I’ve always felt a bit uncomfortable in “holy” places. This might have something to do with my upbringing. I was raised Roman Catholic, by the type of mom who would take me to mass every Sunday because it was the “right thing to do”—a ritual that I assume was often agonizing for the both of us. There is nothing more oppressive than a Catholic mass. As a kid it was simply boring, a dreaded stain on the weekend. Now, when I find myself at such a service, I am struck by how strange the whole practice is. The scripted, antiquated, unnatural speech. The way the entire audience speaks each scripted response in unison, somehow knowing exactly what to say at exactly what time. The fact that I sort of know what to say, too, despite the decade and change that has passed since my regular attendance. The fact that the script has changed somewhat since I was a kid, which somehow highlights the absurdity of the whole practice even further, because the new words are spoken by the crowd just as reverently and as unconsciously as the old ones once were. There’s an echo that has undoubtedly occurred in every Catholic wedding or funeral mass since the script change, whereby the regular churchgoers mumble the new script, and the irregular churchgoers (people who haven’t gone to church either since they were kids or since their own kids were kids) mumble the old one. The energy of the room changes upon the first echo. The dissonance momentarily wakes the crowd from their mass-induced stupor, and they look around the room, remembering that, yes, the script has changed, and yes, it has surprised them once again. This concurrent realization does not impede each subsequent echo, but instead actually prolongs them, as the irregular churchgoers, unfamiliar with the new script but still compelled to say something when prompted, hesitate and then meekly recite the old phrases, wondering which ones had changed and which ones were the same.
The whole experience brings me back to my childhood. Lately I’ve been trying to make the most of my church-related obligations. I appreciate the beauty of the architecture of the church, the stained-glass windows, or the singer’s voice. Once this wears off (as it quickly does—the majority of churches are not as awe-dropping as St. Patrick’s Cathedral), I ponder the strangeness of the ritual, its implications regarding the nature of humanity. However, this too inevitably becomes stale, and then my prevailing emotion is once again boredom. I start feeling like a kid again in the worst possible way. And then I start recalling memories. There is one moment that I think of every time I’m in church. I was really young, maybe about four years old, at a Sunday mass with my mom. It was time for everybody to kneel, so I quickly slammed down the knee-cushion attached to the bottom of the pew in front of me. I was presumably ecstatic to finally have something to do. As I did this, my mom half-whisper, half-yelled “watch the baby’s foot!” I did not see the baby that my mom must have been talking about, so for a long time afterwards I assumed that “the baby’s foot” was some kind of nickname for the knee-rest contraption (and, as you can see, I still have not learned the proper name for this object). I did not realize my error until one Sunday mass, probably a year later, in which I referred to the knee-rest as the “baby’s foot” and my mom, confused, said that there was no baby there. That was when everything clicked—the “baby’s foot” was an actual baby’s foot that I’d almost crushed with the knee-rest.1 It’s strange, the way memory works. There is no way my mom remembers this story. Yet I’ve held onto it for over twenty years.
My grandma did not feel this way about church. To her, church was a comfort, an outing, a community. She lived right across the street from her church, and went to mass every morning. She was friendly with all of the nuns, volunteered at the church with a group of her friends, played Bingo in the church auditorium. She turned to God when she felt sad, anxious, or hopeful. The support of a higher power comforted her, empowered her. She prayed every night. When I slept over her house, she prayed with me, and the prayers comforted me, too. She collected scapulars, rosary beads, angel pins. She had statues of saints in her bedroom. Occasionally, she’d give me something from her collection; she loved giving me gifts.2 She wore a necklace of saint medals (probably about ten in total) which she’d fidget with when she was anxious or bored. I’m not sure if she even took it off to sleep. The necklace is buried with her.
Early in my life (probably around age eight or nine) I came to the conclusion that God wasn’t real. It was the same time that I learned that Santa Claus wasn’t real. When I realized the truth about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, I assumed that God belonged to the same category. Then I did something strange—I kept this revelation a secret. Since every adult I knew claimed to believe in all of these things, I assumed that it was expected of me. It is strange, the types of conclusions children come to. A year or two later, my mom sat me down and informed me that Santa Claus wasn’t real, or the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny. I was entering middle school; she was trying to save me from embarrassment. I took note of the fact that she did not include God in this revelation.
It was very hard for me to restore my belief in God after this. I tried to. I wanted to believe in some kind of higher purpose, a life after death. It was simply impossible. I knew that it was false. It shocked me that my parents and grandparents believed in it. When my smug, frustrated teenage self confessed my atheism to my mother, I could not understand why she was so distraught. I did not understand why she thought it was so sad that I “believed in nothing.” I could not understand what comfort she could possibly take in a myth that was more ridiculous than Santa Claus (after all, at least the gifts under the Christmas tree were some tangible evidence of his existence). The whole thing seemed so juvenile.
I think I realize what she meant now. The God that I believed in when I was eight and rejected when I was fifteen is not real, at least in any tangible sense. One might argue that he is real in the way that Santa Claus is real—in the rituals and art created around the idea of him. But calling oneself an “atheist” because you do not believe that there is a big, bearded, white-cloaked man in the sky is just silly. That grey man is just a symbol. Look at all of the representations of God created by different cultures! I used to think that this variance proved them all false. How could any one religion be “true” when there were so many others that contradicted it? I did not see the thread of truth uniting all of these myths, that the characters were representations of abstract ideas, of fundamental truths about the world. The point of fiction and myth is to illustrate concepts that are tough to represent intellectually. Saying “humans are both good and evil” is basically meaningless in itself, just words. But through fiction, we understand such statements as true, and internalize them. That’s why we have Cain and Abel, or Macbeth, or Harry Potter. None of these stories are meant to be taken literally, but considered abstractly, they are truer than real life.
I started saying that I “believed in God” again around the same time that I learned there was more to life than could be observed or quantifiably measured. When I realized that my whole fixation with quantifiable measurement was a cult-like obsession in and of itself, that there were many things that I believed to be absolutely true that could not be measured in such a way. When I realized that this type of thought was as limiting as it was depressing—disbelieving in something due to its inherent intangibility is just as naive and logically destitute as blindly believing in it. Nevertheless, I started seeing evidence of things I could not explain. I started observing synchronicity: meaningful coincidences. I realized that my mindset influenced the way the world manifested around me, and, later, I realized that if I asked some higher power for something, it really would deliver. Not stupid, instant-gratification things, like a million dollars or a date with a celebrity. Not obviously impossible things, like immortality or a smaller nose. Things I knew I deserved, but did not previously think I was capable of. It was after this realization that I understood why my grandma trusted God so much, why my mom still believed in “him” and thought it was so important that she bring me to church every Sunday.
Religious traditions only oppress when they have been corrupted. At their purest, they are simply a means to communicate a higher purpose, or a moral compass. Everything in life is a cycle. Economies go through periods of prosperity and stagnation. Societies go through periods of enlightenment, and then “dark ages” where free thought is discouraged and morality is abandoned. When we enter such an age, we misunderstand the mythologies of yesterday. We take them too literally, then reject them altogether. We fail to see these stories for what they really are. Perhaps, then, a church can be viewed as a microcosm of the society it inhabits. Take the Catholic Church for example: an institution that is usually ridiculous, and often heinously corrupt. This is because it is made up of people. The worst, most evil parts of humanity are reflected in the Catholic Church. The most perverted, the most power-hungry. But this institution also reflects the best of humanity. Those church groups that united my grandmother with her friends. The paintings, sculptures, and music that have been created to honor these myths which move people. The kindness with which true followers of Jesus treat the people around them.
Nevertheless, I still cannot stay entertained throughout a wedding or funeral mass. My mind inevitably wanders. What made this guy decide to be a priest? He swore off sex for his whole life, that’s crazy. He must be some sort of freak. He has to have done it at least once. I wonder if he’s ever molested a child. Stop, he’s not a pedophile just because he’s a priest, that’s fucked up. Still, though, a lot of them did it. You probably know people who have gotten touched. Stop thinking about it. Ugh, how much time is left? It’s brutal—and there are just the right amount of instructions to sit, stand, and kneel to ensure that you can never zone out totally. I’ve never been able to bring myself to recite the script along with the crowd. But I love the story of Jesus, and a church—especially an old, beautiful one—can feel actually holy, as long as there isn’t a mass going on.
