on feeling discarded

It is Monday of Holy Week. I have set up the homeschooling kids w a math test for Henry and a boring workbook for Jane, and tell Stephen I am leaving to go pray for a second in the car in front of the Eucharistic chapel at the church we don’t go to anymore. I’ll spare the details (only bc I don’t really understand them), but we used to lead music there, were replaced unceremoniously w no notice, and never heard hide nor hair from anyone there since. It was awfully like we fell out of the back door, the one near the music area where the lady who led before us used to slip out of service to smoke, and someone tossed our folders and water bottles out after us. We disappeared in an instant after investing heavily for four years in a community that forgot us entirely, as if we, and our five very noisy, very real children, dried up like the last sip of old coffee left in a hot Florida car. 

So. We don’t go there. We actually don’t go anywhere anymore. This is extra bizarre for a Catholic - we are expected to attend every Sunday, unless we are ill, and we always, always have. And now, suddenly, we don’t, and I find that it, maybe, didn’t matter so much all along, and maybe I could have been home, reading, going to Lowe’s, caring for my lawn, going swimming. 

But I’m in the car, trying to pray. I’ve brought coffee and a novel in case the prayer doesn’t work out. I don’t know why I insist on coming to this particular church. I tell myself, the next Catholic Church is too far away and inconvenient for a quick pop in. When I was younger, I used to faint when I’d have a blood draw. I’d faint every time, and the nurse would tell me just to look away, but I insisted on looking, trying to will myself, hard, into overcoming. Is this that? My friend texts me a draft of a poem he has written. I text back, “I’ll read in a bit, heading to pray at The Church that Hates Me.” This is probably not a productive title to give this place, not conducive to my healing, certainly immature. 

I’m very reluctant to listen to the live streams of Catholic parishes these days, but yesterday was Palm Sunday. I’m averse to the localities of being Catholic, but I’m still fond of the source somehow deep inside, despite me, and I turned on the Papal Mass in the car. The Gospel was chanted in Latin and I couldn’t follow and felt spared - the Palm Sunday Gospel is the long, long reading of the Passion. In Mass, parts are read aloud by different old men at different lecterns, with the people in the pews meant to read their parts, too, like “crucify him! crucify him!” and other small crowd bits. This has always felt painful to me, like grade school read alouds where all the other students were painfully slow and flat and yet you had to stay with it, lest you be called on by the teacher. But the Pope’s homily was so kind and loving. I thought, “are we sure he is Catholic?” It was such a contrast to my experience of church as late. “In welcoming the dismissed and discarded, in drawing close to those ill-treated by life, we are loving Jesus. For that is where He is: in the least of our brothers and sisters, in the rejected and discarded.” That is me this year. Discarded. Tossed like a used tissue under a pew, sitting next to Jesus. And others sit here too. So many others, who ask the Church, “can you be a mother to me?” And find that though the Church Glorified can be a mother to us, blessing us because we are, still, her own children, the Church Militant refuses us, wants to boot us out. 

I never relate to Jesus in the Passion in the Gospel - who could? Really, I never relate to Him in any of the Gospel stories. In the Passion, I am Judas, or the people in the crowd, never, never Christ. But this year I suddenly relate deeply to Jesus feeling the utter despair and anger of Judas’ betrayal, the betrayal of the institution of the Church. The betrayal by His own bride. I’m always the betraying, wandering bride myself. But this year, I am Him in the story. 

After we fell out the back door of our parish and into the smoking area of the parking lot, I went on to lose a pregnancy at 15 weeks, which then set off a slew of health issues that are newly chronic. My husband began to experience the most absolutely terrifying periods of delirium and confusion that seem like strokes or early dementia, and we are struggling for a diagnosis and some help. I began to drive to neurologist offices, talk with insurance about surgeries, file documents for second opinions. And in it, I was the alone-est alone I’ve ever been and ever felt, and somehow without the support of any parish community to bring me a casserole or call me or even care. And still we are in it, in the deepest struggle of our lives, and deeply alone.

And at this time, w the political divisions and the mask divisions (I was pregnant! We were seeking a new diagnosis for a scary thing! Of course I wanted to mask and not catch Covid - but I didn’t need to tell everyone this) and some strange Catholic divisions, I felt my former community was more interested in telling me all about the Deep State and the Deep Church and could not handle my Deep Troubles. I felt like those I spoke to hid away, or called me but spoke in cautious tones, afraid that I may not be holding up my part of the deal of being a Really Good Catholic, and God forbid, what if my troubles and struggles might be contagious? Rather than asking anything about our troubles, the calls begin with “why are you not back at Mass?” I felt former companions distance, likely because hurt can come out in all sorts of sharp, scary, ugly ways (tears, doubt, rantings) and I wonder if they were waiting to see how “toxic” I might become. If I might “deconstruct”.

