Читать книгу You Can Share the Faith - Karen Edmisten - Страница 8

Chapter 1

Do Remember That You’re Being Watched

I GREW UP WITHOUT GOD.

That sounds nihilistic, but it wasn’t that dramatic. We didn’t denounce nattily dressed neighbors who scurried off to church, or throw rocks through local stained-glass windows. There was nothing rebellious or ugly, just a houseful of souls muddling through life, trying to figure it all out. We spent Sunday mornings as a family, with dad’s famous animal-shaped pancakes, or mom’s French toast, or brunch at the Officers’ Club on special occasions. My father was an Air Force pilot and we moved every couple of years, meeting and befriending diverse families. My childhood was populated with kind, loving, interesting people. It just didn’t happen to be populated by God.

We did have some of the cultural trappings of Christianity. Naturally, we always had a Christmas tree, who didn’t? There were glittery stockings and gifts galore. Santa’s visits to our house on Christmas Eve made me a huge fan of the holiday. It was magical. At Easter, I looked forward to chocolate bunnies piled high in a pastel basket—a beloved family tradition, and who doesn’t love a good Easter egg hunt? My household may not have believed in God, but we believed in love and family. However, when the Christmas decorations were packed away and all the Easter candy consumed, we moved on, unchanged.

There are millions of households in the United States like ours was. Good, kind people who live their lives somewhere in the agnostic-to-atheist realm because they’ve never really been introduced to Christianity. My parents were and are—I’m blessed to still have them—kind, decent, wonderful people whom I love very much. They are children of God, and I’m certain he’s quite fond of them. When I think of my parents, or of myself in the days before my conversion, my husband before his, or any number of people I know, I remember a quote from Garrison Keillor. He said somewhere, of a friend, that although she doesn’t believe in God there’s evidence that God believes in her. I think God believes in all of us, and he’d like us to be conduits of the evidence.

My childhood home was a lovely place to grow up, and I was well loved and cared for. But because we didn’t talk about God, I felt no pressing need to search for him. In reality, of course, God was always right next to me, but when you’ve grown up as I did—and as my parents did before me, and their parents before them—unbaptized and uncatechized, what does spark an interest in him? What would make a girl raised in a secular home even begin to care?

Though I didn’t realize it as I was growing up, I watched believers. Subconsciously, I recorded the actions, behaviors, and sincerity (or lack of it) of those who professed belief in Jesus Christ. The witness of Christians, for good or ill, left a deep imprint on my psyche, forming my ideas about Christianity.

Being Nothing

My earliest memory of organized religion is of a Sunday school classroom: paper dolls dressed in robes and sandals, and me, at a loss as to what to do with them. A teacher who seemed unwelcoming, unengaged. I remember only sitting alone that day. The visitor, the stranger. A few years ago, I asked my parents about the experience, and they said they tried going to church once or twice but didn’t continue.

Religion didn’t come up again until junior high school. A break in French class found a few of us sitting around chatting. Someone asked what religion everyone’s family was. Classmates around the circle confidently ticked off their answers. Catholic! Methodist! Baptist!

I panicked. Clearly, everyone was something, but what was I? I didn’t have an answer to that question. It had never seemed particularly important, and no one had ever asked me before. I vaguely perceived that Christians were divided into two big camps: Catholics and Protestants. I knew we weren’t Catholic, because those people were really strange and extreme. Were we some kind of Christian? We celebrated Christmas, right? And Easter. We must be something.

“Umm, we’re Protestant,” I mumbled, when my turn came around.

“Yeah, but what kind?” someone persisted.

“I don’t know,” I bristled, “we’re just Protestant.”

“That’s not how it works,” someone muttered in disgust. “You have to be something.”

A few smirks indicated that my classmates were unimpressed with my lack of religious clarity. It was the first time I genuinely grasped that my family and I were “nothing.”

My next encounter with religion came when my friend Cathy started dropping notes in my locker. “Jesus loves you,” the notes said. I was irritated. Cathy and I had never talked about religion, so why was she bringing it up now? Didn’t she know I was officially “nothing”? I went with my gut reaction: I didn’t know Jesus, and “love” implied too much intimacy for the nonexistent terms I was on with him. I ignored her note-dropping.

Then one day Cathy invited me out for pizza with her family. Never one to turn down anything involving pepperoni, I accepted. Cathy and her family picked me up that evening and we headed out, but not in the direction of any pizza place I knew. When we pulled into a church parking lot, I stiffened. What was going on? Cathy had not mentioned a church. What was wrong with Pizza Hut or Pizza Inn or anyplace else that was not a church? On high alert, I scoped out the premises as I gingerly followed Cathy and her family inside. Witnessing nothing but the conspicuous consumption of pizza, I relaxed. I had overreacted.

