more off-topic no-books stuff

like everyone else on the st. leo's email list, i received a link to the survey talked about here.

at first i wasn't going to take it, but eventually i did. and being who i am, of course i have criticisms to make about it. it's primarily full of questions about my parish, and ends on some questions about the church in general. as the article notes, it doesn't ask any truly controversial questions, although i was able to passive-aggressively fill in some bubbles about parish closings. what bothers me about the survey is that it doesn't ask me anything about, for instance, the archdiocese of Detroit. it's like being given a survey by your management team that asks you to rate your coworkers, your supervisor, even the company, but doesn't care how you feel about the management team. i have complaints, yes, about my parish or the church in general, but lately i think i have more about the AoD.

my most ambivalent feelings, though, have nothing to do with the content of the survey. first of all, i took it. i started it out of curiosity, then quit, then went back to it and ended up being more emotionally invested in it than i expected. so emotionally invested that i lied on one of the questions. late in the survey, you're asked what your status in the church is. and instead of telling the truth, which is that i'm not catholic, i lied and said i had converted. at the time, i explained this to myself by saying that whoever reads this survey will be less likely to pay any attention to my opinions. what do they care what some heathen who drops in at st. leo's every week thinks the church's biggest challenges are, or what makes me keep going, or what would make me stop going to mass?

and all of this sounds perfectly reasonable, except why do i care? because apparently i do. i seem to have an emotional investment in this, in being taken seriously. and that's a change that seems to mean something, even if i'm not yet sure what.

i haven't talked to my friends about this, for the most part. a couple of them know that i'm studying with sr. sue, and most know that i'm friends with sue and sr. maryfran. but even with the few i've talked to about studying, we don't talk about what it means, or where it goes. one of my friends has informed me openly that he'll have no respect for me if i convert. it's all been very In The Closet for me. so this means something, but i don't know what it means or how i feel about it yet.

“Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.”

this is supposedly about my studies, but my personal life gets mixed up in my studies sometimes.

i've been seeing this guy for awhile who is more religious than i am. he's encouraged me to explore this side of myself. we have conversations about it that i find thought-provoking and satisfying. my unconventional spirituality is something we've made our peace with.

that's the nice story. the blunter version is that he's catholic, he wants this to go somewhere, and he wants to be married to one someday. he thinks that might be me. as much as we've made our peace with our religious differences, that's in our private life. publicly, his family and friends are catholic in a conventional sort of way, and they already look at me sideways. i know that if i didn't get baptized they'd become frowns. i know that even if i did someday, some of them, maybe many of them will never believe i mean it. and we'll probably face questions at every turn if we try to do things in unusual ways.

recently, a couple he's friends with asked him to be a godfather to their impending child. i knew this institution existed, but not much about it. i probably wouldn't have ever looked into it, except that he kept asking me how i felt about it. it was obvious that this was something more significant than i'd previously realized. after all, he's asking me how i feel about it, and we're nothing, right now. he's asking me if i mind him being tied to these people forever, even though there's no evidence that he and i will be tied together.

not long ago, we attended a wedding, and i sat through it with the critical eye of someone who might someday be asked to submit to one. i notice things he doesn't. the way the mass excludes anyone not in the church. i imagine my family and friends standing there, looking awkward, while everyone on his side of the altar receives communion. i imagine my half of the room, and it would be a pretty paltry half, sitting and waiting while the six thousand people he'll be obligated to invite go up to receive.

so we'd already talked about my discomfort with that. and now this. the other day, on the way home from church, i asked him if any child i had would have to be baptized with godparents. the answer, apparently, is yes. and would they have to be catholic? he didn't know.

so i looked it up:

"What if someone would like to have a faithful Protestant friend as a sponsor? Technically, only Catholics can be godparents or sponsors. A Christian of another denomination, whether Orthodox or Protestant, however, may be a "Christian witness" to the baptism along with the Catholic godparent. The reason for this distinction and restriction is that the godparent not only is taking responsibility for the religious education and spiritual formation of the baptized person, but also is representing the Church, the community of faith, into which the person is being baptized. A Christian who is not Catholic, although perhaps a very holy, Christian, cannot fully attest to the beliefs of the Catholic Church."

most of my friends and family aren't even protestant. before, i was trying to imagine the reactions of his family if i said i wanted to make an atheist godfather to my child. and imagining the reactions of mine if i excluded them entirely from this. these people, whoever they end up being, will play some role in the life of my child. am i prepared for that connection to come exclusively from his side of the family? 

as i said in the opening, it's hard for me to sort out my personal life and my studies. often, i've made my peace with a higher power. i've made my peace, somewhat, with the church. i can like its social mission and hate its politics and live with that. i understand that the church - especially the church as personified by the church i attend here in Detroit - will let me keep being who i am and still be a part of them. but i'm not always sure that that's true of my relationship with him. i feel sometimes like i'm being swallowed up. i'm afraid my life will be his life, plus my cynical commentary. i'm afraid of all the time i'll spend making polite small talk with people i can't identify with. i'm afraid my wedding will be so much more his wedding, that my children will be so much more his children. i'm afraid that very little of who i am, the influences that make me who i am, will be part of their lives.

