religion
Altar of Sts. Faith, Hope & Charity Church, Winnetka, IL. Photo by the author.
“Jesus Christ, you look like a fucking priest.”
As we neared the end of our program in education leadership and members of our cohort were being hired left and right, a few classmates, puzzled by my lack of job offers (one needs an interview to get an offer), looked at my resumé. On one hand, they were generous and wanted to help; on the other, diagnosing my career woes was a lot more interesting than the group project we should’ve been working on. One, an experienced administrator who had seen thousands of resumés, gave my materials the quick review of a seasoned school leader who doesn’t need more than a few seconds to know whether an applicant would merit an interview. Despite spending hours upon hours crafting my resumé and attending to the precision and variety of the language I used to describe my professional path, I failed to take the 30,000’ view. I’m not sure I took the 30’ view. Apparently, I looked like a fucking priest.
The emboldened names and titles throughout my resumé, my friends pointed out, distracted readers from the facts I wanted to convey. My undergrad major was religious studies, and I had minors in philosophy and Judaic studies. I have a master of theological studies degree from a divinity school. My first professional title was “Campus Minister & Teacher of Religious Studies.” The student programming I’d developed included retreats, liturgies, and service projects. I taught core religious studies courses in a Catholic school. My professional development included a fair amount of mission formation. I even coordinated a conference of campus ministers. Oh, I thought, I look like a fucking priest.
Instead of imagining me in a Roman collar, I wanted potential colleagues to see that my academic background was unique because of its interdisciplinary nature; that my master’s studies focused on cultural construction and comparison; that the structure and content of the programs I’d built, all those retreats and liturgies, gave students space to develop skills for leadership, effective team building, and critical thinking and reflection; that my courses were innovative, engaging, and (unique among Catholic schools) driven by a commitment to religious pluralism; that attending to formation gave me and my colleagues a chance to add a meaningful dimension to our work and tools to identify clear connections between our personal values and our professional roles; that the conference I designed and hosted was hardly a pious assembly - it was a dynamic (and, dare I say, fun) networking event for a group of people whose professional development options were, at best, limited, and at worst, insultingly didactic. I wanted them to see that I was not only poised to lead a program or a division but to bring a fresh and unique perspective. To paraphrase the song, I wanted them to want me, but, judging by the lack of interviews on my calendar, all they saw was religionreligionreligion. And nobody wanted a fucking priest.
“What got you…interested in religion?”
I get the question frequently. It’s a question that most people don’t receive because most people didn’t study, teach, or work in an environment infused with religion. There’s often a slight pause before interested, indicating a search for the right word that will convey earnest curiosity (and shield the judgment simmering just beneath the question). It’s not a neutral question (then again, is any question neutral? #seewhatididthere). When people ask History or Political Science majors about their chosen fields, they understand what one could do with such a foundation. They could teach history or poli sci; they might go to law school; they’d be dependably interesting guests to stoke conversation at brunches and cocktail parties. When people ask an astrophysicist or a celebrated sculptor how they got started, they ask with a real desire to get a glimpse into genius. When people ask, “What got you…interested in religion?” though, they’re assessing me, anticipating whether my response will inspire a lecture about the evils of this or that approach to religion, an attack on my moral depravity, or just free therapy.
I’ve always answered honestly, though my responses, according to my mood and the context, have swung across the spectrum, from sharing my anthropological curiosity (at the purely intellectual end) to describing my own spiritual experiences (at the more personal, warm & fuzzy end). Sometimes, very rarely, my response is more complex (or just more complicated) than my inquisitors expect, throwing them off their guard and giving me a chance to jump to a different conversational track. For the other 97% of these interactions, my response doesn’t really matter and evaporates quickly, making room for Dawkinsian lectures about the intellectual inferiority of religious people, heated (and typically poorly researched) retellings of the history of the Catholic Church or religiously motivated wars and why that proves the evil of institutional religious practice (anti-religion folx are big on proof), accusations that I am “part of the problem” or unaware of my own internalized self-hatred, or the outpouring of years and even decades of legitimate emotional distress rooted in pain that was inflicted in a religious context.