Earlier this month, my boyfriend and I visited the Shrine of Our Lady of the Island: a large outdoor Catholic-owned property dotted with sculptures of Biblical characters and saints. The “main attraction” was a giant sculpture of Mary and the baby Jesus atop a hill, facing a gorgeous, panoramic view that stretched on for miles. We loved it there; it was a great place to walk. It was quiet, the weather was beautiful. There was just enough to look at—statues of saints, Bible scenes, and the Stations of the Cross were dotted throughout the paved paths through the woods. Many of the statues had benches in front of them for people to kneel. Upon seeing those benches I momentarily got that uncomfortable feeling that I get in church: the feeling that I was trespassing in someone else’s space, that this place belonged to the type of person who would take the opportunity to kneel and pray. That I was supposed to find these statues sacred, not just beautiful. This feeling went away.
Then we came upon the shrine. We each had to visit it alone; dogs were not allowed. There was music playing, but it still felt quiet. When I approached it, about five or six people were kneeling before the huge Mary and Jesus statue. Some of them were alone, some were in pairs. They looked at me as I entered, warmly. I made eye contact with one lady, and we smiled at each other. The air there felt light, peaceful. I knelt, not out of compulsion, but out of reverence. This was something I hadn’t expected to do. I said a quick prayer, did a sign of the cross, and walked about twenty yards behind me to an overlook in the back. It was beautiful. I could see miles before me. I saw a valley, and a mountain behind it. Suddenly, off the cliff a few feet away from me, perfectly complementing my field of vision, three dragonflies appeared, all mingling with one another, hovering in the same spot. I was reminded of my grandma and her gifts. At one point, she decided that I really liked dragonflies—I must have really liked one dragonfly necklace that she gave me. She would snatch up any and every dragonfly-themed trinket she could find. Pins, necklaces, stickers. They’re all gone now. Thrown out when I cleaned out my old childhood bedroom, sometime before she died. But it turns out she was right. I do love dragonflies—out of all the little presents she picked up for me every time she went to the store, those were the ones that stuck with me. Sometimes when I see a little dragonfly charm in the store I’ll buy it, in memory.
My grandmother suffered from dementia for years leading up to her death—not so bad that she did not know who we were, but bad enough that it completely destroyed her short-term memory. It was sad, and I didn’t like to think about it, so I didn’t visit her often. I was able to justify this by telling myself that she would not have remembered the visit, even if I did go. I have regretted it since. But that day, in a place that was quiet and peaceful and holy in the way that most churches just aren’t, I felt that she forgave me. It makes sense that she’d meet me there. There was something different about that place, something special. Perhaps it was the way natural beauty so effortlessly married manmade beauty. I wonder if the place had been sacred before the shrine was built, or if the structure invited the good energy to collect there. Nevertheless, it seemed natural that it would serve as a cozy halfway point for spirits to visit, once they have become accustomed to somewhere far better.
The dragonflies stayed there as long as I did, hovering happily around that same spot, adding character to the landscape before me. The memories flooded me—I saw Grandma’s face in my mind, even heard her voice. I missed her. When I reconvened with John, I told him how amazing I thought the shrine was, and encouraged him to go to the overlook. He loved it, too. I wonder if he got the same “holy” feeling I did. I asked him if there were any dragonflies there. He hadn’t seen any. I did not mention my grandma.
I do not know if she was there. Maybe she’s everywhere, and the tranquility of the place simply allowed me to feel her. Maybe she’s nowhere, and it was simply a hopeful delusion brought about by the Catholic symbolism (or the dragonflies). But I like to think that we met again. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps, in that moment, she existed in the way that the white bearded God or Santa Claus exist—in the human mind. Nevertheless, I was moved. Like a faithful churchgoer singing along in a Sunday mass, or an eager and inspired artist carving the crucified body of Jesus out of a block of granite.
Let’s start a dialogue. Share your thoughts in the comments about Catholicism, holy places, or friendly ghosts.
When you really think about it, it seems nearly impossible for a baby’s foot to get caught in the foot-rest of the pew behind him. Was the baby crawling under the bench? If so, his entire body would have been in danger, not just his foot. And if the baby was sitting next to us, then his legs would have had to be freakishly long. How could that have missed my attention? The mystery continues.
She loved to collect things. When the US Mint unveiled their special fifty-state quarters, she bought us matching folders to hold all of them. Her and I would be on the lookout whenever we’d heard that a new quarter came out. If she found one, she’d keep it on the side, so that I could have the pleasure of popping the quarter into the book. She’d always let me have the first quarter. It was a ten-year-long event. My enthusiasm for our little tradition had waned somewhat by the time our collection was complete. I wonder if this upset her. I still have the collection—a prized possession.