonely (my story about Sandy at the mental hospital had years before been my first taste of Christian hypocrisy). Even at the Abbey of St Walburga the nuns often confessed to me the same petty sins as folks in mainstream society: gossip, lies, backbiting, fear, doubt of faith. Their faith did not make them more spiritual, it, like any closed community of like minded believers, gave them the chance to escape the general population and find community and comfort, "bird of a feather." The more time I spent amongst Christians the more I realized their belief generally was a habit, not a religious or education awakening of the mind or spirit, but an excuse to indulgence ignorance - "if I know God through my church what else do I need to know?"

 

 

This does not make me angry. It awakened in me a great curiosity. For if religion or faith is a construction of society then what is the nature of the universe?  This has been my awakening. The desire to better know the fundamental nature of reality around us. I have found that science does not rely upon cultural dogma created in a manner that is unchanging or not evolving based simply on tradition. Science does not seek just to provide answers, it also asks questions. So no, my lack of belief does not make at all angry, it gives me hope; for my departure from belief I have found the ability and the great desire to ask a simple question - Why?

 

 

It does make me a bit sad that you think I'm angry. I think most of my friends describe me thusly - "eccentric, quirky, funny, smart, silly, artistic, fun-weird." That you are worried these are not qualities in me and that it is anger which drives me, well that means you simply don't know me.  Perhaps it is fear that I discovered a truth many believers fear, that is all that which they have believed may in fact not be true.  My experience with our family, both immediate and extended, is they are intolerant of divergent thinking. They judge others based on the last moment of interaction. Did you know in the last nearly 20 years since I left the priesthood not a single person who is a member of our family has ever asked me why I left?  They assume it is because I am gay (not the reason).  Most of my "family" stopped interacting with me or it seems, would refer to me in the context in which they last understood me, which was when I was a priest or seminarian.

 

So I'm not angry, but I don't, as my husband likes to remind me, suffer ignorance. It was my own acceptance of belief, that is my cultural upbringing in faith where I was told and taught how and what to think without critical evaluation, well this lead me to become a priest and in so becoming discovered it was something unfair to myself, to you and dad, and the people I served as a priest. That personal act of ignorance gives me pause and regret but not anger. I don't dwell in that regret but am now trying to better understand how or why I walked that path for so many years, feeling and knowing that I didn't ever really believe it. It seems I am asking that great scientific question - Why?

 

 

You are a marvelous woman mom. I love you. You're powerful and intelligent.

 

Always ask that question - Why? And then ask it again and again and again. The world and this universe are incredibly marvelous- even without the cultural experiences of faith.

 

Love

 

Thomas

In Persona Christi, part 1

I've been wrestling with my own "demon" lately. The bellowing of his wings around my ears has nearly deafened me to the rest of the universe around me. I can feel his taloned toes digging into my shoulders; his forked tongue licking my ear, whispering to me, "Fool." The weight has been there a long time, the weight of my "demon." Yet even in this burden I've grown used to it, I carry the weight with me now, much easier than at first, in fact I think I kind of like him there, a bit of company when I'm alone.

What is the demon? What am I wrestling with you may query? My demon, my weight, has been the guilt of own early life, the journey I took into the life of priest. Looking back on the road I've traveled, up until 1999, I was ashamed. Afraid to acknowledge that life, who I was, that this journey, the one I took, the journey to become "in persona Christi," the person of Christ, had been a series of deceits, missteps, fear, and doubt from the beginning.

I've started my blog in the last few months, finding inspiration in the writings of a young atheist, Chris Stedman from his penned work, "Faitheist." His story of struggling to find a place in the world, of trying to fit in, to reconcile his sexual orientation with his world, loosing himself in fundamental religious "acceptance", then finding himself through the compassionate act of his mother was a marvelous story. His desire as he wanted to better understand religion and theology, a realization he didn't believe in God, and finding then the desire to bridge the gap between belief and non-belief were an inspiration. In my own world my entire family is religious, still embedded in their theology, Catholic mostly, and as a man who has also gone from belief to non-belief, finding common ground to bridge the gap between belief and non-belief were refreshing.

