This I Believe

Growing up Catholic is an amazing spiritual legacy, or it could be if you were the type of person that believed without question all the myriad things that are contained within the Roman Catholic catechism. My parents encouraged blind acceptance, but as you can see, I chose to open my eyes.

I realized in elementary school that some of the things I was supposed to do and say and believe didn’t make any sense to me, and when I asked questions my mother (for it was only to my mother that I voiced my earliest questions) told me that Saints are holy and we should pray to them because it says to in the Baltimore Catechism. That was her response to many of my questions. Now, I had never seen this illusive Baltimore Catechism, but it was the book that she and my father learned from when they attended Catholic school in the 50’s. My mother bought a copy about 10 years ago so I’m sure she’s fully versed in what Catholics can and do believe.

In 9th grade I increased the questions and the (supposedly) rude comments about “our” religion. I was tired of Catholic school, tired of being told what to do, what to wear, and what to believe. We had one World Religions class, which touched briefly on a few other religions, but always with the same pitying attitude of “gosh, aren’t you amazed they think they know the way to heaven? Those poor souls. Let’s pray that they find out about Jesus and the Pope and convert.” Catholics were even supposed to feel this way about other Christian religions since, as my grandmother pronounced, a person (read in man) started all religions besides Catholicism and Catholicism was started directly by Jesus. Can you imagine the guilt??

Once I left home at 17, I stopped doing church in any form. My religion was my acting and singing, talking with people about interesting things, and being outside. Having children made me realize that if I didn’t give them some sort of spiritual foundation they would not have anything to start from when they felt the need to rebel. We started attending the small UCC church in the village where we lived in VT. I baptized my children to get my parents to visit and also to demonstrate my commitment to the community we had chosen. It really had nothing to do with Jesus, or saving souls.

Moving to Asheville and joining UUCA has allowed me to really think about what I believe and how I put my beliefs into practice. So here’s what I do believe, today, at age 34.

I believe that the world is round…and very small when you realize that the six-degrees-of-separation theory actually amounts to about 1.5 degrees in Asheville.

I believe that a good cry followed by a good laugh brings a feeling of peace equal to an hour of meditation, and is, in fact, a form of meditation.

I believe that the act of creating or listening to music brings about our spirit’s discovery of a new facet of itself.

I believe we are sensual beings: the sight of thunderclouds, the smell of a ripe peach, the sound of a river or children laughing, the sublime deliciousness of dark chocolate, red wine, and a hot bowl of my famous chili with an ice cold beer in January are all ways that bring me back to the blessings of living this life, in this body, within my current paradigm.

I believe that my children, and yours, deserve to live lives free from fear, harassment, ridicule and shame. I believe it is my right and responsibility to promote that very cause as much as I can.

I believe that the personal is political and that the best way to effect political change is by touching one person at a time.

I believe that love must be dynamic in order to survive. Each person in a relationship must honor the changes within themselves and respect the changes in the other. Learning to let go of expectations and BE HERE NOW is at the heart of a living, breathing, growing relationship—whether with children, parents, co-workers or partners.

I believe in a Divine Other, an original spark from which we, and all other beings come. In ritual I choose the word Goddess because a feminine deity makes verbal sense to me. I honor the earth, the moon, the cycles and seasons of the year, and I see in them a reflection of the cycles and seasons of my life. I set goals at Imbolc. I notice my growth at Summer Solstice. I honor the first fruits of my labor at Lammas. I mourn and release the deadness of my life at Samhain and I look to the darkness of winter for wisdom in the coming year. I honor the spark of life in the returning of the light at Winter Solstice. My pagan spiritual practice keeps me grounded in the here and now, while allowing and encouraging my expansion and change to accommodate new information and insight. My spirituality is dynamic – not dead – and relates to my UU values every day.

Finally, I believe as Mary Oliver says in her poem “Wild Geese” that we “do not have to be good…(We) only have to let the soft animal of (our) body love what it loves.” We share our despair and “the world goes on and offers itself to our imagination and calls to us like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—over and over announcing (our) place in the family of things.