The folx who share their emotional distress, though, mostly folx who grew up in a religious context and got burned, don’t ask that question. Typically, if they bring religion up at all, they indicate discomfort or unease about the topic or say in some way or another, I had a bad experience with religion. Maybe they were abused, isolated, publicly humiliated, or indoctrinated to hate something about themselves or about others. Sharing such details is risky - it’s painful to summon those memories and potentially reopen healed (and not-so-healed) wounds. If we’ve gotten to that point in the dialogue, I try to communicate my gratitude - I know and appreciate that they’re sharing their experiences for my benefit. I also try to communicate that I am in no way, shape, or form trying to convert them or sugarcoat the past.
The majority of my conversations about religion, though, do start with the question. Sometimes I respond by reflecting on my Religion classes in high school, my favorites because they were the only truly interdisciplinary courses we had. Sometimes I geek out about the power of ritual to construct culture. Sometimes I tap into my own experiences of deep spiritual hunger and fulfillment. Sometimes I recount the conversations that I had with my parents about the primacy of one’s conscience, even over the Church’s teachings, that ignited a slightly rebellious spirit in my own practice and thinking. See, I whisper under my breath, we’re not all brainwashed fundamentalists who are out to save or suck out your soul. Whatever tack I sail, though, I consistently crash into sweeping and unsubstantiated opinions, personal condemnations, and, for the remainder of our relationship’s life, that look of subtle pity and condescension that says, “I can’t believe you actually believe that crap.”
You know what no one has ever said to me in these conversations? Tell me more. No one has ever asked for more details or for a recommendation for a book to learn more, for a community to visit, for a practice to try. No one has ever asked me what meaning I gleaned from my experiences, how it informs my worldview. No one has ever asked me what I believe, whether I conform to my Church’s teachings or how I diverge…OK, I lied. There was one conversation in which someone posed these questions, and that conversation didn’t end like the rest. That someone…well, I married him.
My family went to church every Sunday when I was a kid. My wife cannot believe this. She’s like, “You went every Sunday?” “Yes.” “What if you were out of town?” I was like, “They have them out of town.” I don’t know if you grew up going to church and now you don’t, but it can be a weird existence. Because I like to make fun of it all day long, but then if someone like Bill Maher says, “Who would believe in a man up in the sky?” I’m like, “My mommy, so shut the fuck up!” “Stop calling my mommy dumb.”
John Mulaney is a frequent visitor to our home (via Netflix, of course). By now, Mulaney’s physical performances are burned into our memories, so my husband and I don’t need to actually watch to be tickled by this gesture or that facial expression, and we can (and often do) recite his jokes and stories along with him. Mulaney and I come from similar worlds - we’re both Irish Catholic Chicagoans who went to parish elementary schools and Jesuit high schools, and we’re both close to (though on opposite sides of) the Gen X/Millennial divide. His stories about growing up, from school assemblies to being an altar boy, and glimpses into his family dynamic and humor feel very, very familiar to me. And for a few hours after he’s on screen, my Chicago accent is just a little heavier than usual.
Mulaney’s bits about church resonate especially loudly for me. I can even remember my father saying “God can’t hear you” if I wasn’t singing along with the cantor loudly enough, and, like Mulaney’s (now ex-) wife, my husband listens to me talk about Catholic stuff with a mix of fascination and horror. But there’s one bit where my experience diverges from his.
If you grew up going to church and you have adult friends that didn’t, they have a lot of questions. “Wait, so they forced you to go?” Yeah, I was five, I was forced to go everywhere. No kid is just going to church. Riding by on his Huffy, like, “Whoa! What’s this place? A weird Byzantine temple with green carpeting where everyone has bad breath and I wear clothes that I hate on one of the mornings of my two days off? Let’s do this.”
I did. Well, not on a Huffy, on a Schwinn. On a warm summer day, about a month before I turned 11, I was riding my bike past our church, just a few blocks away from home. For no particular reason, I decided to go in. I’d been in this church a thousand times by then - my family was there every Sunday and every Holy Day of Obligation, and my school, attached to the parish, was there on Wednesdays for 9:00am mass - but I’d never seen it empty. The huge, metal doors at the front of the church were unlocked, so, with great effort, I pulled one open and shuffled in.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when it did I took in all the colors filling the space. When the lights were on in the sanctuary, I never really noticed them, but the afternoon sun streamed through the modern stained glass windows and quilted the green carpeting, mahogany pews, and tan walls with messy, distorted, and fantastic patterns. I could see millions of dust particles swimming in the light. I knew it was dust, but to nearly-11 year old me, it gave the sanctuary an enchanting and lovely shimmer.
