How do you experience the “interfaith” community? Let Peace Be.

Religion was a big deal in our very strict Roman Catholic family in South Louisiana. All nine children attended Roman Catholic school and wore Roman Catholic uniforms, which included girls covering our heads to enter our church. We were forbidden to attend any services that were non-Catholic, even weddings and funerals of our blood relations.  This rule was adhered to so strictly by my mother that she didn’t even attend her own brother’s wedding to a Methodist woman.

I was always sneaky in my spiritual journey. I knew that the black nannies whom I so loved when I was very small weren’t Catholic, but I still loved them and knew they loved me.  At the age of six, I was sent with my four-year-old brother to stay with my uncle who had married the Methodist, with the admonition that I help him say his prayers every night. I loved that my Methodist aunt angrily admonished her children when they laughed at my Catholic prayers. My maternal great-grandmother wasn’t Catholic, and I was allowed to spend the summer that I was eight with her. My very holy older sister was sent with me to make sure I practiced my faith.  I loved grandma and her non-Catholic black lady that came to help her on her farm.

We were taught that anybody who hadn’t been baptized into the Roman Catholic church was simply not eligible to enter into heaven.  There was a whole string of mortal sins that could get you an eternal ticket to hell; suicide was one. When a beloved older, former military serviceman uncle committed suicide, he was not allowed a Catholic burial, and we were not allowed to speak of him again.

We always knew who, in our parish congregation, was in the state of mortal sin because they weren’t allowed to receive Holy Communion. There were always a lot of men sitting through communion, and almost never a woman doing so. I never wondered how my daddy, who beat his children unmercifully and swore worse than any sailor, could go to communion every Sunday. Every Saturday evening he would take a bath and go to Confession. Upon his return home, he would say, very pleased with himself, “I’m now clean, inside and out.”

We were taught to look into ourselves every night to see what sins we had committed that day, not to be able to make amends with each other, but to apologize to God. If we didn’t apologize to God for every sin, and we died in our sleep, we would wake up in hell. We were told not to worry if we knew our big brothers were too bad to ever go to heaven. We would see them suffering in eternal hell and would still be happy in heaven.

Even at the age of six, I knew there was something false about this kind of faith. I actually made a conscience decision to be as bad as I had to be to join my siblings in hell, if it came to that, but I’d keep chickening out as they upped the ante.  I then decided to try to drag all of them along with me wherever I ended up. They cooperated with that plan, only to a point. I never stopped looking for a solution to my dilemma, knowing that I’d never be happy in heaven if any of those I loved were in hell.

When I was in high school, Catholic, of course, the Roman Catholic church decided that we could, after all, associate with non-Catholics.  We even had a few girls of different race and some of different religions in our school. After graduation, I did something really daring in marrying a Lutheran.

In the years that have since transpired, I have been at Seders, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Pagan ceremonies, indigenous worship circles, and many other rituals, opening myself to interfaith spirituality. I have made friends with people from all over the world, with differing faith practices. I have never felt less fear in my faith.

I have adopted no set spiritual practice in the form of ritual. The closest I have come is probably the huge meals I used to serve at my home to people of all races, religions, and creeds. Let Peace Be.