Practically Spiritual.

Protect Us From All Anxiety: My Catholic Re-Conversion (Sort Of)

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."  -Sir Francis Bacon

Here in Massachusetts, Roman Catholicism is the quintessential religious experience. With a regretful grimace, most Bostonians you meet will identify themselves as fallen Catholics. Most of us know someone who was affected by the priest abuse scandal. For us, the sight of a church spire is, at best, bittersweet. We are the lost children of the Church. Even the new Pope snubs us.

In my family, Catholicism is just this strange archaic thing we used to do, like schoolchildren once huddled under their desks in preparation for nuclear attack. Can you believe we used to do that? And the guy with the big hat? We used to believe in all that stuff?

Sometimes my sister and I repeat bits of the Mass to each other. We haven't attended church since we were children, but the liturgy is still crammed in whole somewhere in the back of our minds. Being women, it is probably heresy for us to recite it. (That part really chafes.)

My mother recently told me, her voice filled with wonder, that after she had my little brother, she called our parish priest and asked him if he thought that, after three children and one tricky pregnancy, it would be okay if she got her tubes tied. Father So-and-So put the kibosh on the idea immediately.

"But you did it anyway," I said.

"Of course I did it anyway! I have no idea why I even asked him."

Those strange things we used to do.

Lost In Space: How My Faith Got Misplaced

I was twenty-six. I had just gone through a bad breakup and, to compensate, I was dating too much. My still-coalescing sense of identity was beginning to smear. I worried I'd get these guys' names mixed up if I had too much to drink. I didn't come home a lot. My roommate worried about me.

I was wobbly like a poorly-made three-legged stool, hungry for something I couldn't name, so light and insubstantial that a harsh word could tear me apart like vapor.

I have always taken solace in my faith, and I turned to it again during this time. What would the gods want? I decided to swear to a vow of celibacy. One year of just me, on my own. I was dedicating to myself, I thought, trying to summon up a sense of my own solidity.

I lit a lot of candles, like you do, and gathered together the few pitiful artifacts of my life that I felt were purely my own, that had never been introduced to me by anyone else -- because during that shaky time, it felt like cheating. This was me: an old Frank Zappa album and a novel about an astronomer that I had read so many times it was falling apart. I had discovered these treasures on my own. I figured this was all I had.

I propped a Tarot card featuring Viviane, the chaste and mysterious and always self-possessed Lady of the Lake (at least, according to The Mists of Avalon) on my dresser, and solemnly took my vow.

I'm now experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that taking a vow of celibacy is probably the number one way to find a man. The universe adores reverse psychology.