#of course you made it about m*rcia | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

les-eaux-d-eunoe-blog · 6 years

Text

From Atheist to Pantheist to Catholic - My Conversion Story

These are only life events, and cover the Faith part of the Faith + Reason equation. I’ll need to dedicate another post to the philosophical and theological path that occurred in tandem with these events.

I hope you enjoy. :) It’s been a wild ride.

---

- I am very young and at swimming lessons for the first time. I must be 3 or 4. I fall off the platforms designed to keep our heads above water. No one notices at first. But I am not afraid, just drifting towards a light before I am suddenly yanked out of the water and coughing profusely.

- I attend Sunday school at the insistence of my Grandma. My dad is annoyed. I come home and ask my papa about God. My dad tells me that God is made up. Later in life he tells me he rejected religion when I was born, because he couldn’t understand how a pure and beautiful child could be stained by sin. He devoted his life to science after that.

This made perfect sense to me, and I carried this attitude with me throughout my life. I became a very critical observer, especially in regards to organized religion.

- My Catholic grandparents bring us to Christmas mass (and continue to do so every year.) My mom is preoccupied with keeping my sister and I quiet. My young brother causes scandal by slipping out of the pew and taking communion unbaptized. He can’t be more than 6, and just wants to participate. (He is now a Christian, for what it’s worth)

- I backpack in the Wyoming wilderness with my family around age 10. I feel a sense of peace on the mountain rimmed shore of Tomahawk lake. I feel a pattern in the grandeur, a true and humbling sense of awe. I feel something Godlike. I tell my pop, and he just smiles at me and ruffles my hair.

- I experience manipulation and physical trauma at the hands of peers I place trust in as a child and teen, which scar me deeply.

- I have several night terrors / hypnagogia as a teen where I experience ghosts, and once, a demon. I’m deeply disturbed by these experiences and don’t know how to integrate them into my beliefs as an atheist.

- My mom tries to help my bad teen acne and irregular cycles by putting me on birth control.

- I’m an average student, and a decent athlete. School is just okay. I don’t excel at much and prefer listening to music and painting in my room. I become interested in boys.

- I graduate high school, start college, and then promptly drop out. My parents kick me out of the house. I spend two years living with a boyfriend and experimenting with weed and hallucinogens.

- My dad asks me to visit my devoutly Catholic great-grandmother Olive once a month in a nursing home at the height of my rebellion. She sees nothing but good in me, despite me feeling utterly fallen. She loves me immensely, and keeps poems I wrote as a young girl in with her collection of favorite prayers.

- My boyfriend becomes abusive and the economy collapses. I lose my job, and eventually break up with him. I ask my parents for forgiveness and move back home. I return to college.

- I discover pantheism, and feel like I’ve finally found a name for the Godlike awe I’ve been chasing since I was a girl on the lakeshore.

- Eventually, my great-grandma Olive succumbs to dementia. I receive a small inheritance from her, which I put towards the cost of completing a French study abroad at a university in Normandy.

- In Normandy, I feel close to the spirit of my great-grandma Olive. Our program includes visits to churches, monasteries, and reliquaries with weekly if not daily frequency. Everything is ancient. I feel sad and disconnected from my American peers, estranged from Norman locals by the language barrier, but form a tight bond with my host family. I spend a lot of time wandering the narrow streets and drinking wine and cidre in cafés trying to make sense of the world. I buy ranunculus and place them on my night stand. I find solace in the Gothic architecture, and in the tiny orchard towns of the Old Country.

- The last week of my time in France, we visit Paris. My program director arranges for us to attend mass at Notre-Dame de Paris. There are incense and Gregorian chants. Part of the mass is in Latin, the rest is in French. I sketch the vaulted ceilings. I shake hands with a kind-eyed stranger behind me and wish him peace in English, knowing he may not understand my words but feels my intention. After mass, I walk between the arches, and I cry.

- After returning home, I spend a quick summer in my hometown, and pack to leave for Chicago to pursue a bacheor’s degree. I love Chicago and make friends. My first Easter there, I try to find a Catholic church and talk a new boyfriend into coming with me. I dress up and wear a new silk hat. He hates the service and asks if we can leave. I say no and am disappointed in him, despite neither of us being Catholic. I feel, for some reason, I should be there. Maybe because it makes me feel connected to my great-grandmother. We leave and eat strawberries in Millennium park.

- I move out of the dorms and into other neighborhoods. Subsequent years I begin to practice Lent, because I like the principle of it. It seems like a really positive challenge to me. I don’t make the mistake of dragging others with me to Easter mass anymore.

- I graduate college and struggle to find meaningful employment. My body is in tremendous amounts of pain. The doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with me though. I quit hormonal birth control to see if it helps. My body reels and tries to stabilize without the consistent dose of hormones I’ve been taking daily for the last decade. I fall into an inconsolable and deep depression for the next two years

- An acquaintance asks me to join a band. As music has been the silver thread pulling me through the darkness, I agree wholeheartedly.

I learn to play bass, and duet vocals with him as he plays lush, reverby guitar and sings in a low timbre. Over the course of the year, we fall in love. He’s tall, serious, dark, with electric blue-green eyes. He’s fiercely intelligent. His smile makes my heart leap from my chest. His name is M.

- One weekend M. and I are spending the morning together, and he casually asks if I’d like to go to Easter mass with him the next day. I’m overcome with surprised joy and happily agree. I dress up once again, and I smile at him with this unexplained feeling of pride as he leaves my side to go take the Eucharist.

- I continue to struggle with my mental health. M. really loves me and encourages me to find a therapist. I do. We find out I have PMDD, and I begin, slowly, working on improving my health.

- My grandpapa is suddenly diagnosed with stomach cancer and is placed in hospice. I fly out immediately to be with him and my family. Within the week, he’s gone. My family grieves in the small hospice chapel. I find myself praying for the peace of his soul.

During this trip, my grandmother is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, which breaks my heart. I feel like, in a way, I’ve lost both of my grandparents twenty years too early. I return home.

- My relationship progresses with M. He is a cradle Catholic, but isn’t especially devout. It’s a somber year. The next Easter rolls around, and I once again practice lent. I give up alcohol. Despite still not feeling especially Catholic myself, I begin reading the Bible, starting with the gospels “as a cultural experience.” I think it’s some kind of effort to connect with my roots. I read them on the train as I ride to the record store that I work at.

- One morning on the train, I read the parable of the 10 Virgins. I’ve never heard it before, and I don’t quite understand it. I re-read it over and over again. When I get to work, one of my co-workers is playing Johnny Cash.

- The song playing is "When the Man Comes Around." I am shocked to hear the parable of the 10 virgins in the song. And I start to wonder if what I’m reading maybe is actually trying to speak to me. So I don’t stop.

- Intrigued by my experience, I decide to fast deeply during lent. Out of curiosity, one evening in my room I try to talk to Jesus for the first time and introduce myself. Nothing spectacular happens, but the room seems to smell like sawdust and sweet wood, and I feel peaceful.

- That Easter, M.’s parents are visiting and invite us to the candlelit vigil service. It’s in a church that’s hundreds of years old called St. Michael’s. The choir is perfect and well practiced, and they sing a Capella. I watch the baptisms of the excited canidates and catechumens, dressed in their special outfits, with happy spouses looking on. I feel this sudden yearning to be one of them. I’m delirious from fasting and feel as if I’m floating. I silently cry again, and think about my grandma, great grandma, and grandpapa. We go out to dinner together and the food tastes incredible after the fast.

- In the weeks following, I keep reading the bible. It becomes my secret.

- M. and I decide to move to Arizona together, to find a better life. We are living paycheck to paycheck, and feel like we might find more gainful employment there. When we arrive, I spend most mornings standing on the edge of desert landscape, trying to achieve deep meditation to help with my mental health. I memorize the “Our Father” prayer, and say it at the beginning of each session.

- M. and I talk about maybe having children someday. He says that he thinks he might want his kids to go to Catholic school, like he did.

- At this point, I’m already deeply fascinated with Catholicism. I read about saints as I commute around town. I read about the formation of the bible and the desert fathers, I decide that I might want to maybe be Catholic. Then I find out what’s involved. The lengthy process of RCIA keeps me away, and I worry about what my fallen-away father would think. So I keep reading in secret instead.

- I want to donate to a food drive, so M. helps me find a local church to take food to for thanksgiving. They have a prayer shawl ministry. I really want to learn how to knit, so I join, despite not being Catholic or belonging to the parish.

- Months later, I become fascinated with the rosary. I decide to pray a “virtual rosary.” During that experience, I see the Virgin Mary in my mind’s eye. I see her as the female form, then as my own body. I recognize that I’m holding a lot of insecurity and tension in my body as sexual shame. Suddenly, I see my female form as completely beautiful and natural. I feel freedom and peace from that shame I’ve been carrying since I was a child. I don’t know much about the Virgin Mary, but I know that I need to learn more.

- That very night, my boyfriend and I go to see The Smashing Pumpkins. The whole set is filled with imagery referring to the Virgin Mary. I find myself saying the Hail Mary prayer in my head, over and over again. It glitters in my mind like it’s made of gold.

- I read more and more about Our Lady. And I find a small coin necklace with her image. It glitters just like the prayer. I make a pact with myself that if I decide to buy the necklace, that I’ll join RCIA.

- A few days later, I decide to buy the necklace.

- That Sunday, I feel compelled to go to mass alone, even though I’ve never done that before. I walk there. At the end of the service, the church announces its new RCIA director, who I meet after the mass. And I begin the inquiry process within weeks.

#my journey #rcia journal

14 notes · View notes