My second inspiration came from the words of Mary Johnson in her marvelous tale, "An Unquenchable Thirst." Her superbly written story of her journey from life as a sister in the Missionaries of Charity to freedom outside of the community and theological system she had lived in for so many years. This story, this story was the story that inspired the most in me. I have maintained for years that being Catholic is more akin to being part of a community, almost an ethnic group unto itself. At the very least, akin to a small town. Reading Mary's struggle with the impetuous of rules that were arbitrary, and meant in many cases only to hurt, and in other cases meant to drive a sister towards greater holiness through suffering, well this story resonated with me on a level of my own experience. While my journey from believer to "persona christi" to non-believer was nothing as dramatic as Mary's, the thread that is woven in the theological expectation of holiness in religious study and community binds us together.

My imagery, my usage of words all flow from the theological context of my education, both as a child and as an adult. My words developed fine tuning in my college education that was spent as four years in the rolling hills of Missouri at a Benedictine Monastery that offered a seminary college for young men wishing to be priests. There was a medieval aura about the place that like a blanket of fog created an air of mystery and wonder that to my young, eager mind was delicious. I wanted to live in a world where heroes are real, where magic works, where angels dance on the heads of a pin, and where demons thrust their claws into your shoulders and influence you to do wrong. I learned in this world that using words make dreams seem real, that fantasies, if you close your eyes just right, feel as real as a chair beneath you. That dreams, when a song of praise vibrates your lips, seem more powerful than waking. My words, sometimes only spoken in my mind were able to craft a fantasy that I didn't feel I ever needed to leave. My entire life had up to that point, college, been crafted around words of prayer, Jesus and Mary, Holy Spirit and God the Father, and so those images in my mind, they became brighter than the actual images in my eyes.

As a young man during the late 1970's and early 1980's in the mountains of Colorado I would explore the pages of books in our local public library that contained references to the mythological gods of the Greeks, the Romans, the Norse lands. I would read books about magical spells, the components necessary to make them actuate, about spirits and demons that on more than one occasion I sought to summon and control. I grew up not believing so much as hoping that the unseen world of myth and legend was real. It was there I formulated my opinion about the world around me, there I wanted to escape the everyday and discover the world of dragons and demons. I tried so hard to read, understand and reignite the theologies of mythological worlds, the gods that dwelled in the legends of mystery and time. Yet in all my exploration as a child, I continued to find no gods, no angels, no demons. I cast spells, attempted to turn myself into a raven, tried to make the neighbor boy fall in love with me, all to no avail.

But in the quiet solitude of a little Catholic Church, nestled in the valley of the Yampa high in the Rockies, I found the myth that I was seeking. There, surrounded by adults who believed that the God who is, who was, and who is to come, came to them daily, in bread and wine, I realized that maybe, even though I couldn't see it, this God was real. I strained my eyes, my heart, my mind, and hoped that I would see him too, veiled in fermented grape, unleavened flour. I never did, but those adults around me told me that He could not be seen with eyes of flesh, but only with eyes of faith. This legend, the God of Judaea, the God who calls us each to his son Jesus, was also compelling. There nestled in the stories of the Old Testament were legends of angels, demons, myth, magic and power. These legends, so familiar to my growing mind resonated with my own secret desire to live in a world of fire and magic. And these legends weren't to be found on a dusty rarely accessed shelf in the public library; they were resting in the working hands of the men and women who raised me, these legends so mysterious, so powerful, had to be true - didn't they?

I spent nearly every weekend at this little church, finding there acceptance on some level for my hope that the mysterious world of angels and demons was real. Lifting our voices in prayer, the space lite with candle light, incense sweetening the nostrils, all created the powerful perception that there, in that small space, swirling around our minds, our heads, in our hearts, was a divinity pulling us ever closer towards a world of magic and mystery. How easy it was for my already inspired imagination to start to accept these legends of the Judaic Christian tradition that they were not legends at all, but were in fact reality, and the world that I did encounter, the mundane experience of the doldrums of everyday life, the everyday real world was the lie. How I hoped this were true. And thus, as I grew into my teenage years, an outcast because of my oddities as a lonely boy, my sexual attraction to men, I found the idea that the perceived world was myth and that the unperceived world, described in the Old and New Testaments as God's kingdom to come, was the real world. Further I walked into legend, to the point where the reality of the life around was shadowed by dreams and no longer perceived by my own eyes.

