March 29, 2013
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This Sunday is already EASTER!!!
And by that I mean time goes by a lot faster when you don’t go to church, I’ve realized.
Since my birth, my parents religiously took my siblings and I to church.
Along with this weekly ritual came the drag of time and dread every Sunday where I would numbly sit and listen to the Homily, knelt halfheartedly when we needed to, drew on the program, and mumbled lyrics to my favorite Jimmy Eat World song during the moments of personal prayer.
And sure, church and Sunday school instilled a good sense of right and wrong in me, taught me to treat others as I wanted to be treated, and made me more empathetic to others.But to this day, there is nothing – and I mean nothing – that I hate more, than going to church. Or talking about religion. Or ignorant religious bigots. Or southern accents.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a certain number of things – physical things – that go along with Catholic mass. The burning of incense, the laying of palms, holy water, ashes on Ash Wednesday. I could sit in the Basilica of St. Mary and just listen for hours while not even doing anything myself.
I find this horribly ironic, because as tenaciously as my parents took me to church, I responded to absolutely NONE of it.
And I honestly don’t know why.
Logic tells me that I would grow up to be as god-fearing as anyone else with that kind of childhood, but when it comes to religion and my own life-after-death experience… I just don’t… care? When I was a kid, people taught me that in order to be a good person, I had to follow “Jesus/Christ/God/whatever”.
When I was about six, I saw some kid bullying another kid at our Sunday school. I came to the conclusion that I could just be a good person and NOT have to rely on something that I don’t even physically know exists.
I was also taught that if I didn’t go to church/had sex before marriage/killed someone that I would go to Hell after I die.People speculate so much about what death is like, and what happens to our souls when we finally die. SO much that it is something that keeps them up at night. Me included. Until about a year ago I came to the conclusion to that question:
How does it feel when we sleep?
When we’re put under for surgery?
We’re unconscious, and therefore can’t… feel.
It only makes sense right?
I am put at ease by the thought that when I die, I will be taking the world’s LONGEST NAP. And it will be AWESOME.
Sorry for that weird post guys, but I just had to get that out of my head.
Love,
A slightly tired Mary
Comments (1)
It wasn’t a weird post, it was very personally insightful. Thank you for sharing it with us. I feel the exact same way actually. I was raised Catholic and went to church, Sunday school and even a Catholic university (same one as your sister) and it pretty much all went over my head at the time. Later in life I began to appreciate the role of faith in my life to a greater degree but that’s another story… I’ll never forget though as a kid that massive, oppressive sense of boredom while sitting through mass on Sundays and the almost ecstatic sense of relief when the service was nearing completion and freedom seemed imminent.