O Fearsome One

Last week's poem began

"where are you
god of my childhood
o fearsome one
who kept me on the
straight and narrow
ready to punish or
banish
for one wrong step
outside the lines"

If someone lives their life in an isolated community, as I did growing up Catholic, Catholic school and Church, with its dogma permeating our home, there isn't a sliver of room for foreign ideas (or foreign gods). We memorized answers to all the catechism's questions about God, sin, the Sacraments. How easy it was to displease the almighty God who knew every thought in our little minds. We could not hide from His view. After seventeen years of this Catholic lifestyle, I then lived nineteen years in a religious congregation.  At that time, the early sixties, the everyday Catholic was not encouraged to read the Bible, lest one misinterpret the texts and start on the path away from the true God.  As a novice I was blessed to live with a professed nun who was going to college.  She was a convert and entered the convent at age thirty-five.  She was an enigma to all of us as we tried to figure out what her life had been like and her reason for a conversion. 

I was fascinated by Sister Jude.  She read the Bible!  She talked about the Bible!  And so when I made my first vows, and received some money, the Mistress of Novices asked me if I needed or wanted anything.  Immediately I replied, a Bible.  She looked at me quizzically and asked, "What for?" and I looked at her and wanted to say "You're kidding, right?" but I said, "To read."  So she bought me the Bible.  Though it was the old Douay-Reims edition, it still had wonderful passages that just blew me away.  I'm sorry I didn't keep that copy.  It got replaced by the Revised Standard Version and the Jerusalem Bible.  But it was underlined in the many places where I read about God's love and the love we were to have toward each other.  I read about the call to social justice and how we are to care for the less fortunate among us.  My heart was often inlamed with joy to realize I was learning a whole new side of Divinity, which at that time was a male, God the Father. 

My father had been strict and I couldn't go against any of his wishes, so it was easy for me to believe in a Divine being that reflected the same demands.  My father just had to look at me if I said something unacceptable and I immediately felt his displeasure down to my toes. 

Eventually I found other books like Teresa of Avila who was in love with God and was able to talk about one's relationship to the Divine in ecstatic terms.  I wanted that joy.  I pursued that ecstasy. I went deeper and deeper within. I spent long hours in quiet contemplation, listening for the still small voice. I thought I was meeting God the Father in that place.  I now realize I was meeting the Divinity of my self, my own Divine Being that I believe is unique and immersed in the Universal Energy that is in all of life, all creatures, all plants, trees, rocks, water. 

The concept of a personal God, to fear offending, who could banish me to hell after I committed a so-called sin, no longer made sense.  I preferred the Presence, the comfort I was feeling during my time at prayer.  I felt loved for the first time in my life.  I felt at peace with myself.  I began to believe in happiness.  And so the second stanza of my poem"

"where are you
god of my contemplation
o gentle one
who met me on the
mountaintop
ready with dreams and
visions
of life beyond and
life within."

to be continued...