sunday

it's sunday. i long ago made my peace with not attending mass. i take the advise of emily dickenson who wrote that some keep the sabbbath going to church i keep it staying home with a bobolink for a cloister and an orchard for a dome.
when i made my first confession i learned a short little list of sins to tell the priest. each time that i went to confession after that i rattled off the same list. i told a lie, i talked back to my mother and father. sometimes i had to stop and think about whether i had told a lie or not because i always tended to tell the truth back then. i dreaded going to confession and running through the same little list of sins. when i went through puberty my list seemed babyish and i felt inadequate. i needed some bigger sins to tell. but when i did have a sin that seemed a little bigger i didn't really feel like sharing it with the man in the box. i knew it was a sin if it made me feel bad and i preferred it to be between just me and god. i stopped attending mass as soon as i went off to college. there i found some new sins that i could have added to my list but i didn't feel that they were sins. and saying forgive me father i have sinned and saying that i was truly sorry for this sin and that i would go forth and sin more would have been the real sin.
i didn't like hearing in church that we were all such bad people and so full of sin. most of the people i knew were good people. and there were certain gospels that just infuriated me. like the one where god says that a man should leave his family and follow the lord. but i always liked the beauty of the church and the calming hymns that poured out of the organ and the mystery of the mass in latin and all that bell ringing and ritual. then one year it became the fashion to strip churches of their beauty and simplify them. our church was stripped of it's magnificent floor-to-ceiling altar and a simple laminated altar that faced the congregation replaced it. simple language replaced the latin. and i dreaded all that hand shaking and peace sign offering. should i turn and offer the sign of peace? will so and so offer me the sign of peace? should i reach a little farther and offer the next person down in the pew the sign of peace? whew! that part of the mass is finally over and i can feel some peace.
when our son was born i had to start attending mass again so i could have him baptized. then i spent sunday mornings in the cry room with all the other mothers and crying babies. that soon wore thin and i stopped attending again. when he started school i had to attend again so he could go to catechism classes and from here until he reached confirmation age i deligently attended so he could get confirmed. but then he refused to go to these confirmation classes even though i threatened and begged. how would he ever be able to be married in the church if he didn't go? one day while i was out running and fretting over this a calm came over me and i made a decision and i don't think it came from god. confirmation was about confirming your faith and if he didn't want to confirm his faith then why would i ever want to force him to? it was his decision. he stopped going to catechism and i stopped attending mass for good this time. it felt good. i always came away from mass feeling like i was a bad person. they certainly told me that often enough. i developed a strong sense of right and wrong at a young age. i try to do right and i feel bad when i do wrong. but there are certain things that go against the rules that i just don't feel are wrong. religion has been the source of most of the turmoil in the world. i don't know for certain what i believe anymore. most of the time i believe that stuff just happens. it's random. it doesn't happen for a reason. but then some serendipitous thing will happen that makes me doubt this and make me believe in fate. i believe that anything is possible so i can't say that there isn't a god out there just as i believe that the supernatural and extraterrestial life may exist. there may be other dimensions and forces that we have not identified. i can say that in my darkest days i've tried praying and my prayers have not been answered from above. and this is when you find the strength inside yourself. when you delve down and find that strength to carry on and believe in yourself. for those that attribute this to god answering their prayers, i'm glad that they have this backing to help make them strong. maybe i am even one of them. I think nature and the beauty of the world and the beauty of life itself does this for me. so again to quote emily, instead of getting to heaven at last, i'm going all along. and btw i think think my son turned out to be a wonderful person even without being confirmed.