Faith in the post-Prop 8 era
I've been struggling with my faith for years... nearly decades. To some extent it's been about my disability. But for the past few years, as I've begun to let those wounds heal, the struggle has been less about faith than about faith community. As I have felt myself opening up to the One again, I've found myself wanting -- needing -- to share the experience of the sacred with fellow travelers.
I was raised in the Catholic Church, and that tradition still resonates with me on an incredibly deep level. In terms of theology and Christology, I personally lean towards much more progressive teachings1. I also believe, in the tradition of Zen Buddhism, that all is One2. For me, participating in the ritual of Mass, relatively unchanged for centuries, celebrated by millions of people the world over, is a form of communion with the sacred that has nothing to do with the Pope or the Catechism.
But I haven't taken part in that communion for years now. Not because I don't want to -- I do, deeply -- but because, honestly, I'm scared, I'm angry, and I'm hurt.
A faith community should be a place of love, trust, and support, not of hatred and betrayal. I am terrified that I will return to the flock, establish relationships, and truly find a spiritual home, only to be shunned if I express my love for another woman (or, God forbid, actually want to marry one3).
I've found churches (the local UCC congregation, for example) where I feel very much welcomed and not judged in any way. But the ritual, the tradition... I need those things, too. My Catholicism is like my DNA... I didn't choose it (probably wouldn't have chosen it, if I had a say). It's broken in small but significant places. I can't ignore it. It doesn't determine everything, but it's still the blueprint, the foundation upon which I have to build my (spiritual) life.
And right now, at this moment, I feel the pain and brokeness of being betrayed by my foundation perhaps more than at any other time in my life. Last weekend I wanted to go to Mass, to offer thanks to the One who inspired our country to move beyond bigotry. But I couldn't do that, because that would mean communing with an expression of the One that, in fact, advocated bigotry in the form of active campaigning against the three ballot initiatives relating to gay marriage, including the one here in Florida.
It's difficult for me to separate faith from a faith community... that's part of the Catholic DNA. So to reconcile a faith that teaches equality and humility before the divine with a faith community that has aided in my becoming a second-class citizen... well, I can't reconcile the two. My heart is broken, and the place I have always turned for solace helped break it. God is love, and yet my love is spat upon in the name of God. The Church is the body of believers, and I am a living cell of that body, and yet the rest of the body would excise me, like a tumor.
Albert Low would say that this is a manifestation of the blessed wound, that existential ambiguity that -- unresolved -- is the source of violence, and that is healed (or at least soothed) with creativity. We, who proclaim to be made in the image of the Creator and so are inherently creative, have failed in our creativity, and spiritual violence has erupted.
I don't know where to turn now. I don't know if I can forgive. I don't know if I can trust. And yet, what else is there to do? My own experience tells me that disconnecting from the community in order to protect myself only causes more heartache.
I am simply at a loss, and lost.
[1] see Carter Heyward
2 see Albert Low
3 applications still being accepted /grin