We ate our meal in a cafeteria-style room, and I thought, “Whew, it is just a social thing, it is just pizza.” But after dinner, my initial suspicions were confirmed as the night morphed into something surreal. I didn’t know the term “altar call” at the time, but I knew something entirely outside of my experience was happening. I was captive in a church, listening to a preacher exclaim, “If you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, come on down!”

As I sat in the middle of this crowd, my eyes scrunched shut, something odd happened: I felt slightly drawn to the offer. Wait, what? For a fraction of a second I imagined myself responding, pictured myself running forward, as others did, weeping and gasping, “Yes! Yes!” What would happen if I did it? What if I flung myself into the wave of humanity at the front of the church?

I had to admit that the euphoria and peace they promised sounded enticing. But I didn’t understand how I could automatically, magically receive such gifts. If I were going to say yes to this, I needed to understand what “this” was, how the package was to be delivered. There was no logic in the claim that my life would change overnight after running down an aisle, flailing my arms, and shouting, “Count me in, God!”

And then there was the anger. Oh, the growing, swelling anger! I seethed. Cathy lied to me. Lied to get me to her church, lied to get me into this whatever-it-was. My fury at her trickery was stronger than the flickering spark of the moment. So I sat frozen, glued to my seat until the whole thing ended. The emotion died down, the people around me drifted back to earth, and it was time to gather our things and go. I don’t even remember the conversation on the way home; I closed in on myself, shut down, enshrouded in my wrath.

Cathy’s family dropped me off at my front door, unconverted and defiant. They had not persuaded me of their dogma, but they had convinced me of one thing: Christians were untrustworthy fakes who lied and schemed to get you into the club. If the club was worth joining, I thought, they wouldn’t resort to such pathetic recruiting tactics. I was done with them.

Fasting and Feasting

High school brought another Christian into my life. In my junior year drama class, I performed a scene from Neil Simon’s Star Spangled Girl and my impression of a southern ingenue caught the attention of a tall, skinny boy named Jack. After class, he followed me down the hall to my next class, chattering all the way about what a great actress I was. I approved of his taste in actresses, and as it turned out we also shared a love of books, movies, and nonstop talking. In no time we were best friends. I became a permanent fixture at Jack’s house for the rest of my high school career.

Jack’s family was Catholic, the first Catholics I ever really got to know. Jack’s mother, Loretta, was bigger than life, a Philadelphia girl who married an Air Force guy and landed in the heartland where she was completely out of place and yet somehow perfectly, exactly where she should be. I didn’t realize it until years later when I learned the term, but Loretta was a corporal work of mercy in action. She befriended strays and welcomed anyone and everyone into her home. Lonely, middle-aged man? Come to dinner! Misfit teen hiding behind overgrown bangs? Get thee to the party! Priest? Join us! She threw dinner parties and holiday feasts, inviting the lonely, the gregarious, the cool and uncool, the kids who had loads of friends, and the kids who had none. And she made the best chocolate pound cake this side of Philadelphia.

Loretta had strict “Crazy Catholic Rules” as I called them: Sunday morning at the Donnelly house was for Mass, no exceptions, ever, under any circumstance. Boys and girls were not allowed behind the closed doors of a bedroom, no exceptions, ever, under any circumstance. The Donnelly kids joked that there may as well have been a Hays Code stating that if you were in a bedroom with a member of the opposite sex, merely sitting on a bed chatting, at least one foot per person had to be touching the floor. And Donnelly children, upon arriving home on a Saturday night, awakened their mother immediately to tell her they were home and safe. Rules were nonnegotiable. No exceptions, ever.

But if I thought these crazy, rigid Catholics had to fast from a certain amount of freedom, they also proved that Catholics knew how to feast. On the 6th of January every year—I didn’t know it was called the Epiphany—the Donnelly Christmas tree was still up. My family, like normal people, kept our tree up until New Year’s Day, but what kind of crazies kept a tree up until January 6? Why? I found out why. Loretta threw a Twelfth Night party. I had never heard of Twelfth Night, aside from Shakespeare, so I was curious. And what a party! Platters heavy with hot, bacon-y hors d’oeuvres, Loretta’s rich chocolate pound cake, fruit punch, coffee with heavy cream, wine and Irish coffee for the adults. Sweet strains of Christmas music played against the backdrop of a twinkling, bubble-light tree.

It was magical. And it was my first exposure to countercultural religious revelry—the Catholic feasting that celebrates the entire season in a world that packs Christmas away too soon. These Catholics were a strange but intriguing bunch. I hung around them until it was time to move away for college, where I met another set of Catholics who ran the gamut from textbook cases of hypocrisy to a girl I hated for her goodness.

