How Did I Get Here?

I was singing a song I’d heard hundreds of times–the Boomer anthem, “You’ve Got a Friend”–when I realized that it was a perfect hymn. Think about it:

When you’re down, and troubled
And you need some loving care
And nothing, oh nothing is going right
Close your eyes and think of me
And soon I will be there,
To brighten up, even your darkest night…

Boom. Jesus in the house.

But then, I stopped singing, did that RCA dog head tilt, and thought, “Whoa. How did I get here?”

It’s a question I’ve tried to answer for many friends since my “late in life” conversion to Catholicism. And the answer rarely satisfies. Perhaps because it seems so simple.

You see, my life led me here.

I have previously written about my Baptist upbringing, and the misgivings I had about my mother’s religion. But I learned something else back then. I learned that there were these people that my mother and many inner city Black folks seemed both frightened by and envious of.

“Those Catholics,” they were always called. Almost the same way some white folks called us “you people.” But tinged with a touch of respect and awe that “we people” did not receive.

“Those Catholics,” I gathered, were a very serious lot, whose religion required a level of discipline few could maintain. For instance, the nuns we gawked at when we caught a glimpse of a few in their black habits were all supposedly married to Jesus, a fact that both impressed and vexed a lot of the local men.

It made Jesus both “bad ass” and more than a wee bit greedy. And of course, there was always the unspoken question about how He could possibly satisfy all those women, especially when He wasn’t even here. Not in the flesh anyway.

Nevertheless, the strivers amongst us fought hard to get their children into Catholic schools and out of the gang-ridden hell holes the rest of us were destined for. Few converted to Catholicism full on, but they spoke reverently of the strictness of “those nuns,” and the rigor of the curriculum.

The uniforms, too, they loved. Especially for the girls, who could not wear jeans and mini-skirts to school, though some of the girls rolled up the waistbands of their little pleated skirts a few times in an attempt to follow fashion as much as they dared.

This intensified the rumors that despite those strict nuns, Catholic girls were “fast.” There were other rumors, too. Here comes the “frightening” part.

It’s something I forgot about until a few years ago when my mother, by then living in a nursing home for medical reasons, caused a Catholic roommate to ask to be moved to a different room.

After watching said roommate pray to her saints and say her Rosary for several weeks, my mother finally began to question and then rebuke her for “idolatry.” And then one day, my mother told her “all that incense and chanting and whatnot” reminded her of “that hoodoo they used to do down in Mississippi.”

I apologized on her behalf. But it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. Many family members had expressed the same fears. Catholics prayed to statues and “talked to” dead people. Catholics lit candles and waved incense around in “those” churches. Even worse, the priests thought they were God. And people had to go apologize to them every week, or they would go to Hell.

Ironically, many of the things my relatives and friends were so afraid of and scandalized by are the things I went in search of throughout the 60s and 70s. I wanted the structure. I wanted the rituals. I wanted a “spiritual representative” here on Earth.

Those were, after all, the years of Transcendental Meditation and experimentation with “altered” states. Friends became devoted Buddhists and Hindus, chanting fervently at makeshift altars in their tiny apartments.

It was also the time of Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar—one of my boyfriends would play the lead in the touring company of the latter. Every hippie guy I knew compared himself to Jesus. Usually as a come on, but sometimes sincerely. There were Christian communes and “Jesus freak families” flourishing all over the world.

I careened from religion to religion. Discipline to discipline. Became, finally, Baha’i for a short while, wooed by the requirements for daily prayer and the magnificent white domed temple in Wilmette, Illinois.

Later, when I married into and lived among the Hopi Tribe out in Arizona, I was introduced to a world that revolved around religion, rich with ritual and an unparalleled personal relationship with Spirit. They believed in one god, too. And lots of saint-like spirits who danced in the village plazas on summer weekends, and could take their prayers to him.

I would also meet a Yoruba priestess, steeped in a similar spirit world which my African ancestors had brought with them over the water. They had prayed to their spirits on those slave ships. And hidden them, later, under Catholic saints throughout the Diaspora.

I was, the priestess said, a daughter of Oya, the whirlwind goddess of transformation who had come to me as a tornado in a dream one night, with all my ancestors walking proudly in front of her.

A huge honor, that was, she told me. And I was honored. But the required rituals and incantations were uncomfortable and overwhelming.

Jesus was my man. I read The Bible, on my own, all the way through, twice. It was the ultimate “self-help” book. It spoke my language, spiritually and literally, in the King James version we owned at home. But it was also more poetic, mystical and yet also practical than any other sacred book I’d explored.

I just could not find a Christian church that offered the type of “visceral” spiritual experience I longed for. I needed a combination of all I’d experienced. And something else, too.

I needed a religion with a “pedigree.” I wanted what my Jewish friends had, in fact. I wanted to be able to trace my religion back to The Book. I wanted to be more than just Christian. I wanted to be part of the religion that my Beloved had established. The one that descended from his Disciples. No detours.

But by then, as a child of the 60s and the wife of a Native American artist living on a reservation, I was wary of Catholicism for political reasons. I will not belabor that point. It is, however, a point forcefully made by friends just before my recent baptism.

I was joining the religion of The Oppressor. The religion that had enslaved and helped exterminate millions of indigenous people. The religion of the Crusades, the religion of The Inquisition. The religion that did not allow women to be ordained, the religion that shamed homosexuals…

But one Christmas Eve, my daughter’s boyfriend insisted we go to midnight Mass at a nearby church.

And Jesus was there. I felt Him.

But I wasn’t ready for Him yet. It would take a few serious slaps upside the head and an even more serious illness to get my full attention.

And some love, too. Love like nothing I’d ever felt before. “Those nuns” knew what they were doing. The old gospel songs talk about it, too. “Can’t nobody do me like Jesus,” they sang in my mother’s church. Male and female, joyfully, on Sunday.

It’s not sexual. It’s better than that.

I didn’t feel it when they sang it. But I felt it in that beautiful Catholic church. And Jesus just kept wooing me and leaving little “love notes” all over the place, after that. When He wants you, He wants you. And he puts all other suitors to shame.

So after a personal invitation from The Man Himself and months of soul-searching via RCIA, I took The Plunge. I do not know why He called me. He will tell me when He’s good and ready. And all that history may be why. So that I can help His Church march away from that, into a brighter future.

I just know that when I walk into St. Mark on Sunday morning and bow down and kneel and sing and pray to Him, He is present to me as He never was anywhere else. And through the Eucharist, I renew my physical and spiritual connection to Him every weekend.

That anthem I spoke of earlier explains the attraction beautifully:

If the sky above you,
Should turn dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind should begin to blow
Keep your head together
And call my name out loud
Soon I’ll be knocking at your door…

Yep. Can’t nobody do me like Jesus.

I just had to meet Him over at His House.

Photo credit: Freefoto, http://www.freefoto.com/preview/15-12-9/Forest For unrestricted use.