i want them to be kind to those less fortunate. i want them to believe that love is always good and that gender and sexuality are flexible. i want them to believe that prayer is a dialogue with themselves and the universe and whatever higher power they believe in. i want them to know the value of silence. i want them to struggle sometimes. and i want them to hear my grandmother's laugh, and the liquid accents of my family. i want them to be able to laugh about going without, because they've lived through it and learned that it's not the end of the world. i want them to be as likely to turn to my brother's humor as his sister's quiet cheerfulness for their spiritual guidance. i want them to think of thomas as their uncle. 

this is harder to write than another reflection on my reading. there's no easy conclusion. 

sex makes promises

this is something cozzens says - that sex makes promises. and as much as my usual response to any religious person discussing sex is to roll my eyes, i admit that it touched something in me.

my approach to sex, which i'm sure is difficult for both secular and religious people to understand, is rather bipolar. on the one hand, i see it as an adult act, which should be done with respect and affection, but need not be done in the confines of a committed relationship. it is something i can divorce from love, or from love-that's-going-someplace. i've had one or two casual encounters that were only that. and we were friends, and it was comforting, but we both knew the limits of it. and it's like dancing with someone you don't know, or don't know very well. you can enjoy it, but you set boundaries, on what you'll do, how exposed you'll be. you don't dance with that person the way you dance with your established partner - you take risks with that person, you feel more secure.

and then there's a place for me where it becomes something else. and then i stop being this pragmatic person and become this...i don't know. romantic person, maybe.

peter tells me that i talk about sex sometimes as if i use it as a yardstick, or a thermometer; it tells me whether the relationship i am in is healthy. i'm not sure if that's true. perhaps it is the fact that at some point i begin to dance with this person as an established partner, i start to take risks. it becomes more intimate, and thus, more vulnerable. i have heard people say that casual sex and premarital sex make you numb to intimacy, but that hasn't been my experience. vulnerability is nakedness. apparently i'm more willing to have sex with someone than to take my clothes off.

so maybe i don't feel that sex makes promises. i feel that intimacy makes promises. and i think, as cozzens also suggests, really, that it would be a mistake to confuse sex with intimacy. some people may not be self-aware enough to put them in conversation with one another. others, i'm sure, are more self-aware about it all than i am. but, yes, intimacy makes promises, and like most people who want to make a life with someone, at some point i begin to want those promises.

i don't really know where this is going. it's just been on my mind.

cozzens, chapter on prayer

i haven't written about the other chapters in this book, for various reasons. time. laziness. etc.
but i probably also have the most to say about this, because i find prayer difficult. the last time i met with sister sue, she asked me about prayer, and i told her frankly that i'm ambivalent about it. that i don't know how i feel about it. it seemed then, to her, like the logical next thing to discuss. so she gave me an entire book on it, which i've begun, in addition to reading the chapter in cozzens.

cozzens says some things i find encouraging about prayer, but also some i'm less encouraged by. how's that for a topic sentence i'd nail my students to the wall for?

he says that the will to pray is a lot like prayer, and that it shouldn't be forced. okay. so far we're in accord. he says most of us grapple with the god-beyond-god, so we content ourselves with praying to the superparent god, the one we can only ever seem to say "help me," or "thank you," to. again, okay. but i also think maybe this hits on the root of some of my difficulties.

i don't want to pray to the superparent. i don't think i have wanted to for a very long time, maybe not ever. luke told me once that the hardest thing about losing his faith was breaking that habit of prayer. i didn't have that problem. i remember praying, of a sort, when i was in the midst of losing my faith. if you can call weeping accusation prayer. i was angry, and frightened, and didn't know where to direct those things. but when i passed that stage, i really stopped praying in the way where one addresses oneself directly to a being.

that said, it isn't like i never pray. i think it mostly happens for me, though, in inarticulate moments. when i am scared and something in me thinks "no," or "please," but i'm alone, so those thoughts get aimed at, wherever, at whatever may be listening. when i am feeling profound gratitude or happiness, and it seems to go beyond whoever is around me. when i'm not just grateful to adrienne, for instance, but for her, for her existence, for the events that allowed us to meet, for the gift of her friendship.

these are obviously prayers to the superparent god. i do them, without thinking about it, but when someone wants me to do it on purpose, i am defensive, resistant. inside my head, i roll my eyes.

when i have dinner with peter, he prays. i suppose we pray, although i never do it aloud, a thing which i imagine concerns him. he always prays for his family, for our mutual friends, for my family. i accept this. when mike seamster died, i cried as he did it. but some part of me doesn't join in. for one thing, as cozzens says, this suggests a god attentive to every little detail, a micromanaging god, and i don't really imagine god that way. for another thing - how selfish. really. when brad was dying, when my grandparents are in the hospital, i thought 'please don't.' but i was ashamed of it, on some level. do i believe that they matter more than other people? only to me, perhaps. do i believe that if i pray harder i get what i want, and others who don't pray won't? surely not. so then why? what makes my loved ones so special? if i get one wish today, why isn't it for syrians dying in a civil war or palestinians, and not for peter's mom's serious but in no way life threatening surgery? why isn't it for the miraculous healing of the ozone layer? if this is a thing to spend energy on, how can i possibly take myself seriously praying for these very little things?

