What Just Happened?

(I really hope you don't think I've come unhinged if I share this with you)

You know how when you have zero expectations of some plans and that because they were made by someone else, you shrug your shoulders and tag along easily enough and it turns out to be a great big huge exciting amazing night out? That is pretty much how I would summarise the last week watching the Pope in town. Historically of course it was a huge affair and utterly absorbing for me as I adore English history. Politically in view of the controversy that rightfully follows the Church everywhere it was a searching questioning kind of political experience. However, connecting with something a frankly almost obscure German man would say was not something I expected at all to happen. 

As various stories shared of a decade of drug laced parties will attest to I don't think I am a prudish bore about life but it is no secret I suppose that I find modern culture too brutal and ugly sometimes and society, year by year, a bit of a modern cultural challenge. I have mentioned it a few times here. I am out of sorts with the secular society I find myself living in, contrasted with the more religious, Catholic, one I grew up with. 

If you can guess how old I am you will maybe come to understand how recent these huge social changes here are. I, we are literally living through them. If you watched the sweating and the hand wringing of the secularists and atheists here in the run up to this visit you will appreciate the anxious strangle hold they currently have on social and political debate. And let's face it the only religious experience of any major impact on modern British society to have occurred here in my lifetime was an attack on the Underground in which a bunch of people were killed. 

So in that last respect, this visit has turned out to be a positive experience of religion and more than that it has brought back into sharp focus very fond memories of a wonderful Convent education from age 5 to 16. I had rejected the whole essence of that experience in my twenties and now because I figured patriarchy was the game in the Church and I would never play along with that. 

Or would I. 

I found two quotes to share that summarise things right at this moment after listening to this hugely intellectual man speak, and the extent to which I am weighing this all up in terms of value to me as a person, my politics and living here in the UK. (A feels the same way).

The first is a quote from the man the Pope beatified on Sunday - a word I had to look up I was so out of touch with Catholicism. His name is Cardinal Newman:

From Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England (1851) (Lecture 7)

This is what we call an enlightened age: we are to have large views of things; everything is to be put on a philosophical basis; reason is to rule: the world is to begin again; a new and transporting set of views is about to be exhibited to the great human family. Well and good; have them, preach them, enjoy them, but deign to recollect the while, that there have been views in the world before you: that the world has not been going on up to this day without any principles whatever; that the Old Religion was based on principles, and that it is not enough to flourish about your “new lamps,” if you would make us give up our “old” ones. Catholicism, I say, had its First Principles before you were born: you say they are false; very well, prove them to be so: they are false, indeed, if yours are true; but not false merely because yours are yours. While yours are yours it is self-evident, indeed, to you, that ours are false; but it is not the common way of carrying on business in the world, to value English goods by French measures, or to pay a debt in paper which was contracted in gold. Catholicism has its First Principles, overthrow them, if you can; endure them, if you cannot. It is not enough to call them effete because they are old, or antiquated because they are ancient.

The second is a response to me on another blog where I shared how I felt about all this. It knocked me for six and then some:

I am a 40-something professional woman in Ireland. Alison's sentiments mirror mine almost exactly. 
Speaking with like-minded friends during and since the Pope's visit, I sense an almost palpable collective reawakening of spiritual consciousness amongst us, not manifested in a dramatic sense, but rather in a shared exercise of questioning, in parallel with a quieter personal quest to re-examine our spiritual dimension and reconsider our lives. Questions that have been spurring me in my own personal quest have been: 

Morally, if I do not stand for something, have I inadvertently placed myself in the sorry position of in fact standing for nothing? 

Watching the protesters as they align themselves to groupings with whom they share little in terms of morals and human values, and indeed in some cases even collide morally, have I too, by default, allowed myself to become similarly aligned to groupings with whom I morally collide? 

Observing the sheer happiness in the faces and personas of the Catholic people whom I saw welcoming the Pope, I ask myself why it is that my own experience of that same depth of happiness remains solidly embedded in the past - in my days as a practising Catholic. Despite living my life as a good, kind and caring person, why has that depth of happiness not manifested itself since I stopped practising and proclaiming my faith two decades ago? Why have I suddenly tasted it again this weekend? 

In my secular lifestyle I know where my mental and physical dimensions begin and end. But as a three-dimensional being, where does my spiritual dimension begin and end? And without a fixed and unswerving spiritual reference how can I ever even begin to find out? 

Why does life suddenly feel exciting? 
_____________________ 

Best wishes to others who, like me, are finding that fitting life into just two dimensions is no longer a comfortable fit.. 

