i used to adore the easter holiday – sunrise church service, plenty of later church services, joyous singing, dressing up… but i haven’t attended church since college when i went – shall we say – religiously. in college, i had an understanding & wise chaplain, a family of friends who all held different beliefs but accepted each other, and very few commitments to get in the way. no matter how my faith evolved & changed over those 4 years, i had those things to fall back on & into a pew.

my degree is in religion. it has served me well in that i have been exposed to a wide variety of world views without judgement, i have been forced to constantly evaluate my own beliefs, and i have been stretched to think beyond the box. besides, “it” is what i love!

my education in religion has also left me quite confused.

faith & family – an intersection

after college, working weekends with an unpredictable schedule meant that i didn’t have the opportunity to try new churches. i didn’t have the chance to find a new church family, somewhere that i fit in or that would support my set of beliefs. and then i married a catholic.

since mike & i weren’t attending church, and faith appeared to be a more academic exercise, this never posed a problem. of course, like most things, having a child screws everything up! that’s a joke, by the way. suddenly there are matters of baptisms and holidays to attend to. questions of teaching morals without a religious structure. wanting her to understand “faith” without “dogma.”

and realizing just how far dogma – rite & ritual, tradition & custom – penetrates our very core.

saying i want “religion without religion” – the subject of my honors thesis and core philosophy of my favorite theologian – becomes much more difficult when faced with the practical needs of raising a child. possibly more difficult when faced with the issue of crossing the divide between two vastly different sides of the same religion.

so this weekend, easter weekend, a holiday that for me is purely religious – sorry, easter bunny – i watched mike take lola to mass and i cried. i made the last minute decision not to go to the local united methodist church for an easter service. i’m just not sure what the point would be if it was “just me,” if there was no family. i suppose dogma & ritual has a place for me when it’s surrounded by family but, on my own, it is not something i crave. since mike’s family is all practicing catholics, he doesn’t seem to experience this inner struggle.

religion for us is not a fight (there are plenty of others) so much as it is just an understanding that we believe different things and that neither of us with be budging any time soon. and therefore, it’s not something that will be experienced by us as a family. without family, there may be no place for dogma & ritual in my life – and somehow i feel a profound loss at that realization. as a person of deep faith, strong held beliefs, a nagging liberal arts education, and no desire to sit in church by myself every week, i am left at an intersection between faith & family, feeling that i’ve made all the compromises i can make on either side.

sorry

i hope you weren’t waiting here at the end for a profound thought or nugget of inspiration because i have none. this post is more about me putting thoughts on paper (or computer screen) and letting the little digital words help me sort things through.

i am curious to know, though, if you have struggled with the same intersection – where family meets faith and where faith meets tradition – if you’ve decided which way to turn, or if you have a completely different way of handling this struggle in your own life.

{image credit: kaleidoscope prints by thepaintedlily}