It was no difficult task to imagine myself a priest in those years. I had practiced all my childhood at spell casting, pretending to be a magic dweller. I donned a superhero's cap so frequently that in my small town the locals knew me as Batman. When as I grew older I was encouraged to put childish things away, those dreams of dragons and fire, and to embrace the mysterious life of Christ, his Father, his Judaic traditions and history. These dreams were not considered so childish by my family, the adults and leaders of the "real" world around me, and so I allowed my hope to rest on them. Looking at the world I had dreamed of, heroes and magic as a boy, I did not believe a "normal life" of the working man would suit me, and thus I stepped into the journey of evaluating the possibility that perhaps somehow, in my uniqueness, I was summoned by the God of Israel to be his hero, his magic user, his persona christi.

I asked my parents, I asked my friends, I asked my priest, they all agreed, it was a good life to be called to, the priesthood. There was never any doubt that the life of a man called to be in servitude to the proclamation of a legend of Christ was at all undesirable or bad. In fact, every person I asked encouraged me in the journey. Never once did a single person in the life I lived ask me if in fact it was because I believed in God that I felt called to serve as a priest, or if it was because I hoped that the legends of the Gospel and Judea Christian traditions were true. The difference rested between dreaming and believing. I, in all my desires of a fantastical world, never once questioned the reality of the dream I was in, and instead casting my sight onto the fantasy created in Gospel and Christian prayer I walked boldly into a life of the priestly based on the Roman Tradition of faith and mystery.

And so, when first I placed my soles on the ground of a monastery, the rising cathedral above me, soaring like a castle set in one of my medieval fantasies of childhood, it was apparent that I could dwell further in the legend of the Christ. The swirling black robes of Benedictine monks summoned from me my own dreams of boyhood into this adult fantasy, and I could not help but be seduced. There even upon praying on the altar of God, wondering one lonely evening why, wondering how, this myth of God in bread and wine could possibly be true, I did not turn from the fantasy. I pushed from my mind those crafted doubts of my reason, refusing to end the dreams of boyhood, and continued to step on the hallowed ground of faith. My soles guided my soul into further mystery, further fantasy, and as I sank lower and lower into the faith world of God and angels, it was easier and easier to ignore the rattle at the back of my mind shaking at me the words, "but this doesn't seem real."

I thrived in fantasy there. My childhood made that easy. Once I figured out how to study and grow into educational excellence, the rest was simple. Surrounded as I was by handsome young men on the same myth's journey, it was only a matter of practicing the fantasies I had always hoped for, that I would be a hero, and my power would come from beyond my own capacity. I became a leader in my community of young men, the head of the student government, fervent in prayer, wrapped and tasseled in accolades thrust upon me, I knew that my call, as fantastic as it may be, would continue to allow me to dwell in dreams, and there upon dreaming, I feared awaking, and so I stayed asleep. My college years were tremendously successful by all the measures of the college and seminary expectations. I was prayerful, a leader, educated, smart, and clearly marked for some level of leadership within the confines of this world of dreams and fantasy.

College taught me how to laugh. I found joy there in raising my voice in songful praise to god. I found that I laughed with the monks there: Brother Pious binding ancient books together, Brother Thomas in support of my inability to learn French: Father Peter taught me to have humor at my own short comings. College taught me to love. I learned it was okay to feel a spiritual connection to other men of faith and in that faith nourished by Christ to tell them that I loved them. College taught me that sorrow was part of life, that people when they die should be properly mourned, but that the veil of death was thin and torn asunder by the rolling back of the rock across the entrance to the tomb by Jesus. College taught me that people are unendingly generous. Old men, called Knights of Columbus, mostly farmers, sending me financial support because they believed in me, in my magic. They wanted to see me become in persona Christi, and they sent me the money to do so. My family taught me how much they could exhibit pride in my accomplishments. College taught me to be proud.

I learned in college all about the other faiths of the world. I learned about the Shintoists, their understanding of the world around them through a spiritual connection to the stones, the rivers, the forests, the mountains, the valleys, their kami. I learned about the Buddhists and their quest to be free from suffering by being free from desire. I learned about the Muslims and their discovery of Allah and his greatness in their destinies both now and in the future by submission to His will. I learned about my Jewish brothers and sisters and their selection by their God as chosen. I learned about the Hindus and their worship of their gods creating and destroying like life itself while at the same time we return time and time again in reality. I learned about Tao, paganism, Egyptian tradition, the Greek and Roman gods I learned about the various ways Christians express their love of their god from faith to faith, based on Gospel and resurrection through being reborn in Christ.

