conversion

My father died in April of 2018. When I asked him how he wished to be remembered, before he died, he said, “as an enthusiastic Catholic”. He had converted to Catholicism when I was 15 and he was 48, out of a tradition of staid Protestantism. He sank deep into the spiraling Mobius strip of Catholic theology and tradition and moved away from the straight, pragmatic lines of American Protestantism. I never knew the Catholic Church that many complain about; rules and judgment and pedophile priests. What I knew, those last couple years of childhood, were the Camaldolese monks at the monastery and the Franciscan brothers who gave mass early Thursday mornings when Dad and I would go at dawn. Whatever this ritual was, it was entirely different from the wonder bread Protestantism with their three-point alliterative sermons I was used to. It felt like taking part in something entirely ancient and otherworldly, where Sunday school with the Presbyterians was some cross between a cosmetic surgeon’s waiting room and a self-help book convention.

After high school I lived in missionary communities in Central America for three years. I was deeply devout, in that I was sincerely trying to understand my life in the context of a Biblical faith, and the life and death of Jesus Christ. I read and underlined in my NIV, copied out psalms and folded pages. I remained a virgin by Clintonian standards. I was particularly confused by the crucifixion and spent a lot of time trying to understand what it meant. I prayed to be blessed by the Holy Spirit; wept and cried and prayed to Jesus in circles of devout women. The evangelical movement was sweeping Latin America in those years; Catholic churches were like dark gray dusty outposts of irrelevance as compared to the vibrant tambourine-shaking Pentecostals.

I returned to the US at age 21, and moved into secular college life, somewhat older and stranger than many of the other kids. I felt it my duty to proselytize, but didn’t have the heart after one or two shameful encounters. My religiosity morphed into the political idealism of the very young. I became predictably agnostic; in my early thirties I tried to find a church community and found all the Christian churches talked about Jesus too much, like he was some weird brand of Starbucks drink, bound to make one feel better, and with the Unitarians they crept around the fact of the name of Jesus like it was a load in someone’s pants. At coffee hour after service with the Unitarians I was invited to a dozen groups of do-gooders and Jungians and meditators, in a great community circling a vast unspoken void defined by what was absent. I left the church in body if not in heart.

Until Dad died. In his final couple of years, I remember I had a conversation with him in which I was once again challenging him about how he knew God to exist. It was the first time he petered out on a conversation of that kind, and it was when I pretty much knew he was dying. He got a bit into the conversation and then said to me that he couldn’t keep talking and fell asleep. Prior to that he would maintain ground with me in which I could tell that I was not actually asking the interesting question. But it was where I was stuck and it was what I challenged him with. The question of “belief” in God being as irrelevant as someone asking if I “believe” in my own child. I don’t believe in him; I experience him. I wish now I had asked him how he felt when he knew the love of God; how he felt God was with him in his suffering, how he understood his life to be transformed by being loved by God. Those are the questions I wish I had asked, but I remained stuck in the irrelevance of existence; my father died while I was still a child, perhaps true for each and every one of us in that we maybe never grow up until alone in the world, fatherless.

Three months after he died, I remember receiving the revelation of a desire to convert to Catholicism while on a run. It had literally never occurred to me once in my entire life prior to that date. It hit me with a full force, complete and total, not as a question but as a recognition. I started to attend mass at St. Andrews. The parish of St. Andrew’s in Portland, Oregon is the pariah of the conservative archdiocese, Father Dave accepted along with the gay pride flags that hang from the balcony likely only because he is expected to keel over from a heart condition one of these days soon, such that a more conservative priest can be appointed with all haste before Fr. Dave is cold in the ground.

I would always arrive late, and go in the side door. The congregation felt like a group of refugees, heavily LGBTQ, African American, and the rest straight Portland white folks. Women gave the homily as often as not. I stood in communion line and folded my arms to receive a blessing each week. I would have crawled across broken glass through the streets of Baghdad to receive that blessing. The moment of eye contact; the gentle recognition that I was not a communicant, the blessing upon my forehead. I cried every single week. At the same time, I had told Clayton that I believed we needed, finally, after twelve years, to get a divorce. It would take 15 more months before we would separate; months spent loving one another as well as we ever did, telling all the truths. I felt like I was moving before flames as my life burned down in slow motion behind me.

In September of that year, I started attending the RCIA class. It was myself, a few DACA (dreamer) kids, a sweet soon-to-be-married couple, an attorney. The class was run by Michael, the gay liturgy leader and his husband, and Matt, the middle-aged seminarian upon whom I quickly developed a schoolgirl crush of mammoth proportions.

Each week, we were led through various rituals and ceremonies. I had oil placed in my palms, my forehead, my feet. I was granted sponsors, who adopted me like the luckiest puppy at the pound. I confessed to the congregation my intentions. Hands were placed upon me; I was welcomed and prayed for and recognized and loved. For once, it did not matter who I was or what I did, the ceremony was the same for me as it was for each of the others. I could be stupid or smart, white or brown, rich or poor, an absolute asshole or the virgin mary herself, and it made no iota of difference to the process I was granted. After years of swimming in the ocean of agnosticism, I felt like I was hauled, nearly drowned, aboard a giant beat up old Spanish galleon, a ship bloody with battles, and sailed by sailors a thousand years old. They hauled me up, gasping, onto the deck, and promised me a home. Within this old tradition, there was no heartache that my life would ever concoct that a thousand others on this very ship had not gone through before me. No crisis that would ever transcend or surpass or overwhelm the cumulative wisdom contained therein. It was a humbling and an acceptance; here I stake my ground; here I plead for acceptance and admission.

The night of my confirmation, the ceremony went on hour after hour. Candles were lit and chants were made. At last I was brought before the congregation. The lights were off, only candles lit, and a golden light surrounded me and my sponsors and Father Dave. The congregation chanted, over and over, Veni Sancte Spiritus, I felt the loving hands of my sponsors on my back, and heard their voices, distinct, chanting over me; parents in a way I never had, united, loving me, holding that circle for me. Fr. Dave crossed my forehead with oil. I was blessed. I became a Catholic, my name written in a book. Even if I want to leave I cannot. I belong, until death.