so this is my problem. if it "works," why are we all so petty? if it doesn't, what's the point?

it's a really mundane dilemma. i recognize that.

this is the point, in an academic argument, where the author would turn and say well, the function's not the point. which cozzens, to some extent, does. but he also falls back on the ineffability of the universe, reminding us that studies show that "subatomic particles can influence each other even though separated by enormous distances," and saying that "Such reports lead me to imagine that creation is indeed in a state of unimaginable communion" (117). i'm phallocentric rational child of the enlightenment enough to believe in "magic" by suggesting that since we don't understand what our brains are capable of, or how much we influence one another, that i can light a green candle for your benefit, act as if it worked, and perhaps influence you enough unconsciously that it DOES work. so perhaps once prayer becomes spooky action at a distance i can pray for peace. although, probably, still not for nice days for someone's damned wedding, or for someone to find a job they like. and it's worth noting here that while i prayed in my desperate inarticulate way for brad's life, i prayed harder when he was dead. for there to be something. for there to be rest, if nothing else. for a good man to have what it seemed to me any just universe must see he deserved.

i don't know what that means.

cozzens suggests also that prayer, aside from being spooky action, should be love. rather than ask for my cousin to find a job she feels a calling for (and ugh, how i hate this vocabulary. a calling. your vocation. fellowship. it reeks of sanctimoniousness for me. i can't quite put my finger on why. are your gatherings so much better than those of us the rest of us, christians? we get careers, but you get freaking vocations? shut up.) i pray that i love her and want what's best for her, even if i don't know what that means.

on the one hand, i see this. it seems like what i already can understand, which is accepting my powerlessness in a chaotic world (even if i'm not good at it). but it also still suggests, which cozzens doesn't necessarily get into, a micromanaging god, just one with plans i'm too stupid to grasp. and i don't know that i care for that either. it's still not how i see god. it's why i've never believed god honestly cares about whether i think sexual thoughts, about whether i tell individual lies. we confess deeds, but i don't think it's about deeds. it's about patterns. do i treat others well, in all my dealings? if my white lies and my blunt truths, my actions, my promises, my sex, if all of them are in the name of loving my friends and lovers and being fair to those outside that circle, i don't know if i believe the individual deeds matter too much. people go to confession for an act of sex, but they don't discuss the larger pattern of whether what they're doing (the sex or the apologizing for it) is harming them, harming their partners, whatever. bad example, perhaps. but my point stands.

so far this is a lot of bitching. so what do i like? not unexpectly, cozzens discusses things like mindfulness and intentionality. the idea that we can go through our day in a prayerful way - by trying to see a bigger picture. which is maybe in line with the critique i just made, although since that connection just now clicked for me, i'm not confident i believe it yet. that i try to see beyond the day to day, and my embeddedness in it. i admit that this is tough for me, because in graduate school a lot of my life has been just do the next thing, get through this week, this day, this class. a fellow student once suggested that they keep us so busy so we can't ask why we're here, why we're even doing this, if this is what we want. and i think, as i thought when he said it, that there's truth there.

the closest i feel to intentionality, to prayer that gets at whatever is there comes in odd moments. sometimes when i am at church and there is singing and i feel connected to something, in harmony with something. when i marched with occupy and the buildings flung our voices back at us and i felt...outside myself. or tied to all these people, swept up in something that made us fearless and better than ourselves. when i run, sometimes, and i feel like i am fully in my body, like i am fiercely enjoying it, what it can do, this day, the sky, the cars, the feel of the ground under me, this moment, this movement for the sake of this feeling. i'm not explaining well. these moments are rare. more often, are my inarticulate glimpses of profound fear and gratitude.

maybe i should be encouraged by that. cozzens seems to suggest that this type of prayer, spontaneous, unforced, unscheduled, is closer to pure prayer. but when i read that i think, well, that's nice and all. but that doesn't get you through a meal with someone. it doesn't stop you cringing from the artificiality of it. not long ago, at peter's house, i was invited to be the one who said the prayer, and i felt blind panic and rejection. what can i do? jump up and run? fumble my way through an explanation that like cozzens, i find myself better at this in stillness, in silence?

i become frustrated sometimes, because what i read might tell me how to be a christian in my own way. but it doesn't tell me how to live with other christians. how to make them understand.

but this isn't the point, and shouldn't be the point. it's not cozzens's job, or sue's job, to help me explain myself to someone like my grandmother, or a partner, or a friend, a friend's father, whatever. and if the point of all of this is to help me live with those people, i ought to just stop wasting my time and do what they do, without question, without reflection. because all this can do is what study has always done for me my whole life - give me a vocabulary that brings me closer to myself, my discipline, my life's work, my understanding of the universe, my feelings for others, while pushing me further away from most everyone else. i don't know where to end this. i wouldn't trade that understanding and that vocabulary for a chance to fit in.