Lately, I find I am very adrift when it come to faith. Not FAITH (God, the Trinity, do unto others...), but faith: which faith, which church, which way to tell our kids is it. Bill and I both grew up Catholic but stopped practicing as Catholics in our adulthood. We have had cause to go to Catholic mass twice in the past few months and while he and I found the sameness of it comforting, our children looked like they were being skewered with hot pokers the entire time. I guess you can't raise kids in a church with contemporary music and programs designed specifically for them and then expect them to sit, stand, kneel for an hour and feel like God is there for them too. My stepdaughter likened it to secret club where everyone knew how to reply or when to kneel or what to say except her.
We have gone to a huge, non-denominational church for years and enjoyed parts of it very much, but never really found our place in there. We tried joining things, volunteering in different areas and then committing to small groups where you get to know a few families and get together with them. This is an attempt to make a church of thousands homey. However, every time we joined a group, after a few months the leaders would move. Really, we were the Kevorkian of small groups. It gets to where you feel like you just can't invest in the awkwardness of forcing a friendship or sense of familiarity with people anymore when you are just waiting for them to move on you.
We have been shopping around for a new church for the last year. We will try a church or two and either the kids will like it and we won't or we will like it and the kids won't. There are many more weeks that we don't even try. It is a very first world problem to have so many churches at our disposal to choose from, I know. We live in a university town in the Bible belt. People are atheists, agnostics, evangelists and zealots. I know people who do not go to church but spend more time on the weekend serving and building their community than I have ever thought to do. I know people who carry God in their heart everywhere they go and in everything they do and wonder how they do it so easily. But what are we? We are not any of those things. I think we are just parents trying to raise good kids and keep God in the picture while we do it. But I wonder if we are failing them because they are not growing up in a church reaching milestones and then the next milestone and then becoming an adult in their church?
My grandmother was one of the most religious people I have ever met. The woman raised 12 children in a house with one bathroom. She went to Mass every day. My mother tells of having to go to church on Christmas morning before they could open presents. I remember being a foul mouthed teen and grumbling that I had to go to church on a weeknight because it was a holy day of obligation. Being a know-it-all 15 year old, I pointed out that if we were really celebrating the conception of Jesus, shouldn't we go in March and not early December? She was furious. Having never seen her more than annoyed before, I took note and even listened to what she had to say. She said sometimes you just have to have FAITH. You have to stop being so smart and to just believe. She may have also been hinting at being more obedient and perhaps docile, but I had stopped listening by then.
We had an incredibly intelligent and long conversation around the dinner table last night with all of our kids about God, about religion, about why we have not found a church. I was amazed with the insight they provided about what they see, what they think we could do, what things we all could do and I thought that perhaps our indecision and hesitancy about faith isn't affecting them as negatively as I had thought. It may have been good to tell them we don't have all the answers or they may just use against us in the future. I did walk away from the table thinking that maybe we aren't failing as badly as I thought. And I guess for the time being, we should just focus more on FAITH and less on which building to put that faith in.
No comments:
Post a Comment