Living in college I was afraid though. I loved the magic of the place, monks, the students, my friends whom I had come to love. But I was afraid, because by then a small nagging doubt shifted in my brain. I had learned about all the other world's explorations of their definitions of truth, their hope to experience what is divine, what is magical, what is beyond their sight of the here and now. Upon learning these things, many of which were many centuries older than my theological upbringing, many thousands of years older than the Christ story, I wondered why my story would be more true than theirs. I remembered standing on the mountain in the rockies as a young boy invoking incantations to draw ancient mystical power out of the sky and stones and knew that my whole life to that point had been a journey to live in a dream. I was afraid in college because I knew I might wake up.

Upon graduation of college my bishop, encouraged by the college seminary advisors, asked me to go to Rome. That famous place nestled in the Mediterranean, a cradle of Western civilization, home of the world's oldest Christian tradition. There I could further emerge myself into the dreams of my childhood, there for most certain in the ancient cathedrals and homes of God I would finally see the dreams of my faith playing out in reality. While I loved the dreams in college, I still hoped that somehow, with the right incantation, the right place, the right light perhaps, I would see the divine; I hoped that the fantasies so well described in gospel and faith would become more than dreams and I would experience beyond that hope, reality. I remember so well setting foot upon the crumbling streets of Rome, their cobblestones grabbing at my toes, almost as if in protest to my walking there, almost personal. There in Rome, thrust from the dreams of a monastery I entered the nightmare of fundamentalist society of Roman Catholics who pushed me to leave the niceties of those faith dreams behind, and to look at the faith dreams of blood and tears. There, standing before the church of Cephas, looking at the grandeur of a place that should have sparked a fire of fantastical dreams, thrust upon me the stones cast of a belief system that ultimately would come to hate me.

Seminarians clutching at rosaries, papal masses, long black cassocks, religious societies, Jesuits, Legionaries of Christ, nuns, friars and brothers, all swirled around me, joyful in their fantastical praise of the Christ, his mother, the Church's martyrs and saints. I arrived in this ancient city and was immediately aware of how inadequate my doubts in faith would prepare me to live in a community of believers who had NO doubt about their God. I lived with men in seminary who laughed at other faiths, found flaws in other faith systems, in other Christian beliefs, and would do everything they could to tear those beliefs apart. In some way in their deconstructionism of faith, they believed they were building their own walls of faith stronger. Using the cast off sad philosophical debates which they believed they always won, they would rest back and sing praise to Christ for allowing themselves to be so bright, so powerful. Every time they mocked the belief of another faith I cringed, cried inside and wondered what would they do to me if they knew that when I slipped rosary beads between my fingers I didn't believe in virgin mothers, that I doubted if the Christ had ever even existed. My faith started to become as real as the magic on the mountain, a dream that while so nice in theory, never became anything than a dream, a boyhood fantasy. Yet like a drug, being offered the chance to become, in persona Christi, to become like the person of God, I still wanted to know if that spell would hold, maybe in that moment, when oil is dripped on my head, when the stole and priest's chasuble is placed on my shoulders, maybe then the magic would be real.

Walking in Rome, it taught me to dwell in sorrow. My life, surrounded by the fundamentalism of Catholicism became darker, more dreadful because I was not a theological man, I was a dreamer, someone who loved fantasy. These men in Rome, studying to be priests were not interested in fantasy, they were interested only in ensuring that their truth, Catholic as it were, would be the only truth, and their mission as men of God, as they would become in persona Christi themselves, well it was to rid the rest of the world of any other belief, to convert, and if not able to convert, at least to mock and ridicule. My sorrow arose from that nagging doubt of College, and I wasn't able to laugh here or love, not really. When I walked into the giant cathedrals of Rome, all of Europe, I remembered all the lonely men and women that I had encountered thus far in my life, the boy who died of AIDS, the old man dead in his bed alone for weeks, the very poor, the sick, the elderly, and looking at these ancient huge temples of worship I realized that this faith lacked the authenticity of its own creed. Monks and priests wrapped in silk and wool, finest leather on their feet, didn't represent their own Christ, they, these monks and priests were supposed to be in persona Christi, yet looking at them I realized they were nothing like the Christ I had sang songs of praise about in college, they were nothing like the naked, sacrificed man on the Cross. My sorrow deepened, and I wondered if maybe the spell that would make me in persona Christi might in fact too be a myth, a legend. Would I stand again on the mountain in Colorado calling upon the power of the sky and stones, hoping to turn into a raven so as to fly away, to swim in my dreams, and there in that hope discover the magic wasn't real? Would the anointing with oil, laying on of hands, stole and chasuble all result with me one more time climbing down the mountain on my hands and knees over stone and dirt, shaking my head wishing that the dream were a reality. This tainted the laughter I had left at college with sorrow. Rome taught me that dreams are not reality.

In Rome I had the chance to travel in Europe and in Africa. I discovered a love for the catacombs of the ancient city resting above me, her old dead dusting beneath her. I found my heart in Florence, a city so filled with creativity and art that at every turn I was inspired to create art myself. I went to the valleys of the Swiss Alps, seeing there a wonderful hamlet where I got drunk with the locals, the only language we had in common at that time was laughter. I walked the dusty streets of Tunis, surprised at how much citizens of the USA were disliked, but inspired by how warm and welcoming the Tunisians were to guest; there I met Muslims who were gregarious and kind, welcoming us to their homes with tea and honey. In Rome I had my first sexual experience with a boy named Ricky*. It was awkward, it was difficult, and it filled me with shame. In Rome I looked from the top of a building and found myself glad for once that I didn't have wings as I thought about throwing myself to the cobbled stone streets below, my anguish, my conflict in being faithless and dreaming of sleeping with boys pushing me to the edge.

I wanted so much to be the man I had already for so many years of dreaming of being. I knew that I could not remain in the heart of the Catholic Church, for my love affair with the trappings and rituals of this place had already faded. I begged my bishop to bring me home, that I would continue my studies in the USA. There at least I thought I would be closer to men and friends I had from college, there I could find my community. There I could run away from my love affair, there I could hide my doubts in moving from place to place. They agreed, still finding in me the hope that I would become a great man of God, in persona Christi. For a time at least this became very true.

Escape from the Rock

 

Yesterday I blogged about an experience I had as a young seminarian praying over the body of a dead man whose life, name, even corpse faded into nothing. He was a lonely man with almost no family who died in a small yellow, broken house forgotten - no one to weep for him.

As I have been thinking of my experiences as a leader of God's people, now an atheist, I, perhaps true to my Catholic upbringing, keep finding myself dwelling on the mystery of death. Our passing at the end of our lives seems to be much of the motivator for humanity's continuation in belief in the divine. In thinking about death many are afraid, some are excited for they believe they'll live forever, and some are ambiguous, not sure what they're facing. I am in a category that might be a little more solitary - I don't mind death - in fact it will be fine.

I think that much of our experience as faith filled people, especially in the western traditions, is centered around three elements - creation, death, and resurrection/the next life. Philosophies vary from theological system to theological system, but most certainly there is a common drive behind base theology in a mono-theistic and even in some poly-theistic points of view. That common view is the possibility that our lives will continue in some fashion after we expire on this world.

I don't want to wax on the philosophy of death and life, so many philosophers, most better than I have already done so. Instead I want to ponder my own experience of death. I've interestingly enough had several experiences of death, not my own, but in being privileged enough to be asked to participate in the very personal time of a person's passing.

The first time death had a large impact on me was when I still a Freshman in seminary college. Part of our training was to spend each Saturday in ministerial service to the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the dying. One mission I was assigned to was to go on those Saturdays to the mental hospital in St. Josephs, Missouri. We were assigned to different floors in the hospital, some of us visited young people on suicide watch, others visited residents who were there for the long hale due to very deep seeded mental and emotional disadvantages. Now this was 1989, and the state of mental health care was poor indeed.

 

One of my Saturdays I was on the ward for folks on suicide watch and folks who were very seriously clinically depressed. I met a young man named Sandy who had tried to kill himself the weekend prior. We talked for hours about music, life, where he was from, about his hopes and dreams. He told me about his hobbies, his passion for painting, that he was afraid to die, but that he was more afraid to live. I felt a connection to him and loved seeing him. Sandy wasn't much older than I, he was the only boy in his family. He was originally from a town outside of Kansas City. He was a handsome man, he had a sweet smile that seemed to escape from the mask of sadness he wore. When he did laugh, when he did smile, all the sorrow in his face washed away and he filled the room with brightness. Looked back with the wisdom of my years I know now I had a crush on Sandy, maybe the first one I really had for another man. We were friends as much as we could be with him at the St. Joe's Mental Hospital.

