Time Machine Series:
Exploring Past, Present & Future
PAST
If you had known me in high school, you’d have said, “What a devout Catholic you are.” I went to Mass on Sundays, volunteered at St. Vincent de Paul’s Thrift Store, and never missed a Thursday night class in preparation for my Confirmation. While I had checked off all the Blessed Sacraments minus marriage at that point, following, since a young age, my mother’s devotion to the Church, I began to stray in college. Was it time, distance, maturation, or exposure to never-seen-before influences that caused me to lose the passion? Maybe yes. Or maybe it was just learning new things, and understanding that faith can reside in the background. Maybe it was learning that faith in a religious sense is entirely different from faith in a spiritual sense; that spirituality, no matter the flavor, is, in and of itself, a good thing.
PRESENT
If you had to slap a label of religion on me at this very moment, I’m something of a Marian Buddhist, or a Buddhist Marian. That is, someone who venerates the Blessed Mother in all her forms, yet is centered by the Way. But here’s the catch: the backdrop to those religious labels is a sweeping canvas of humanistic atheism. I know the veneration and prayers, the chants and incantations toward a godhead or doctrine aren’t real—they’re there just to make us feel better. That’s all religion is. And yet, I still believe in mystery, in a force that is greater than us. I’m still called to something. At night, when I put my youngest son to bed, we go around his room and say goodnight to everything, the seashells, the starfish, the wooden blue whale. We also say goodnight to the little medallion of the Virgin Mary above his door frame. I thank her every night when I walk out of his room.
FUTURE
If you had seen the Clash coming, you might have done something different. You might have just gone a little more out of your way to be nice to someone. Or you might not have egged someone on, taunted them, belittled them because your respective gods were different. We tried our hardest to show our boys that all you really have to do is treat people with kindness—that’s all. Honor self, and honor each other. Our boys grasped this, and just in time. You see, they were grown enough to be crusaders after the Clash. It was painful to see it happen in our country first: what seemed like a slow erosion, but then ignited like a match head. It was horrific what happened. The brutality. The inhumanity. But I suppose it all had to happen. It all had to build, then burst, then go away. That’s usually what nature intends when something has outgrown its shell. In its place was what the prophets and philosophers had been talking about for centuries. A great peace. A period of enduring harmony. I’m just happy I was able to experience a small part of it. I can advance knowing that my sons will live it.
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Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash