Spiritual Sojourn, part I: When Church Was Good

I was raised Roman Catholic. My mom's family is Polish, and she grew up in a Polish Catholic enclave of Detroit, Michigan. My dad's family is German, and though he was raised Lutheran, he left the church when he was 13. By the time he married mom on September 1st, 1972 (and no, that date is not a coincidence) he was a sworn atheist. Mom wanted to be married in the Catholic church, and the rules of the church say that if a Catholic wants to marry a godless heathen that's ok so long as they promise to raise the tadpoles RC. Dad was fine with this as long as mom assured him that we wouldn't be taught creationist, anti-evolution crap in school. This wasn't a problem since they really didn't teach us much of anything in school.

The thing is, I never really believed in God. I can remember as a child of 8, preparing for my first communion (3rd sacrament and major rite of passage in Catholic families), being told that Jesus was up in Heaven watching me all the time, and I thought that was silly.

Maybe it's a side-effect of my Asperger's Syndrome. Aspergers kids are rubbish at creative play, and I was no exception. When my friends wanted to 'play house' or school or doctor or play with dolls and make up stories for them to act out, I just got up and left. Such things struck me as pointless and rediculous. Maybe I simply lack the imaginative capability that other people have that makes the concept of 'god' make sense in their brains. It just never jived with me.

But for all that, I liked church. I joined the youth choir as soon as I was old enough (right after my first communion, which was the pre-requisite to joining), and stayed there until they threw me out because I was too old. I took a year off, missed it terribly, and joined the regular choir, where I was welcomed with open arms. (I couldn't sing all that well, but they were thrilled to have a member who wasn't collecting social security.)

These were my teen years, and I struggled socially in high school. I had few friends, and my definition of a friend was anyone who didn't dump my lunch on the floor when I sat down next to them in the caffeteria. Even with these low standards I could count my friends (out of a class of 140 students in a school of 700) on one hand. The choir at church was the only place I could go where I felt genuinely welcomed and wanted. When I arrived people smiled and and said "How nice to see you! We're glad you're here," and they meant it. No where else did that happen for me.

So you can see why I kept going. One of the roles of the church is to be a community and provide a place where all are welcome, and in this aspect I have to say that my home parish succeeded brilliantly. It never really had anything to do with god. It was like "Cheers," the bar; it was the place where everybody knew my name.