These visits went on for several Saturday sessions. I was so excited to have the chance to be a moment of hope, new experience for Sandy. his family wasn't coming to see him, and his ability to leave the hospital would happen only after he was deemed fit to not be a threat to himself or others. We were very closely monitored by the staff at St. Joe's, and after a month or so I was pulled aside by a doctor at the hospital. "Hi, I know you've been spending time with Sandy, I want to warn about him." My mind raced, warn me about what? Sure I could tell that Sandy was struggling with depression and other issues, very serious issues, but at the same time I loved meeting Sandy, he made my newly found ministry as a servant of the church seem so real. "Okay?" was my reply.

"Well I want you to know that Sandy has that disease AIDS and he's dying." I had heard of AIDS of course, but this was still 1989 and at this time the disease was still a death sentence for many, and most certainly it was a stigma related only to gay men. The crisis had already killed so many, in fact Robert Mapplethorpe had just died of AIDS that March, and so hearing this news I was shocked. First, Sandy seemed fine except he was sad. He had told me that he had used drugs to help find escape from his sadness, from his loneliness, so I knew that Sandy had some serious demons. But to think that Sand was dying, it was inconceivable to me.

I told the hospital administrator that I didn't care he had AIDS or any other issue. I was there to care for him, to be his friend, to be a listening board. I was there to show him that someone cared, that someone loved him. I remember driving back on the back-roads of Missouri after hearing Sandy's condition. I had to pull my little crappy car over on the side of the road. I cried. I stared at the Missouri grey sky and asked God why did he allow us to suffer? Why was God going to let Sandy die?

The hospital must have also said something to the monk who was the head of my apostolic program, the person in charge of assigning us to our Saturday ministries. I was reassigned the next weekend to a Catholic nursing home in Maryville, a town much closer to the monastery. It was safe, the elderly loved to pray rosaries, read from the bible and tell stories of their families and children.


Sandy died that spring, I don't know if it was self inflicted or if he had succumb to AIDS. Another seminarian, David, who was still working at the mental hospital came and told me one Saturday evening a month or so later. "Thom, I wanted to let you know that Sandy died last week." He put his hand on my shoulder, an act of kindness. Tears in my eyes, "How?" David, who was a second career seminarian, older than I, shook his head, "I'm sorry I don't know." I felt a tear run down my cheek. "Thanks David." I found myself in the seminarian chapel. I loved the chapel, it was always quiet, I could go there and be alone, and not a soul would bother me. In that chapel, looking at the crucifix I tried to justify Sandy's death in the possibility he would be resurrected. Then there in that chapel I wondered if he had died by his own hand? Would he go to heaven? Wasn't suicide unforgivable, the most destructive act one could commit to God's gift of life? Then I wondered, what if Sandy were gay too? He had contracted a disease that at the time many were saying was a plague given to gay men as a punishment. In that sense then did God decide that Sandy should die?

Even today as I type these memories of Sandy I'm moved to tears. Not because of any theology but because I remember that young man who was stuck in a horrible mental hospital the last days of his life alone in a room with another mental patient. I cry because I wanted to be his friend, but when the leaders of our apostolic program believed I was too close to a person I was ministering to they pulled me away. No other seminarian went to see Sandy, he didn't have any external visitors again for the rest of his life - his family had disowned him, he was in a state institution that painted with broad strokes in its treatment of the mentally ill. Sandy is gone from the earth, and I wonder who else remembers him.