Comments

[Erik]

Agreeing with you...

I love this from CS Lewis:
"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
— C.S. Lewis (Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)

[Andy]

Erik,

Stellar quote.

Alison,

Insightful. Lovely. Good morning.

[Andy]

There's kind of a funny thing going on right here. It is in the forums of my local neighborhood blog:

http://westseattleblog.com/forum/topic/god-is-imaginary

[alison]

Hi all

Erik I need to bookmark you and a few others who have swung be here of late.

Evening Andy - thank God it's Friday! I'll check out the link

[Buck]

Well, I can't guess your age, Alison and won't try. But I have an idea... (big grin)

I'm happy for you in your rediscovery/reawakening. I know another woman who benefited from eight years of Catholic elementary education and four years at America's preeminent Catholic university only to turn her back on the faith and walk away... never to return. She's 54 now and prays in the Church of Academe. I can't help but think life would have turned out much differently if she had gone where you are going now when she was your age.

So, needless to say, this post really resonated with me.

[Buck]

Say... do you know a good comma school that might have an opening?

[Gordon]

I'm not Catholic, and I'm pretty sure I never will be. But it always warms my heart a little when I read of folks rediscovering the church.

[alison]

I'm currently hoovering up a book on judeo-christianity. Incredible stuff. Fascinated by the Essenes.

[Old Iron]

-And it is compositions like this, the professing of a reinstatement of wonder and awe, that truly warm the heart.

Cheers to you Alison.

[Kris, in New England]

Alison - this is amazing, truly. This goes beyond resonating in my own life these days.

I grew up in an evangelical faith - very insulated, very restricted. 15 years ago I left it and until recently felt that organized religion was not for me and was content to consider myself a spiritual person.

I never stopped believing in God.

Fast forward to last fall when my family attacked me out of the blue - hurtful insults were hurled and in one brief phone call my family walked away from me. I haven't heard from them in a year now.

As I navigated my way thru my grief, I recognized the need to be part of something larger than myself; to be in the presence of like-minded people with the sole purpose of worship and thoughtful prayer.

I began to crave being in church; for the first time in 15 years. So we (my husband and I) started to test out a few churches that are near our house. Amazingly we live in a very small town but have 6 different religions to choose from!

After careful consideration, talks with church members and attending services we have decided to join the Catholic Church. Given that my husband grew up Catholic (he converted to the faith of my birth shortly after we got married) this was a very big deal to him and his family.

And an even bigger deal to me - the faith in which I grew up was extremely anti-Catholic. And when I say extremely - I mean that in every sense of the word.

And yet every time we go to Mass each weekend, I feel like I've come home. Joining the Catholic Church and worshipping each week feels more natural to me than the faith of my birth ever did.

In fact, next weekend we start a 6-month course of study so that my husband can reconnect with his faith and I can learn all about it. I have the same sense of wonder and awe that you do.

I also agree that we are in a period of intense spiritual activity; I am not the only person I know who is either joining a new church/religion or finding a new, deeper connection with the one they already have.

[Laura]

I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic School 1-8. I am not Catholic as an adult. I saw Pope John Paul II when he toured here years ago and he looked straight at me as he rode by in his Pope Mobile and smiled (the crowd was thin here in the South- it's Baptist country here) and I can honestly say that I was completely awestruck.

[alison]

Cheers to you Gordon and Old Iron, what a lovely thing to say. I appreciate all of you taking this at face value and not as me coming unhinged :)

I'm in a state of shock that I have gone from flat out rejecting Catholicism in so many ways to trying to look into it more. I was ambivalent to this Pope and didn't even know he was coming over! I'm still in shock but I definitely had a moment of awestruckness. And I certainly can identify with your search for faith Kris. Thanks for sharing that Kris & Laura.

[Kris, in New England]

Pope John Paul II was so charismatic; even though I grew up being taught that Catholicism is evil - I loved the Pope. He really was a man for the ages, who could appeal to all peoples.

Pope Benedict is older, less-known, not nearly as charismatic and yet - he has much to say at a time when the Catholic Church needs a strong voice of reason and humbleness. For the Catholic Church right now, they don't need a rock star for a Pope.

[Trooper Thompson]

I'm happy to read this Alison. I remembered you in my prayers, and asked that you would find some peace in your heart in times of trouble.

[Soumyaranjan Dash]

Tho I'm from India, I like your blogpost... Lovly, insightful and informative!