Soul Searching

As a child, I played a good priest delivering mass almost every Sunday afternoon. At the time it seemed natural given the hierarchy in our home that as the older sister I would be priest and my brother demoted to altar boy. I took my job seriously wearing the appropriate gold vestment, adorning my bed, "the holy table," in crisp white linen, placing at its center the chalice brimming with apple juice and blessing the host, a bowl of triscuits bitten into perfect circles. I read every sacred word from the special missal I was given by my padrinos for my First Communion ignoring the fact that my brothers arms were shaking in exhaustion from holding up the book for so long. In those days my inspiration was Father Tom the priest of a lively Hispanic church across town called Cristo Rey that we attended for many years. Although Father Tom was a gringo, the man could roll his R's like nobody's business and I looked forward to the moment when he would ask us to all join hands in one great circle. "Padre Nuestro que estas en cielo," he would begin. At this point the fantastic smells from the basement made it hard to think of anything else but what had been stewing and simmering down below and after Father Tom's final words were said, "vayan in paz, go in peace," my brother and I would take the stairs two at a time to be first in line as the Abuelas ladled out bowls of menudo, crispy tostadas dripping in salsa verde and pan dulce the size of bear claws. In this same basement our Ballet Folkloric dance group would get ready to practice for our big performance in May waving bright red skirts in the air, our braids pulling our faces into tight grins. If you had to ask me back then how I would define spirituality I would have used these images.
It was all so simple. no messy politics. no questions.
Since then I have struggled to define my place in the Catholic church.
"I'd like to start going to Temple what do you think?" I remember asking my parents as a teenager.
"What if I decide to become Muslim?" I wondered aloud at the dinner table.
My parents were always open to my questions, always listened and so I explored..
I've been to Mosque, to Temple, I've kissed the Koran and meditated among Buddhists. On my wedding day we celebrated outdoors convincing the Catholic priest that lightning would not strike nor would God be mad if my "Iranian family" gave a final Muslim blessing. But all of this reading and exploring has often added to my confusion especially now that I have a child. I want to give him a foundation not a survey and at at the same time I want him to understand that spirituality does not have to be confined to the institutional four walls but rather can be open and exploratory. Church with its routine, its archaic words and trite homilies is not the right fit for how I feel inside and the way I want to give back but I'm also learning now that I can no longer define spirituality entirely in my own words that it must be a blending, a coming together, a partnership with my husband and with my son. And so we are in a sense starting over making blue prints for a grand house we are about to build...build together.

"Spiritual literacy is not concerned with sorting out religious dogmas and beliefs. To be spiritually literate does not require you to master certain texts or to climb to a high rung on the ladder of enlightment. It is not an esoteric and mysterious practice for the initiated few; indeed spiritual literacy is the very opposite of such elitism. Some of the most spirtutally literate people are children and indigenous people who cannot even read letters on a page. For them and for us literacy means being able to find sacred meaning in all aspects of life." -Frederic and Maryanne Brussat from Spiritual Literacy