That death seemed so lonely to me and over the years death was lonely in many more instances. I remember Tom, a seminarian who had struggled with a personality that was very odd. He died one summer in between my Junior and Senior year at Conception. Tom had always been held at a distance from other seminarians. He was passionate about his faith, his ministry. He was an odd bird, and had been told at the end of my junior year, his senior year, that he would not be moving forward into graduate school for ministry. That summer he was working for his father, who had a business serving electrical companies. They were using a hydraulic lift to work on wires above head. The tires of the device shifted, Tom was thrown from the basket and died on impact to the ground. What struck me as lonely was that Tom, in his eccentricities didn't have any friends at the seminary. He and I weren't close, but he always smiled, he was clearly in love with his faith. That fall in 1991 we had a small memorial service for him. Following the service a couple of seminarians were mocking him and that they were surprised that college would bother to remember him. I grew angry and reminded them that in their own faith Jesus loved and tended to the fringes of society. They just laughed at me and walked away. Even when Tom was remembered, then in that moment most people who knew him, except his family, laughed at his passing.

So death - our fear of it - in my experience seems to come from our fear to be alive. We are so held back in our ability, our desire to know those people who are outside of our comfort zones. I had encountered hundreds of times since these days death. As a priest I ministered 100s of funerals. I've lost family to death. I've lost pets who were like children to death. As I've gotten older and older I am less inclined to be afraid to die. Certainly in working with faith groups I found many people unwilling to really minister in the areas that seemed uncomfortable.

In the 10s of thousands of years in human history we've been running from death. And in our running, we've created elaborate systems of explaining away the finality of death. Heaven, hell, Valhalla, reincarnation, are all ways to make us feel better about not having fully lived before the bell tolls. My experiences of death, some very personal, others I was on the edges, have all lead me to experience death in the same way. The light of life goes out. That's it. There is no white tunnel of light to greet us. There is no coming back. There is no second chance. Life is but a moment, a flicker of a perfect combination of cells and atoms that for a moment bring awareness and consciousness to beings we call human. Nothing in all my readings on the philosophy of life, death, afterlife, theology, science, have been able to indicate anything other than what we all experience. That when the final breath escapes our lips, the final beat of our hearts thumps against our ribs, we are no more. We're gone. The matter that charged that self awareness simply ceases to charge.
I don't think that that is so horrible. My matter, my material being is what matters while I am aware of it. The final reality that someday my awareness of my situation will end is no sadder than thinking my awareness of my situation didn't exist before I came to be. I do not mourn for lack of life before February 25, 1970, I shall not mourn for my life when it ceases at some time after today. What matters then? For me it's the awareness of life while we have it. I was on the train yesterday coming home from work, and looking at the people standing around me I realized I love humanity. I love its flaws, its greatness. I love that we scurry in our brief moments of existence to connect to one another. I love that we build monuments and temples to our folly. I love that we sing, we dance, we cry, I love that we mourn. The sorrow at death comes because in a world of limitless possibilities, there are limits, defined by death. Those limits piss us off, and we try to find ways around them. But there are no ways around our friend death. But that's okay, because we know this is true. In knowing we cannot escape death we should be moved to love life even more. We should be moved to embrace the humanity around us.

I loved Sandy all those years ago. I am hurt that I was no longer able to be his friend because of fear. I loved Tom too. His weird eccentric life was brilliant, and his death was sad because that life that shone so bright was shut off too soon. But I am reminded by these young men's passing's  and as I say quite often, we are none of us getting of the rock alive.

"Remember oh man you are star dust and unto star dust you shall return."

 

The Arrival

It was a cold dark stormy night.

 

No, really, it was a cold dark stormy night. It was the beginning of January 1989 (January 13 to be precise) and we had been driving all day from Denver to Missouri, taking the long and relatively boring drive across I-80 through Nebraska then I-29 down to the Missouri border. The strange bleak landscape was foreign to me, broken nubs of corn stalks peaking above a dusting of snow, looking a lot like a post apocalyptic world.

Dad had wanted to drive the trip in a single day, and that was certainly doable, just required sitting in the car for 9 hours across the relatively bleak winter landscapes. It gave me time to sleep, try to contain the nervous energy. My mother sat in the front seat of the car, praying, reading, dozing and snoring softly. Dad and I chatted off and on about the importance of the mission that I was under taking, joining the ministry. We talked about the welcome dinner that we had all attended at a small Catholic Church in Denver hosted by the Archbishop of Denver, then Archbishop Stafford. I was glowing from the attention I had received from my family, the odd looks that I had been thrown by my friends. All these things had happened quickly, and like a branch thrown into a fast moving stream I sailed down the river of ministry to seminary.