I walked up the aisle on the right-side, under the west wall’s windows, careful not to disrupt the bands of colors painting the space. At the top of the aisle, I turned left and noticed for the first time a gate in the substantial brass rail that separated the congregational pews from the altar. Later in life, I’d learn that the gate stayed open because of the liturgical reforms after Vatican II, and most churches removed the rails that delineated the spaces for the sacred and the profane, the saints and the sinners. This rail remained to keep people from falling off of the altar, five or six steps above the main floor. I slowly closed the gate - swinging first the heavy panel on the right to its close, then the one on the left - and I discerned two figures I’d never seen before, stylized portraits of…pelicans. Pelicans?
I drifted east, to the apse on the left side of the main altar, drawn to a small side chapel. It had a smaller altar to host the tabernacle, the holy of holies, where consecrated communion wafers were stored. Above it, a brilliant gold-leaf triptych depicted the Holy Family surrounded by children from around the world. We knew they were from around the world because they wore the traditional costumes associated with different cultures. I’d seen it before, but it suddenly reminded me of the It’s a Small World ride at Disneyworld. I laughed, and then I marveled at the faint echoes of my laughter bouncing back toward me from the empty church.
I looked around, confirmed that I was alone, and cautiously climbed the one step up to the altar. There was a key in the small door of the tabernacle, so I turned it, opened the door, and found two ciboria, the hand-size brass bowls from which communion is distributed, filled with wafers. Without thinking, I reached in, ate a couple, and returned the ciboria to the tabernacle. I closed the door, turned the key, and left the church by the side door, where my parents entered and exited every day for 7:00am mass.
When we returned for mass the next Sunday, I didn’t feel any particular thrill, that buzz that comes with naughtiness, that titter that comes with secret knowledge. Instead, I started noticing more details throughout the space. Curious symbols and Greek letters were deliberately planted throughout the church. That’s got to mean something, right? The four faces on the ambo (the podium from which parishioners read passages of scripture and offered prayers of petition, where priests proclaimed the gospel and preached, and, after communion, someone delivered the all-important announcements about upcoming events) stood out to me, shouted out to me. Why is only one of you a person? Behind the altar, twelve larger-than-life statues, representing Jesus’ twelve apostles, were embedded in a giant screen that hid the pipe organ and choir’s risers, but I’d never really paid attention to them or the dozens of angels that sprung from the angles of the screen. I started counting them until my eyes fell on the giant cross hanging over the altar. Jesus, naked, sinewy, and lean, didn’t hang from the cross as much as he embodied it, his arms and legs perfectly outstretched. Above his head were four letters that one of my brothers told me meant “I’m Nailed Right In,” a joke my mother typically pursed her lips or clucked her tongue at but never refuted. Suddenly, I questioned whether my brother was telling me the truth.
I started to notice who sat where and to think about how their position opened or obstructed their views of the ambo and the altar. On weekdays, my parents sat in the apse, adjacent to the tabernacle, but on Sundays we’d always sat about a third of the way back in the nave, always on the left, giving us an optimal view of the ambo. We had a pretty good view of the altar, but the real privilege in our position was being able to see everyone going to and coming back from communion. We could see each person approach the priest from the center aisle, lift their hands to receive a wafer, hear the priest mutter “The body of Christ” and the person mumble “Amen.” Our pew emptied, and I walked behind my mother toward the altar. When she received communion, she didn’t say “Amen” - instead, she responded, with confidence and a hint of rebelliousness, “I believe.” Is she the only one who did that?
