Healed

So...it's been awhile. Lots going on, some of it great and some it not good at all. And we turn to prayer as often as possible. For the good to continue and for God's mercy on the not good.

During Mass last night I was struck, as I usually am, by the phrase we say after consecration:

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

These words are taken straight from the Gospel of St. Matthew, Chapter 8, verse 8. Spoken by a Roman Centurion as he pled for Jesus to heal his servant. The idea of a Roman submitting to the will of God thru Jesus is as much an oxymoron today as it must have been for Jesus. Due to the Centurion's humility, Jesus healed his servant.

These words are now the final Eucharistic prayer in the Mass, recited before receiving Holy Communion, expressing humility and gratitude for the gift of Christ.

For me, it is the words "...my soul shall be healed." (In the verse in Matthew this is about the Centurion indicating that if Jesus only says the word his servant will be healed.)

Not might be.

Not could be.

Shall be...

As a Christadelphian I was always told God's mercy and my salvation were something up for debate. In the presence of Jesus on the last day my repentance might not be enough for my healing.

Imagine growing up with that in your head. You had to be "good" and if you sinned, repent as you went thru life. Asking for God's forgiveness. But on judgement day...well let's just say things could go awry swiftly and permanently.

As I studied to convert to Catholicism we spent a class focusing on the Eucharistic portion of the Mass. Prayers, consecration, receiving Communion. We had readings to do prior to each class. For this lesson it was the history of the Eucharist, the origins of the prayers, and our conduct during Mass. When I came to that line...

It rocked my foundations. To the depth of my being - I remember having to stop the study session at home so I could gather myself. I broke down sobbing and couldn't continue.

All my life, up to that point, I truly believed that no matter what I did I might never have eternal life.

And there, in black & white, from the mouth of a Roman and recorded by St. Matthew - was my salvation.

Five simple words. Five short syllables. It was there the whole time. During my time as a Christadelphian I know I heard that reading every year. Not once did anyone call that out for what it is - our redemption thru our faith in Jesus Christ.

I recall feeling - betrayed by my family. Betrayed by all the people I had trusted as a child. They terrorized me with their exhortations and sunday school. They took the words of Jesus and surrounded them with a cloud of fear.

Imagine what that did to me as a child. A vulnerable, abused kid/teenager looking for mercy wherever I could find it because I sure as heck didn't get it at home. 

Imagine what that did to me as 40-something adult. A still vulnerable seeker, trying to heal from all that abuse, praying for some kind of intervention for absolution.

And there it was - staring at me from every Bible I had ever touched or read.

And oh the irony. For a class to convert to Catholicism to show that to me so clearly, while the almighty Christadelphians still believe that everything bad in the world is because of the Catholic Church and believe they have the corner on the market of Bible interpretation.

When no interpretation is required. The words are there - they always have been.

Just like God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We are never alone.

Bondage

When we see that word - bondage - it's likely we automatically think of slavery. A stain on any society that kept slaves. And while the word does usually mean being kept in chattel slavery, there is another meaning:

servitude or subjugation to a controlling person or force

It is this lesser-known meaning I've been praying on this past week. Particularly the "force" emphasized.

What could this force be? In the context of my own prayers it represents a spiritual attack on my well-being. I hesitate to say this as I'm not one to go this dramatic within my faith but...

satan

There. I said it.

The evil one. Lucifer. Beelzebub. The Dark Lord. Mephistopheles. The Beast.

So many names for one creature. 

I have come to see, incredibly recently, that I have been under spiritual attack by The Dark Lord. Intent on keeping me servile, it has tied me to the hatred that I bonded to within my own family.

Most everything they did was only for their own benefit. Self-aggrandizement. Charity did not begin at home unless someone could take credit for it. How very - un-Christian. And of course I've already shared what that meant in my family.

Their Christian virtues were irrevocably tied up in hatred. They weren't pro-Christadelphian, they were anti-Catholic (anti any Christian practice really). My mother was anti-<insert ethnicity here>. My father was the same. Equal opportunity bigots.

