Spiritual Journey Thursday: What is church to you?

 

Dave is hosting this month, and has given us the following prompt:

"First, is there a physical place that has deep spiritual meaning to you?  Secondly, are there people  who have invested in, walked alongside, or that you have walked along side of in your journey?  How have they encouraged you on the way? Has your spiritual journey given your life purpose?  Does your journey have a way?  In other words, what has been your path on that journey?   In my mind the answers to those questions help constitute what church is to so many of us."

I once thought I had a complicated relationship with Church.  After all, I am a lapsed Roman Catholic, raised through all the sacraments allowed to a layperson save for Extreme Unction.  I had a personal spiritual epiphany in my late thirties that pulled me--and consequently, my family--ever so gently away from the patriarchal hierarchy of that institution.  (If ever there was proof that women are generally the keepers of religious practice, there you have it--or the absence of it, as our case may be.) 

Now that time has given me distance from that schism, it doesn't seem so complicated at all.  We were regularly practicing Catholics, and then we weren't.  We continued to say grace before meals, sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus on Christmas Eve, do service projects, and blessed the children before bed.  It was an organic realization that our faith extended beyond religion, beyond Church, and most importantly, beyond the patriarchy.  I was simply tired of feeling less than, tired of intermediaries and dogma taking up space between me and the Divine.

I'd like to think that my mother--who was a practicing Catholic nearly all of her life--had a hand in my transition.  She was always a progressive, the parochial high school student who dared to ask the nuns "Why?" in class.  If we could sit down and talk about the pivotal moments that led to my absence from weekly Mass, I think she would nod her head in agreement that I made decisions aligned with my faith and spiritual needs.

To answer Dave's questions:  My family has been alongside me on this journey.  I have sought advice from a spiritual director, from friends, and from reading about other women's journeys, even those within the traditional guidelines of Church.  My church in the physical sense has broadened to include places that are sacred to me--the hospitals where my children were born and cared for, labyrinths I've walked, retreats I've attended, walks in nature.  The message has always been of the profound presence of the Divine, both in the surroundings and in the people near me in those spaces.  I no longer feel "less than", and when I am called to traditional prayers and practice, it is from an internal longing, not external expectations.  

This has been a though-provoking prompt, and I thank Dave and the other participants in this writing circle for sharing their thoughts this month.