I was smug. I was smug in the honor that I was bestowed; the process for entry into the seminary had taken nearly 6 months. Time in interviews, physiological examinations, tests to determine my intelligence, writing essays, exploring my faith, assuring the Archdiocese and its vocational department that my desire to be a priest was sincere, that it was my desire, not my parents. Thinking back now, Mom and Dad didn't over encourage me, they wanted me to make the decision myself. But when I told them I was 100% certain this was what I wanted to do, they could not hide the joy, the pride on their faces. My father was especially proud and offered me unending encouragement. He truly was a firm supporter of mine, and receiving his love, his pride for the vocation that I was going to explore was so rewarding, I glowed in his praise. I became even more smug, and certain that the vocation I was entering was meant to be. I even believed that it was God's will. I was special, I was chosen by God. He noticed me.

We arrived at dusk at Conception Seminary College, off Highway Vv, and pulling into the roundabout that circled the front of the Abbey, the Basilica, I remember the rush of blood to my head, heart pounding as I looked at this magnificent building sitting almost all by itself in the rolling fields of Missouri. This huge church, absolutely amazing in its simplicity, more special because it sat alone, more special because it existed for the prayers and faith of the monks and students called to join it there in praise to God, in servitude to mankind. My boyhood was a boyhood full of fantasies about medieval castles and kings, I had for a long time imagined myself the king, Arthur, occasionally Lancelot, always the hero. Here, nestled amongst corn fields and cow pastures was this marvelous structure and institution that feed those fantasies, here I heard God's voice calling me, beckoning me, summoning me out of the billions of men on the planet to be his voice, his servant, his king.

 

 

It was dark by the time we arrived, sometime in early evening, and the campus, while not sprawling, was intimidating. The monastery sat right next to the large basilica, and large oak trees, naked from the winter's cold created shadowy darkness that was mysterious, it made the arrival all the more grand. Dad kept asking me, "Thomas where are we supposed to go?" I had clutched in my hand the acceptance letter that the college had sent me, signed by a Father Daniel Petsche, O.S.B. and the letter referred to places at the monastery that didn't mean anything to us. "Dad I don't know." We drove down the small road passing some building that looked like student residences. As we drove we spied a man dressed in all black, a black hood pulled over his head, black garments swirling behind him in the biting Missouri wind. "Dad, stop!" I jumped out of the car and ran up to the man who was walking faster than anyone I had ever seen before.

 

I hurried up the small monk and stopped him, "Excuse me Father..."

He held up his hand, "Brother."

Oh right, I remembered from my time spent in retreats at the Trappist monastery in Colorado that not all the members of a religious house were ordained priests. "Um Brother.....I'm Thomas Burkett, I am a new seminarian."

He held up his hand again, then motioned that I should follow him. I turned back to the car and looked at my mom and dad still sitting there, I looked a little desperate I'm certain. My pleading eyes must of struck my father because he and mom quickly jumped out of the car and into the windy, January cold night and we all followed this monk as best we could. His robes covered his feet, and his legs moving were not discernible, it was like he was gliding, floating on the air. He lead us back to the monastery and to a small side door set next to a large garage. We were cold, I was nervous, and mom and dad were very excited by the whole adventure.

He opened the door, and the warm light and smell of bread wafted out to us. This entire time, beyond the words, "brother and follow me", this monk hadn't said a word. He seemed angry, I would later come to love this little monk very much, Brother Aaron, a psychologist who taught at the seminary had a great sense of humor, dry, but funny all the same. As we entered the small room, a kitchen, several monks sat at a table apparently eating. Br. Aaron approached another monk, a smiling bald man, he leaned in a said something to him. Turning to me with a smile a mile wide, this monk exclaimed, "Thomas! Welcome, we've been expecting you!" He speed across the room, shook my hand, "I'm Father Kenneth, welcome to Conception." He turned to my mother and father, extended to them greetings. He offered us food and drink, we declined.

The rest of that evening is a total blur in my memory. I was so enamored of the church, these wonderful monks, the mystery, the joyous experience of meeting so many other people I was drunk on the joy. It was for the first time a place I felt completely and totally at home. I was for the first time swept into a wonderful, exclusive home that gave me so much. That first night at Conception I didn't know what to expect, but what I received was a dream come true. It was the most amazing entrance into a religious life I could have asked for. It was the start of a journey that I'm still on to this day.

It was a dark and stormy night, but the storm passed.