They hated pretty much anyone who didn't march to their particular drum. And that included people within the family as much as without. Since they weren't very loving, as a child we had no choice but to bond to what they offered.

And so here I am - bonded to their hatred. 

And given a gift without price. An epiphany delivered at Mass last weekend by none other than Holy Mary, Mother of God.

{Now to clarify things for the non-Catholics in the crowd - we do not worship Holy Mary. She is a Saint, not a God-replacement. She is venerated as all Saints are; we pray to her for her intercession on our behalf to Jesus, thru whom we pray to God. That's all. She is very important to the Catholic faith - as she should be to all Christian faiths.}

Back to Holy Mary's gift. In a quiet moment of communal & introspective prayer I found myself praying for my father. For the first time in nearly a decade I spoke his name in prayer in a positive way - and asked for the strength to learn how to forgive him.

Trust me - his sins against his daughter are great indeed. The worst sin a parent can commit on their child. In fact those sins really are among the unforgivable.

And yet, here I am. For the first time in my life recognizing that the kind of forgiveness I need to give him will release me.

Just me. Only me.

In a moment of pure clarity, Holy Mary showed me the chains that tie me to him. The connection that keeps me subjugated to him. To his hate. Literal chains leading to this man who wounded me so deeply I never thought I'd recover from the memories of it.

It was - literally a godsend of coherence in a mind that was anything but.

With this magnificent and quite holy offering, I have finally stepped on a path I haven't really seen for my entire life. The incredible understanding of this kind of forgiveness.

How liberating it will be. Oh yes, Holy Mary showed me that too.

After talking about it endlessly - annoyingly even - my journey in faith has taken on another facet. One that I know will bring me closer to that goal of all goals...

...peace.

Amen.

Get Ready to Par-Tay!

And we continue with the rebellion that got its start in my teen years and really ramped up when I went away to college. While this part may not talk about being Christadelphian specifically, I shine a light on how I acted out against all the restrictions I had lived under until this time.

In truth, I see now that God was with me even when I had started to move away from him. He proved over and over that he was watching over me thru my survival of some pretty risky behavior. These times of my life are proof of the old adage - "there but for the grace of God, go I".

Jim and me Sept 1982 - heading out to a semi-formal dance @ college

College, Part 1

The college years were memorable on so many levels. Firstly, and most importantly, I met my future husband, Jim. Secondly, I had the critical away -from-home experiences that all those in their late teens should have. It is a time of deep learning - both how to do things and how not to do things. One of those how not to do things was - party. Party hardy was the motto of my college campus and boy oh boy, did I rise to that challenge.

There is a particular point to the partying that is necessary to explain - seniors had no classes on Thursdays. As you can imagine, with seniors ruling our small rural campus, Wednesdays were the biggest party nights, second only to Fridays. We had a bar on-campus that would serve anyone with a campus ID. So at least we didn’t drink & drive.

Conversely, as a freshman, in my first semester I had an 8:00am class every Thursday. And it was just my luck to be Calculus - my absolutely worst class in every possible way. To face that on a Thursday AM was akin to a form of torture. To face it after a night of partying at the biggest beer drop in the region was a recipe for failure. Which…in the end it almost was a literal failure. I squeaked by that class by the tiniest margin due to some intense tutoring I paid for myself in preparation for the year’s final exam.

Anyway, as a small private college, 95% of the students came from families of financial means. And about 50% of those had bottomless bank accounts - they funded all the parties, bless their wealthy hearts. Truthfully, this cohort of students were some of the nicest people I had met at that time. Generous to a fault, kind hearted, and completely accepting of everyone’s situation in life. 

We also had students who worked on campus to help pay for their educations. Jim was one of those plus he lived at home, being only 5 miles from campus. I was in-between, living on-campus and going home every weekend to work part time. So, Wednesday nights were my only time to partake in the epic number of parties that included free alcohol and, yes, free drugs. 

