Not Broken, Just Bent.

After a long a vicious legal fight, the powers that be have decided to reopen the church of my grandparents for real masses, real baptisms, real funerals.

I am without.
I am hollow.
I can not conjure great joy.
So useless. So mean spirited. So many people died in the past 1150 days who were unable to be buried from their own parish.

So much suspicion still hovers, like a shroud over a casket.

***

At the suggestion of an observant friend, I started to attend an Episcopalian mass. Not often, but regularly, back in the fall.
I do love their mass, which feels like my Mass used to. I love that much of their Mass is in song, and while I can not sing well and I don't know their tunes, it does lift my heart.
I think I feel the delicate touch of the divine when I am there, and I carry it with me beyond the doors when I leave.
I am feeding my spiritual needs elsewhere, in a place other than the Roman Catholicism of my youth.

Occasionally a little part of me worries that I'm Doin' It Wrong.
How can I be both? How can I in good faith (ha, "Good Faith") attend both? It's Not Right. It's not what should be, the shrill little voice whines.

But there is an enormous part of me that truly believes that I'm Doin' It Right.
When I look up, into the light streaming though the windows no matter where I am, I Know I'm doing what I need to do.
And the Big Guy, well, He gets it.
So I shall carry on, down this twisty, unconventional path.

***

I might have more thought on the reopening later.
I wonder if the RCC has just hurt me one too many times, once too deeply, for me to completely embrace and trust them again.

Does anyone have any experience in petitioning for a site to be added to the rolls of National Historic Places? (or National Monuments, or whatever designation a church would take?



( Many of you might listen to NPR. If you did, you may have heard that Catholic church is going through a new round of closing/condensing parishes, mostly out in Western MA this time. )