How will my child be raised.....

I've been thinking today about my will. Right now if something happens to my spouse or I, my children will be raised by my sister and her husband. I think I should change it, though.

My sister is a great mom. Her kids are very happy and well-adjusted. Except for this one thing. Freakin' religion again. My sis and her DH are very conservative Christian. At times so much that I think she's been brain washed. The girl I grew up with is missing in some ways. In other ways, not at all.

I had a conversation with her the last time she was at my house about her faith. I asked if she really thought that people who weren't Christian automatically go to hell regardless of the way they lived their lives. Her response.. yes. unequivocally. I told her my thoughts on the matter: basically that the way we live our lives is more important than the reasons for living that way. That God doesn't care what your religion is. She said she used to believe that, but her views were challenged by a Baptists preacher and while she didn't agree with him, she did come to believe that Christianity is the only way and it's her job as a Christian to convert others and save them from hell.

Sorry, I flatly refuse to believe that my devote Hindu and Muslim friends are automatically dammed. I think God speaks in many different tongues so many different people can hear the message. Plus, I don't think God's ego is quite so fragile as to require absolute subservience. Why else do we have brains and free-will?

So that brings me back to my will and my kids. It's hard because I love my kids and I know that my did and her husband love them with all their hearts. They'd be well provided for and protected in their household. BUT, I don't like the idea of my kids being taught something that's so NOT what I believe. It goes against so many of my core values. Their kids have the same sort of rigid thinking that they do. Of course all kids do to some point, but I want my kids to know that it's OK to question. It's OK to have different opinions. It's OK to express them. In fact you should express them in the best, more respectful way that you can. Dialog is so important.

So I think I'm changing my will. Luckily, I also have this great brother. He's a great dad and uncle. He and his wife also have 4 kids. So if, God forbid, they have to add my 2 to the mix Oy! what a noisy, chaotic house. Who knows, could be fun.

A Catholic Agnostic?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I truly believe. Do I even believe in a god that is the great conductor in the sky? Or do I say I believe because that’s what I was taught to do? Most of my extended family is Catholic and those that are not have immersed themselves in other Christian faiths with gusto. Heck I even have a cousin who has thought seriously about entering the priesthood.

And yet, I’m beginning to acknowledge that most of my religious observances are part of going through the motions learned long ago. Easter is coming soon. It’s also my husband’s birthday. I’d rather celebrate his birthday than the supposed resurrection of someone that I’ve been taught to think was half-god half-man….kind of like Hercules was. So ho much of Christianity, of all religion in fact is mythology that people believe as truth.

I continue to be struck by that idea of Christianity as mythology as I work in my daughters Faith Formation classes. Some of the stories we tell them are completely preposterous. I mean who did Cain and Abel marry if they were the only children of the first humans on earth. Oh, yeah, that other tribe just appeared. And what about the story of the flood? Every living thing on earth was destroyed, and the earth was repopulated from one family and pairs of everything else. Really? Then how the heck do we have all the different races and subspecies. Did Noah really pick up a pair of each of the millions of kinds of beetles in the world? I would say that life just evolved into other things from that point, but that would be cheating.

What I’m most struck with is the need that we all seem to have (myself included at times) to believe in something beyond what humans are capable of. Why does Christ have to be both man and god, why can’t he, and all the other holy men just be man? It seems to me that it is almost more extraordinary for a man, fully human, born of questionable parentage, to rise up and tell people stories that shifted their view of the world and continues to do so for thousands of years. Just a man telling people to love each other. Killed for his words. Inspiring generations. Why does that man have to be a god? Is the story more believable if he “rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures”?

Why does God have to be at the root of the story. If you think about it, really think about it. Jesus’s life is much more amazing if he did it all as a man born from the union of man and woman as we all are. Emulating that kind of man is also more attainable for the rest of us.

A conversation with a religious conservative

I spent the day with my brother-in-law a few weeks ago (a real treat). I adore my BIL but we are at different ends of the political spectrum. I mentioned that I was considering enrolling my daughter in the Catholic school that my nieces go to (not his kids). He immediately said something about how great it is to not have to deal with the prayer in school issue.