It was at one of these parties that I engineered meeting Jim in the second semester. By this time my Calculus class was no longer at 8:00am on Thursdays, and it is in that class where I first saw Jim. Let me tell you…love at first sight is a real thing. I had it bad for him. When I learned we had a mutual friend, I pressed that friend to host a party for the singular purpose of meeting Jim.

It was a blind date for him, not for me. We both leaned into this budding relationship, indulging in all the drinking and drugs we could get our hands on in that semester. Plus, the usual activities one engages in while living away from home.

To say I had forsaken my first year of higher education would be a vast understatement. When I say I squeaked by that Calculus class that is really sugar coating it a bit. While I didn’t fail any classes I didn’t exactly apply myself either. I was more dedicated to deepening my rebellion than anything else.

I still had to go home on weekends to work so I was largely controlled by my parents and their expectations. Especially going to church on Sundays. Held fast to the Christadelphian ideals I pushed and kicked at it all whenever I could. But my parents kept a tight rein on my movements, so my opportunities were slim. Even on Sunday evenings if there was a church talk, I was expected to be there then I could drive back to college. I’d arrive at my dorm at 10:00pm, just in time to crawl under the covers and sleep.

Yet I treasured my rebellion. Away from my parents and their abusive control (this went beyond the restrictions of the family’s faith; my parents were physically & emotionally abusive to me as well) I thrived socially, learning how to be independent in the only way a teen still relying on parental funds could be. Thru parties and covert activities. 

Of course, I paid for it all in the end. My first college transcript was a dismal disappointment. I am not proud of that part of my rebellion. I wasted my freshman year of higher education. My parents gave me the gift of a fully funded college experience - with my part-time work paying for gas in my car and any personal expenses on-campus. And I shamefully threw it back at them by getting a final grade which enraged them and humiliated me. I knew I was better than that and made the mature decision to live at home in my sophomore year, working more hours after classes and on weekends.

And I worked on my relationship with Jim. As mentioned previously, he was a little later to embrace the whole thing. But in the end my "sparkling charm" wore him down, poor thing. I regret nothing.

Rebellion

As mentioned about 12 weeks ago I am embarking on writing my "memoirs". Which sounds so arrogant as to be laughable.

Yet, here we are. Me writing it all down, you reading it. 

It's been slow going. Some of that is just the demands of daily life. Some of the slowness is my own procrastination. I want to do this yet the recall of my life, putting "pen to paper", is not the happiest of experiences.

In fact...it is quite painful. And yet I still feel that call from God to do this. And so I pray and continue to dig in.

God's Hands

 This is truth. Abundant truth.

I have powerful testimony that proves this simple statement.

We are going back to 2010. I was at possibly the lowest point of my life. Nothing was going right. So much turmoil. So much sadness.

I had been away from church for about 15 years. No more Christadelphian meetings, no praying, nothing. I didn't stop believing in God and yet...I started questioning everything about him. The personal crisis that started in 2009 had crescendoed to a feverish state of mind.

After a year of intense sorrow, the hubby & I started talking about, of all things, going back to church.

No one was more shocked than me.

Now - we love the city of Boston. It is one of our favorite places anywhere and we try to get there several times each year. In early 2010 we planned a mini-break holiday in that great place. Bougie hotel, great meals, lots of walking and people watching.

And a visit to St. Leonard's Church in the North End of the city. We went there every time we went to Boston to light a candle for Heather Smith. She was the daughter of old friends and she perished on Flight 11 on 9/11/01. Despite not being particularly religious during those years we honored Heather and her parents.

So we went to St. Leonard's during our weekend away. I was more curious about this Catholic church than any time in the past given that we were thinking about going back to church. And the Christadelphian faith was definitely not on the list.

Growing up in a non-aesthetic Christian faith I had no familiarity with Saints. I knew nothing about them and certainly never saw any physical representations of them.

St. Leonard's in Boston is a classic 19th century Italianate church. Built entirely by the Italian immigrants living in the North End, it is lavish with coffered ceilings, gold leaf everywhere, and elaborate statuary all around the church. So many saint statues that they stood, literally, shoulder-to-shoulder.

