So there I was one warm summer Sunday, finally sitting in a church pew, confident that it would be just one of many, many ahead.
You’d think the family I was with would have been my own, but no. My parents were far too busy dealing with all the little Catholic consequences running around the house to take me to confession once a week and mass every Sunday, despite my best persuasive tactics, finely honed as a firstborn. They drew the line at Easter and Christmas, somehow willing to take the risk.
Fortunately for my salvation plan, I’d found another way. I’d love to recall the exact words I used to talk the family across the street into letting me accompany them to the swear-to-God Holy Family Church each week. Had I told them my own family could all, literally, go to hell, but that it was especially important that I get to heaven? Whatever I’d said, I found and co-opted a real “holy family” -- I was set.
Phew.
Except for one thing: it was hot in there. Really, really hot. I’d finally made it but, wait: so this is how it is, seriously? No fans or A/C for a house of worship in those days, kiddo. You want air conditioning in church? What, what’s a little sweltering -- do we have to tell you again what Jesus went through for you? Do you know how hot hell is?
I stared up at the lone, small window high overhead, thinking that if I could just get up there, get some air. I gasped and squirmed and fretted. I looked to my borrowed family, each of them sitting rigid and straight, eyes locked ahead, not even glancing at the window. Surely they were too hot as well and would want to leave, or would at least notice me melting to the pew. Surely they would at least look at me, if I were in trouble ...
But no. As I fainted out flat beside them, one thing was clear: they weren’t going to turn from the sermon for the pushy little girl from across the street. They sat, these regularly churchgoing parents and their oblivious, obedient children, literally unmoved.
My holy new family had just told me to go to hell.
A woman who was there on her own saw the situation. Appalled when even she couldn’t get anybody to break rank, she carried me into the bathroom and brought me around with cold water. I don’t remember her letting them know, or if she did they didn’t care, but she drove me home to my house, and obviously thank God and God bless her for that. I know she gave my mother an earful about it all, and that I was glad to be back, with a newfound appreciation for my profligate family.
For years I took from it only the obvious lesson: going to church or not doesn’t mean anything -- it’s all in who you are and what you do, yadda yadda. And I never went back as a child again.
It was awhile before I saw the experience as something more, as -- ironically -- a spiritual blessing: I wasn’t meant to repeat the same old fear-based lifetime yet again. My little plan was nipped in the bud, and early.
Clearly, even God had seen enough was enough.
You’d think the family I was with would have been my own, but no. My parents were far too busy dealing with all the little Catholic consequences running around the house to take me to confession once a week and mass every Sunday, despite my best persuasive tactics, finely honed as a firstborn. They drew the line at Easter and Christmas, somehow willing to take the risk.
Fortunately for my salvation plan, I’d found another way. I’d love to recall the exact words I used to talk the family across the street into letting me accompany them to the swear-to-God Holy Family Church each week. Had I told them my own family could all, literally, go to hell, but that it was especially important that I get to heaven? Whatever I’d said, I found and co-opted a real “holy family” -- I was set.
Phew.
Except for one thing: it was hot in there. Really, really hot. I’d finally made it but, wait: so this is how it is, seriously? No fans or A/C for a house of worship in those days, kiddo. You want air conditioning in church? What, what’s a little sweltering -- do we have to tell you again what Jesus went through for you? Do you know how hot hell is?
I stared up at the lone, small window high overhead, thinking that if I could just get up there, get some air. I gasped and squirmed and fretted. I looked to my borrowed family, each of them sitting rigid and straight, eyes locked ahead, not even glancing at the window. Surely they were too hot as well and would want to leave, or would at least notice me melting to the pew. Surely they would at least look at me, if I were in trouble ...
But no. As I fainted out flat beside them, one thing was clear: they weren’t going to turn from the sermon for the pushy little girl from across the street. They sat, these regularly churchgoing parents and their oblivious, obedient children, literally unmoved.
My holy new family had just told me to go to hell.
A woman who was there on her own saw the situation. Appalled when even she couldn’t get anybody to break rank, she carried me into the bathroom and brought me around with cold water. I don’t remember her letting them know, or if she did they didn’t care, but she drove me home to my house, and obviously thank God and God bless her for that. I know she gave my mother an earful about it all, and that I was glad to be back, with a newfound appreciation for my profligate family.
For years I took from it only the obvious lesson: going to church or not doesn’t mean anything -- it’s all in who you are and what you do, yadda yadda. And I never went back as a child again.
It was awhile before I saw the experience as something more, as -- ironically -- a spiritual blessing: I wasn’t meant to repeat the same old fear-based lifetime yet again. My little plan was nipped in the bud, and early.
Clearly, even God had seen enough was enough.
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