Spiritual Sojourn, part II: The College Years

Music was always a big part of my life. I can remember going to sunday school as a wee tot and singing singing singing! I loved the singing! I can still remember some of the songs we sang, and Mrs. L. with her long, brown hair in silver barettes that she would flick over her shoulder to keep out of the way of the guitar strings while she played. We all sat in a circle and held hands and swung our arms back and forth carolling, "I've got a friend and you've got a friend!"

Sunday school was the first place I learned about music, and my whole life music has been intimately connected with the church. I joined the youth choir when I was 8 and the regular choir when I was 15. When I was singing, I was happy. But the only place I sang was in church, so church = singing = happy. If A = B and B = C, than A = C; thus, church = happy.

When I was 18 I moved away and went to college out of state, at a distance of 800 miles from where I grew up. I wasn't prepared for it, but there was definately culture shock moving from a small town in the midwest to a posh, east-coast private college. Like anyone experiencing culture shock, I looked for things that were familiar and therefore comforting.

Church was familiar and comforting. The Mass is the same everywhere you go. And the Catholic chaplain, Fr. L, was accostomed to dealing with kids away from home for the first time and looked after me as I settled in to my new surroundings. He's a wonderful man, and I still have great respect and affection for him. (He's also a druid at heart, but don't tell him I told you.) After a couple weeks I got up the nerve to join the choir, and I made some of my best friends in the choir. Every Saturday at 5:00 for 4 years. JA, the organist, was also a wonderful man. Everyone was wonderful. Everyone was welcoming and warm and actually cared when they asked "How are you today?" Most people ask to be polite, and get very nervous if you respond with anything other than "I'm fine, how are you?" These people actually cared.

My college was a very protective, insulating, in many ways coddling environment. It was easy to stick your head in the sand, forget about the rest of the world, and enjoy your pampered, idyllic existence. So although I strenuously disagreed with much of the Catholic church's politics and policies, it was easy to forget about them, to distance myself from them, to think they didn't reach me or affect me in that warm, wet womb of academia.

So I went every saturday, helped set up, did readings, belted out harmonies to Amazing Graze with Vi at my side, tidied up afterwards, and went to dinner with Vi and Fr. L afterwards. It was a social club, and god had nothing to do with it.