For me, that's almost a reason to not do it. My thoughts are more towards smaller class sizes, personal attention, parental involvement and the fact that her cousins are there. It's not about prayer in schools. In fact, given that I shudder at some of the lessons she hears in Faith Formation (aka Sunday School), I'm really really on the fence about sending her to a school in which she's be going to mass every morning.

Don't get me wrong, I choose to practice Catholicism and I think that being raised within religion provides a sound moral framework for a child. It's just that my opinion of some of the teachings, especially the Old Testament stories, are so out of whack with Church doctoring.

How do you teach a child to respect the values of the teachings without encouraging them to believe the supposed facts of the teachings?

My history

My mother says about herself “I was Catholic before I was born.” This is also true for me. I was raised in what I can only describe as a liberal Catholic Church. In the days post-Vatican II, my church in Northern Oklahoma was one that took the kneelers out of the pews, brought the font onto the alter, and added Children’s Masses complete with visits from Santa Claus and the Great Pumpkin. That church was truly second home to me. It was the only way that I knew to be Catholic.

When I was in high school, my family moved from the town I grew up in. The spiritual home of my childhood was gone. I soon learned that for most people “liberal Catholic” is an oxymoron. I felt out of place and uncomfortable in the more traditional church. Therefore, like others before me, I went searching for my spiritual home.

I can’t say that my faith journey has had any structure to it. I’ve attended other Christian services, read books on Wicca, sat in Native American sweat houses, taken courses on eastern cultures, dabbled in meditation and observed the practices of my Islamic friends. My instincts and emotions have guided my spiritual journey so far, I have along the way developed a points-of-view regarding the nature of religion, spirituality and God different from those I have encountered so far.

For myself, I’ve discovered that I operate much more consistently in a structured environment. While meditation and solitary practices are nice, I am, in fact, too lazy to continue them on my own. I also found myself missing the ceremony and music of mass. Also, when the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church became public I found myself in heated debates about how these things could happen. Often, I heard myself defending the churches actions. Clearly I was not done with the Catholic Church nor was she with me. I became a “returning Catholic” almost by instinct. Despite my skeptical nature, I rely more on intuition than intellect in matters of faith. Ultimately, whether “liberal” or not, my home still is the Catholic Church.

I question the legitimacy of my being a member of the Church all the time. Heck, I help teach Sunday School and cringe sometimes at what my daughter's being taught. But still, there I was on Ash Wednesday with that mark on my forehead doubts and all.

A beginning of sorts

I am not qualified to write about this. I’m not a great religious thinker. I have not spent years in scholarly pursuit of the TRUTH about Life. I have not studied with great masters. I have not done anything that would have me be someone that people would turn to for spiritual direction or enlightenment.

I am at best a casual Catholic.

So why am I writing this? Why do I presume that anyone would want to read it? Who am I to announce to the world my point of view about spirituality? I am nobody. Perhaps, I am also you.

Despite being a lay-person, I think about religion, spiritually and God almost daily. Not in the same way that many of my friends and family do. I don’t read scripture, I rarely pray. Mostly I think on the role of religion in life and the role of God in the world. I question and examine my way of thinking constantly. I also silently debate the opinions of others. I don’t want people laying their opinions on me and I refuse to do the same to others. The intent of this exercise is to allow my opinion to be heard (or read as the case may be) not to declare that I know the truth about something. Certainty breeds laziness.

I’m beginning to think that I’m the reincarnation of Doubting Thomas.

I’ve found myself in recent years having more conversations about faith, religion and spirituality than I have had before in the 30-odd years before. Perhaps it is a sign of my age as I approach that first sign post indicating “middle age”. Perhaps it is a sign of the world that I am living in as religion gets increasing attention in media and politics. Perhaps it is simply time to say what I have to say.

So, I take my thoughts and questions and musings and fling them out in to the world like so many have before me. I don’t know how it will go, but I do promise to stay somewhat on topic. Perhaps I’ll find fellow doubters out in this vast virtual community.