A Tongue of Fire

Again and again, I return to this theme: I wish with all my heart there were someone worth your attention to show you. But there isn’t. Again and again there’s only me here.

And again and again I find I need to show myself to you. Because if you can see that a life as commonplace and depressing as mine is sacred, you might see that your own commonplace, depressing life is sacred. I think if we could see that our lives are sacred, it might be easier to remember that we are meant to be saints.

This weekend was a hard one.

It was Pentecost. I hate Pentecost. It reminds me of the Charismatic Renewal and my whole terrifying childhood, the nonsense about Victim Souls and the madness about evil spirits, the terror of the apocalyptic prophecies, the eccentric masochistic devotions. The fear that we all would be salted with fire, and the fire would hurt like hell itself, and the hurt would be a good thing. Above all, the feeling that I will never fit in. That the fact that I could never pray in tongues or come up with a prophecy or a Word from the Lord meant the Lord didn’t want me. That the ridicule and rejection I’ve always found in Catholic churches from the time I was a little girl will turn out to be an icon of the way God sees me.

It’s not just because I’m queer and tried not to be. Though, that’s bad enough. I can see clearly that all genders are beautiful. Isn’t that true? Didn’t God create every human being to be an icon of Hi beautiful self? I am sorry that straight people can only see the opposite sex that way. Isn’t it also true that we’re supposed to be family for one another? Well, I’ve always felt that I could start a family with just about anybody, not just with a man. Isn’t it true that we all have to strive to look at one another as whole human beings instead of as objects for our personal use? Well, I strive. Apparently straight people only have to strive to look at the opposite sex that way, and it comes naturally when they look at every other sort of human being. For this I’ve been informed I don’t have dignity and am not an equal–most recently by a priest no less. And I don’t understand. Isn’t it our choices that our sins? What would you have me do differently?

That’s not all, though. I am socially awkward and not likeable. I never know what to do to make people like me, no matter how I try. was mercilessly tortured by students and teachers at Catholic Schools and never found a place to belong in the Church as an adult. And after we got bullied out of the Byzantine Catholic parish, I haven’t had the courage to sign up for a new parish. Maybe I never will.

I think if I saw a tongue of fire descending to touch my head on Pentecost, I’d run away and hide.

In any case, it was Pentecost. We tried to go to Mass at a new place near Pittsburgh, because I knew I couldn’t stand to be in Steubenville for Pentecost. We hoped this church might be a refuge. But when we got there, it didn’t look safe. It looked a little too “traditional,” a little too stuffy, the kind of place where they might make an example of androgynous Rose or queer awkward me to prove a point. I could feel a panic attack coming on. I tried to stave it off, which is always a mistake. The only thing to do when you’re about to have a panic attack is go somewhere private and have it. Eventually, it seized me, and I had to sprint outside.

I sat on the steps of the church, crying, trying to catch my breath, hating myself and the whole world but above all hating Pentecost, until Mass was over. Then I sat in the car, hating myself some more, trying to get it under control enough to drive home. So angry that I’d let the anxiety get me again. So furious with myself that I had let the panic get the better of me in front of yet another congregation, another place where I could never show my face again.

Then, for some reason, I got an idea. I sent Michael and Rose to play at the park while I went to a later Mass at a different church a few blocks down the street. We’d driven all the way to a big city with many different places to go; might as well take advantage and not go home right away.

You don’t have to do that. Religious trauma is trauma. Trauma is a genuine medical condition. You’re not obligated to go to Mass if it will give you a panic attack. But it’s what I decided to do.

I got there just as the priest was getting ready to process in. I whispered to him about my medical condition and he told me how to receive a low-gluten Host at this liturgy.

I sat in the back, scrolling on my phone to soothe the panic which was still churning. Scrolling through the first and second readings, scrolling through the singing of the Sequence, putting it down for the moment to stand for the Gospel but still twiddling my hands, stimming with my fingers, trying not to get sick again.

The music was nice.

The Sequence was sung beautifully.

The homily was fine; it described the Holy Spirit as life-giving water and not a burning fire. I’m a gardener. I understand that all creatures live or die by the availability of water. I’m a swimmer; I compose my best writing when I’m doing laps across the pool or the lake. I think I could like a Holy Spirit Who was water, instead of the agonizing fire of the Charismatic Renewal.

Then we got to the Eucharistic prayer, and I scrolled harder because the panic kicked up. I was sick to my stomach with fear. Surely God hated my guts. He didn’t want me to receive Communion. I shouldn’t even be here in this church, wringing my clasped hands before a God Who looked like a slim white disc. I should run away. But I didn’t.

I stumbled into the Communion line, leaving the phone in my seat, still feeling like I ought to turn around and sprint out of church again. But then there was an image in my mind– just an image in the mind’s eye, not a vision or a Word or an apparition or anything the Charismatic Renewal would have approved of. It was the image of an older, more maternal-looking Mary Pezzulo in a nice green dress, talking to a younger, even more hysterical Mary Pezzulo making an even greater fool of herself than I was. And the older one was saying something like this:

“You don’t have to do anything. No, you don’t have to do anything at all. The whole world is dust, and the dust will disappear on the wind. Heaven and Earth will pass away. Everything you’ve done will pass away. Your good and bad choices will pass away.  Underneath everything that is passing away is Love, and you have your being in Love. You exist because Somebody delights in you so much at every moment that He wills you to exist. Abide in that existence.”

I received the Body of Christ.

All the way back to my seat, the image said to me, “You don’t have to feel the Delight. It’s good when you do, but even if you don’t, the Delight is really there. You don’t have to feel. You can cry or cuss or scroll on your phone or go lie down. Just let the Delight be in you. Don’t move on from that for now. Just be in the Delight.”

“What would you have me do?” I prayed, assuming that was what was coming up next.

“Nothing.”

And it appeared to me in my mind’s eye that the older me was holding a baby me, delighting in that baby, loving that baby, expecting nothing in return except that the baby should be a baby because babies ought to exist. But the older me wasn’t really me at all. It was Someone in Whose image I was made.

I left the church to collect my family– still awkward, still unlovable, still on the verge of a panic. Nothing and everything had changed all at once.

If that’s a tongue of fire, I don’t mind it so much.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

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