I had never explored them before but this time, March 2010, I felt compelled to walk up to each one. I felt one of those saints calling to me. One of them had something important to tell me, I could feel it in my bones.

So I began walking around the church, stopping in front of each statue and asking - are you the one? I'd wait a minute or so, then move on when I felt nothing.

Until I came to a distinctly unique statue. Tall, wearing armor and holding a pennant***. Like all the others, I paused and asked - are you the one?

The next few moments are burned into my memory. I can see this like it is happening right in front of me at this moment.

I was pushed - literally - to kneel in front of this statue. There is no doubt in my mind that the hand of God gently forced me to the cushioned kneeler. If there wasn't a kneeler, I'm sure I'd have gone prostrate on the floor.

I prayed as I never have in my entire life. And cried - I didn't know a human being could cry that much in one place at one time.

I have no recollection how much time passed. Hubby just let me do what I needed to do. He stayed near me but didn't speak to me. He respected what was happening to me. He was then, and remains today, my steady loving rock.

Eventually I stood back up, dried my messy face, and sat in the church for a good long time. Just sat there - quietly praying some more.

On the ride home from Boston that evening we talked about what happened. What it felt like physically. And emotionally.

I was exhausted in every way possible. Overwhelmed by the experience and reeling from the very clear message. From God himself.

Go back to church my child. You need me. I need you.

Startling to say the least. The following weekend was Easter. And as we were in our driveway on Easter Sunday, prepared to drive an hour to hubby's parents, we clearly heard church bells. We'd never heard them before in the 20+ years we'd live in our home.

Saints. Kneeling. God's voice. Church bells.

You just don't ignore all that. The weekend after Easter we started going back to church. Our plan was to try the "Big 3" in our country town - Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopal. We started with the Catholic Church for 2 reasons: 1) hubby was born Catholic and 2) God told me to go back to church while I was in a Catholic church.

And so our faith journey began. Because God laid his hands on me.

And it's true - I haven't ever been the same since.

Amen.

*** There is an amusing side-story to this saint statue. In my heightened emotional state I saw this statue with the armor and spear as - female. Research immediately after that visit told me it was - Joan of Arc. Now I knew her story but not the details. So I read everything I could find about her. And ultimately selected her as my Patron Saint when I joined the Catholic Church. Fast forward another couple of years and in speaking with one of hubby's Aunts - discovered that the saint statue I knelt before was distinctly male - The Archangel Michael.

I based my conversion to Catholicism, in part, on the misidentification of a saint statue. To this day it makes me smile at the private joke I feel God had for me. I'm not sure I would have responded so viscerally if I'd recognized the statue as St. Michael. Yet upon a revisit some years later it was so obvious the statue is male...abs under the armor, well-defined legs...and that pennant? It was a spear, going thru the heart of a demon at St. Michael's feet.

Just writing all that - makes me laugh.

On Being Christadelphian

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I am starting to explore writing about my faith journey. As with any experience it requires context.

There are five overarching areas that I hope to cover:

1. Family Life
2. A Profound Death
3. We All Fall Down
4. I Rise
5. I Fall and Rise Again

As I write that I realize I've just come up with the structure of my journey/book. It will be something that, with God by my side, I can "write into". The more I pray on this the more I'm coming to believe this is the right time for me - to recall some extremely painful experiences, emotional & physical, with the nearness of God. He is certainly closer to me now that he was even 10 years ago. Noting that my faith journey spans nearly 50 years.

I know writing this won't be linear. Which will be helpful because, as I approach anything in section 5, I will need God to tell me when to write what because that is the most painful part of my journey and where I really start to welcome God into my heart.

And so I give you another part of what it meant to be Christadelphian in my formative years.