Possibly part of what led to our quick dismissal from leading music was that we used to sing a lot of (probably overly) contemporary songs at Mass. We tried very hard to be sure they were not “too bethel-y” and that they were appropriate for Liturgy. But we used to sing Reckless Love sometimes, not often, even so. I promise, never for Communion. One line says “He chases me down, fights til I’m found, leaves the 99.” I don’t want to hear this song now. No one fought til I was found or chased me down, or even texted, really, unless it was to tell me I was “putting fear over faith” or some other trite alliteration. And I am so, so sad for the times I didn’t fight to find those who’d left, assumed they had someone else chasing them down. I’m so sad for this. I think of them by name now, and mull over what I should have done differently.

So I sit in my car, outside of The Church that Hates Me. Over the years that I’ve been a Really Good Catholic, certainly people I’ve known have left. Instead of fighting for them, we would say to each other “Debbie must not have really believed in the Eucharist” and other stupid, asinine things, trying to maintain our absolute distinction. This could never happen to us. We could never leave, because, Jesus. Because, I am “well catechized” and “they are not.” Because, Eucharist. Silly poorly-taught Leavers.

I apologize here for calling people out (this blog has a three-month readership of zero people, from what I can tell, and I’ve checked, so this feels like a very safe spot, where no one will get hurt) - but, as Flannery says, if they wanted me to write more flatteringly, they ought to have behaved better. And there certainly have been some kind friends to help carry us along. Flannery also says “it seems to be one has to suffer as much FROM the church as for her,” and I wonder what particulars she suffered and I hope there were good Baptist and Episcopalian and Whatever Else friends around to bring her dinners and good books and I’m comforted by her long-ago loneliness. 

Anyhow, I feel like I’ve lost Jesus, lately, like Mary, heading home from Jerusalem, who had thought He was around somewhere and then discovered that He wasn’t. I’m not sure how it happened - we were together and then quite suddenly, I noticed that He was not where I thought He was. I’ve lost sight of Him before, loads of times, but this time, I really don’t know where to find Him. 

I feel like Jesus has a bad roommate, someone who was really crappy to me, and so I tell Him, “I love you, I know you’re in there and that you’re worth it, but, I just cannot come in your house now. You’ll have to meet me out somewhere.” I think He probably will. Certainly, if I recover rightly, I’ll fight for the lost and the outsider and those who the church doesn’t seem to want, those who the church says are “fake Catholics” or “cafeteria Catholics” or whatever awful terms I used to use my own horrid self, with a new and deep compassion. I hope. And I want to tell you this ugly, possibly incriminating story (surely we must have done something wrong) about our awful year because, I suspect I’m not the only one with this sort of story. And I think, I found myself wondering hard if I have any worth as a Not Very Good Christian. All my value and worth has been in how well I have Catholic’ed. And I’m not going to keep Catholicing well right now, and, will I still be worth anything?

I am finding this bit of writing here, a draft I never shared, a bit more than a full year later, and I still feel the same. This church-hurt is the first thing I think of when I wake in the morning. I think of it in the night when I can’t sleep. I think of it when I am waiting in doctor’s offices, still waiting for a diagnosis, more and more desperately as time goes on. We returned to Mass when the Bishop here lifted the dispensation, but we go to a far-away parish where no one knows us. We sit outside in the courtyard, where our kids barely participate, and each week I wonder if it even counts. When we leave, the priests says to us, “enjoy your vacation!” He does not know us. I do not want him to know us.

This undoing for me is very uncomfortable, particularly as a mama who has fought to raise her little ones to love the Church. I wonder what they’ll see in this. I wonder if some good lessons can come, instead of a black blight on their paths to God. I hope. I hope trudging it all out will bring a new depth of understanding and compassion and I’m hoping I’ll lean into that and not into any bitterness, not let a bitter root strangle everything and dry us all up. I see that the faith of the older children has certainly changed. They make derisive jokes about the church. I am still trying to teach them to love the larger Church, but they feel the sting of the local parish, and they don’t have the ability in their youth to see the Church widely. Everything I spent their lives fighting for and teaching them has seemed to unravel in a swift second, leaving a mess that I cannot sort for them. I am angry about it.

I suspect that I was looking so often for the idol of belonging and community and not really for Jesus. I’m hoping that this opening of a wound will heal that falseness in me. We belong to the holy posse, we feel less lonely, we are in the Church insiders club, we walk like pompous kings on Palm Sunday, but then it is Thursday in the lonely garden, and everybody is careless and asleep. I know that “the church is not the people”, but also, it is the people. I’m somehow not able to really see past them right now. It feels like God is in some really sterile, scary place, like my storage unit late at night, down a long lonely echoing hall, and tonight, I just can’t go in there. Maybe tomorrow. I’m going to stand outside for a while. 

“He held him under while he said the words of Baptism and then he jerked him up again and looked sternly at the gasping child . . . . ‘You count now,’ the preacher said. ‘You didn’t even count before.’” - Flannery O’Connor, “The River”