When the boys in my grade were recruited to serve as altar boys (we didn’t have altar girls yet), my mother was, perhaps unsurprisingly, enthusiastic. “What a privilege,” she said after my first training session, “to be that close.” What a privilege? I loved seeing my name on the altar boy schedule, and my quick adaptation to the rituals and routines put me on the A-list for special altar boy gigs. The money was in weddings (once, I got a crisp $100 bill in an envelope after a particularly lush ceremony), but we got pulled out of school for funerals. I jumped at any chance to skip PE or math, so whenever Deacon Roger, who coordinated altar boys, appeared at our classroom door, I’d start packing up my things and wonder, with a smile on my face, “Who’s dead today?”
Most funerals were for old people, grand- and great grandparents whose time had come. For some, the pews were packed, making the communion line last for close to 20 minutes (which is far too long for any group of Catholics to sing “On Eagle’s Wings” on a loop). Others were quiet liturgies with a handful of offspring and the few friends who outlasted them. From the altar, I could tell who was popular and who was loved. For the popular ones, every local with an Irish surname and every major fundraiser within fifty miles would cram into the back rows under the guise of the old maxim that “Good Catholics sit in back” (but really ensuring that they’d be seen by the entire congregation when they followed the casket out of the church). With that kind of an audience, priests would pull out their biggest guns to make their homilies smart, funny, and touching and praise the virtues that the deceased represented.
But people smiled at funerals for the ones who were loved. They cried, they wept, some mourners even wailed - but they smiled, as if their recently-lost and much-favored friend or aunt or cousin had just reappeared and told this famous story or provided that trademark hug. During his homily, the priest would speak to the relationships impacted by this loss and point to specific moments in the dead’s life that showed God’s love at work. Some examples were familiar to everyone, and others stunning (if not surprising) revelations of kindness, generosity, and care. I’d find myself crying and smiling with them, coopting their grief, wondering if I’d ever be so well loved, or if I’d ever love so well, to have a funeral like that.
Some people observe religious practice to connect to and perpetuate their culture. Some seek belonging and community. Some believe fiercely in a worldview and want to tell you all about it. Some, deep in their bones, feel at peace or in harmony with the ground under their feet. Some need a space to tremble at the thought of the limits of their existence. Some needed an escape, space and time to think, space and time that the rest of the world doesn’t afford. For me, it was the things that made me stop thinking, the things that gave me a reason to step out of the echo chamber of my mind, to give into my senses, to just be. It gave me a space where I learned how to wonder, how to sit with ambiguity, how to be still, how to notice, how to feel joy and sadness and know that their mix is part of being alive.
Late winter is a “slow season” for religion. A couple of weeks ago, the lunar new year capped the peak winter festivities - people around the world (or at least throughout the hemisphere) mark the darkest point in our lap around the sun and engage in some form of personal or collective renewal. As the days hint at lengthening, religious folx will let out the steam and the frustration that builds amid the winter doldrums through holidays like Purim, Holi, and Mardi Gras, and as the spring equinox approaches, Ostara, Norooz, Pesach, and Easter remind us, fundamentally, that we’re still alive, that life goes on.
I forget that sometimes, that life goes on. Don’t we all? But I know that it's a more frequent memory lapse these days, and that’s because I don’t go to church anymore. I haven’t shed my religious identity or claimed the title of “post-” or “recovering Catholic” as some cheekily do. Just entering a church triggers a quake of emotions and pain. I was exhausted from navigating the line between being queer and being Catholic and dodging bullets from all directions. I couldn’t, in good conscience, participate in a community that has made it very, very clear that my gay-ass self isn’t fully welcome. However, I was also, and more so, sick of confronting anti-religious sentiment among people who advocate for diversity and pluralism until it comes to religion.
A few months ago my husband looked directly at me and asked, “Do you still pray?” I thought for a moment, surprised by his abrupt conversational turn, and said, without further explanation, “Yes.” He nodded - not sure what to ask next. And I wasn’t sure what to say. Nobody has asked me about my prayer life since I was 17, I thought. I don’t go to church, but I meditate, I process, I laugh, I read, I listen, I think, I advocate, I sing, I reflect, I look, I serve, I notice. Isn’t that prayer? Sometimes I just sit still and let the energy of the universe swirl and shimmer around me. Isn’t that religion? I still strive to love so well that my funeral makes strangers weep. Isn’t that life?
Excerpts from John Mulaney, Kid Gorgeous at Radio City