[Recap from Pt 1] - It (Christadelphian) is a strict faith with unyielding rules and beliefs. Not unlike many others. However, Christadelphians believe in a vengeful God even while believing in a benevolent God who gave us our ultimate savior, Jesus Christ. There is also much hate and bigotry taught in Sunday School. That will become important later. Overall, as I look back on it with decades of distance, I can see how my earliest traumas were a result of this hateful, vengeful faith. My inevitable low self-esteem and sense of unworthiness can be traced, in part, to my activities with and belief in being Christadelphian.

On Being Christadelphian, Pt 2 - A Family of Faith

And so, we were a Christadelphian family. We went to church school & services every Sunday. Attended special talks on Sunday nights. Participated in church events and socials. We were not allowed to join in things like voting in any political election or serving in that capacity. We were forbidden from being police officers and military service was a big no-no. Conscientious Objection was the only appropriate response to a wartime draft. Being unequally yoked, meaning married but practicing 2 different faiths, was strictly forbidden with harsh punishments. 

My father was deeply faithful, once declaring that serving his church was the #1 thing in his life, more important to him than his family. He served in several capacities in our church, including as a leader of church services, public speaker, religious guide and counselor, as well as business and  financial advisor. My mother was more agnostic and went along with my father as all good 1950s housewives did. She did what all Christadelphian women were allowed to do - played the organ, served with all the women in their “womanly duties” as defined by the 1950s and 1960s (meaning cleaning the church building, preparing meals and serving them to hungry Christadelphians, and then cleaning up after them), and lent her considerable vocal prowess (she was a trained Mezzo Soprano opera singer) to Sunday services. As a child and even as an adult Christadelphian I followed my mother’s lead, cooking, cleaning, and ministering as a good little woman. Eventually my brother would lead church services and be a speaker. And so too would my husband. At least for a little while.

Being part of a fringe Christian faith was intimidating as a young child. When you are in school, learning who everyone is, the inevitable question about faith comes up. Until I was 10 years old, I applied my young mind to explaining my faith to any friend who asked what brand of Christianity I observed. I spoke with all the passion and eloquence I could muster to share all the ways in which my faith was better than anyone else’s. You see, Christadelphians also teach that they are the only ones who can inherit the Kingdom of God. And if Christadelphians don’t convert others to our way of thinking, then we ourselves are sinners who will be dealt with on judgement day.

Heavy stuff, especially for a little kid trying so much to fit in. My faith made that extremely difficult to be sure. By the age of 10 I had found a new way of answering the question about my faith – we were Protestants. Period. No more uncomfortable conversations, no more strange looks from my friends and classmates. My parents were extremely displeased to learn this is how I explained my faith. They tried to give me words that a 10-year-old would be able to relate to; I listened and did as I pleased anyway. As I look back, I see this as my first rebellion against the constrictions of a fundamentalist faith.

But I would continue to be an obedient Christadelphian daughter, attending services and events happily (at least as much as I could muster so my parents wouldn't make my life more of a living hell than it already was). I’d like to say I made friends in church, and I suppose I did, to a point. We had nothing in common beyond our church identities. Plus being in a fringe religion it’s not like there are tons of others like you in your town or school. The friends I had at church were only seen at church and church events. My parents took the snobbery of being Christadelphian to an enormous degree, feeling that we were better than all the others in our own ecclesia. They saw us in an elevated status, despite that being 100% against the rules of being Christadelphian. We didn’t associate with all those people outside of church. A position which severely hindered my ability to make friends with a common ground.

Up Next: On Being Christadelphian, Pt 3 - Rebellion

I pray to God to keep me safe during this journey, to be with me with every word I type, to guide my voice to conform to his will for me. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Spotlight

As I continue to consider putting pen to paper about my faith journey I am butting up against some seriously dark places along the way.

The journey I took started with one of the most disastrous moments in my adult life, taking me on an unwelcome whirlwind into deep forests of fear and pain.

And on the other side of all that - came God. Shining thru like a beacon, like the supreme being he always was and always will be.

Indeed. God's grace was always there as we are never alone. And his grace brings with it illumination into the dimmest reaches of our lives.

God's spotlight makes it impossible for the pain to hide in the shadows. And even better - that spotlight banishes the pain.

All you have to do it bend your knees - and ask.

I know I used this image last week. Hit me just as hard today as it did a week ago.

Contemplation

Something big has been on my heart for a long time now. I've approached it many times and each time was rebuffed by my own fear and trepidation. 

I have now dipped my toes into the vast ocean that is...my faith journey. Meaning putting it in writing. A memoir of sorts.

I don't pretend to be any sort of writer at all. Except that I do enjoy it and there can be healing in the action of writing down your own story. Even if it's only ever for yourself.

Yet there is this part of me that thinks - maybe my story can help someone else navigate theirs. 

Is that ego? Or hope? 

And so it is with my story. God is at the center of it - even though for two thirds of that time I was utterly unaware of his presence in any real way. God remained with me during the deepest, darkest times of a young life thru the darkest times of an adult life - and every weigh station in between.

I feel like I need to honor him by speaking my truths. Even if my voice shakes a bit.

Right now my thoughts are a jumble of what to write and where to put that bit of history in relation to the other bits. For now it's just isolated experiences. At some point I will need to combine them somehow, or at least that's what my research tells me.

My prayers - well right now I'm asking God to help me get it all out; we'll sort it out when the times comes. And yes, I mean "we" - God and me. With every chapter, paragraph, and word - my prayers will be ongoing for God's love & grace to guide me.

And so - without further preamble or excuses - I bare it all with the first few paragraphs of my faith history. 

On Being Christadelphian - Pt. 1

My faith history needs a bit of context. My mother grew up in the Congregational Church, my father was a Wesley Methodist. I remember being told they went to church every Sunday. I am not aware of their involvement beyond attending services.  After they got engaged, they met someone who introduced them to the Christadelphian branch of Christianity. Something clicked for them and together they took the necessary classes, converted, and were married in that faith. They even brought in my father’s parents after their wedding. My mother’s parents didn’t convert. Their reasons are lost to time.

Christadelphian - Brothers in Christ - are a special breed of Christian. In the most basic terms, they are a fundamentalist faith observing a strict interpretation of the Bible, which they believe is inspired by God rather than written by men. Their churches - ecclesias - are independent of each other, managed by a group of elected men - brothers - who handle everything from building maintenance to investments of donations. They reject the idea of a Trinity, they believe Jesus Christ, in his human form, was not divine, and they wait for that day when Christ returns to Earth to establish his Father’s Kingdom. They believe as strongly in the Old Testament as the New Testament. Believers call it “The Truth”. Salvation is thru reading scripture alone, or sola scriptura.

And they believe The Truth is for just them. No other Christian, or other form of faith except the Jews, will have the opportunity to inherit God's Kingdom. With regard to Judaism - as the favored people of God, they get a "free pass" from Christadelphians. Any other Christian faith will be found lacking on Judgement Day per Christadelphians. Because these other branches don't read the Bible to the strictest degree that Christadelphians do. Plus no other Bible study is good enough when compared to the Christadelphian Bible reading program, wherein you read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice per calendar year.

The Christadelphian faith was founded in 1848 by a doctor from England. In small part this was in response to the Radical Reformation that began in the late 17th century, which was mostly about the rampant corruption in the Catholic Church. Which is so personally ironic given my current and happy home in the Catholic faith. This reformation would create several more now-mainstream Christian branches including Anabaptists (which includes Huetterites, Mennonites, and Amish). Some Christadelphians align themselves, at least in part, with Quakers.

It is a strict faith with unyielding rules and beliefs. Not unlike many others. However, Christadelphians believe in a vengeful God even while believing in a benevolent God who gave us our ultimate savior, Jesus Christ. There is also much hate and bigotry taught in Sunday School. That will become important later. Overall, as I look back on it with decades of distance, I can see how my earliest traumas were a result of this hateful, vengeful faith. My inevitable low self-esteem and sense of unworthiness can be traced, in part, to my activities with and belief in being Christadelphian.

Up Next: On Being Christadelphian, Pt 2 - A Family of Faith