Hidden Pain

In my first month at college, I went to a party at someone’s apartment. I wasn’t used to drinking, but wanted to fit in and quickly got tipsy after two beers. I didn’t like feeling fuzzy and decided to leave. One of the hosts—I’ll call him Allen—encouraged me to stay. I was initially flattered by Allen’s attention, but was just as immediately uncomfortable with the way he tugged me back when I tried to mingle, or pulled me next to him each time I announced I was leaving. I felt awkward, embarrassed, and didn’t know how to react. Soon, the last few stragglers were filtering out the door, and I followed. But Allen tugged me back one last time. I was about to become a statistic.

All I remember of the aftermath of the assault is staggering back to my dorm, wondering how I could have been so stupid. I hated myself for not leaving the party the moment Allen made me feel uncomfortable, even scared. I wrapped my sweater around my waist to cover up the fact that my jeans had a ripped zipper and were missing a button.

Shock and denial took over. Rationally, I knew that a normal man doesn’t hold a crying woman down on a bed. Normal men understand that “No!” and “Stop!” mean no and stop. But I blamed myself. Stupid girl, I thought. Get a grip.

In the following days, Allen made sure his friends knew I was an easy mark. It was confusing and unspeakably painful to hear that he’d bragged about his “conquest.” I hated him, but didn’t know how to stand up to him. That night would haunt me for years. Instead of facing the reality that I’d been through an actual assault that left me sinking into depression, I acted out and self-medicated, treating the problem with copious amounts of alcohol, an important detail in a discussion about conversion and sharing the faith. I was not alone in this: Girls and young women who appear to be making selfish and sinful choices are sometimes, in fact, self-destructing due to hidden pain. “Every heart,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, “has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.”³

I turned into a drinker almost overnight, and among my partying friends were some Catholics who didn’t seem to live by the teachings of their Church. I wasn’t sure why they bothered to call themselves Catholic when they didn’t take their faith seriously. Though I didn’t believe in God and disagreed with the Catholic Church myself, I was struck by their lack of intellectual honesty.

A Different Way to Live

Late in my freshman year, I began dating a nice Catholic boy. Early in our relationship, Jon asked me what I believed. “Nothing,” I had to say. “I’m sorry.” I thought he’d drop me immediately, but when one is eighteen and falling in love, such differences don’t always matter. Jon was a serious Catholic who went to Mass, prayed, talked about God, got excited about the pope visiting the United States, and went to confession. That last fact confounded me because I couldn’t get him to do anything that seemed confess-able. He placed firm limits on our physical relationship, boundaries I had no choice but to respect. He sacrificed personal desires and pleasure for the sake of his faith. I was stunned by his fortitude.

While I was dating Jon, I was also friends with Stephen, another Catholic. Stephen was a quintessential “old soul.” Although he was only a couple years older than the rest of us in the theater department, he was a grandfather figure. He took an interest in everyone’s well-being, chided those who didn’t passionately throw everything into “our work” (theater majors can be grandiose), and doled out advice on a regular basis.

Sometimes over coffee, Stephen soliloquized to me in subdued, mystical tones about God and about the future of my relationship with Jon. Peering over the tops of his glasses, Stephen assured me that even though I was not Catholic he held me in the highest esteem and thought I was “worthy” of Jon. But he insisted I would have to change if I wanted the relationship to be long-term and serious. Jon, he frowned, shaking his head, could never commit to a woman who didn’t believe in God. I should have been insulted, but I was amused and touched by Stephen’s concern. In spite of his blunt assessment of me, his odd brand of respect shone through. His “spiritual direction” fell on mostly deaf ears, but I was making mental notes.

Jon and Stephen were also friends with Kim. Kim was tall, thin, and beautiful, with a sunny smile and an even sunnier disposition. Why did she have to be Catholic, too? I hated her for it. Kim was kind, virtuous, esteemed by Stephen as some sort of Madonna, and was a close friend of my Catholic boyfriend. Standing next to her I felt like a dirty sneaker kicked too close to a gleaming glass slipper. Sometimes at parties, Kim nursed one beer all night while brushing off the crude comments of flirtatious drunks with a blushing, “Oh, you guys, you don’t mean that.” I wanted to kill her. I made fun of her, but I also made a mental note: There’s a different way to live.

Jon eventually transferred to another school, and we broke up; I knew we would never survive long-distance, but I filed Jon’s goodness away in the Catholic registry I was subconsciously compiling. I’d certainly seen hypocrisy that landed in the debit column, but I credited Jon, Stephen, and Kim with showing me that serious, religious young adults who lived what they believed were not mythical creatures. Such a life was possible. Not for me, I thought, but it’s possible.

Their Actions, Their Impact

Over the next few years, my drinking increased and depression worsened. I quit school, planning to move back home to get my life together, but my parents had just accepted jobs in another state. I didn’t want to move, so I was on my own, and fumbled my way through the next few years. I took an entry-level job at a marketing company and worked my way up the corporate ladder. That led me to the next set of Catholics I would encounter, women who surprised me with unbidden acts of bravery.

My management position required occasional travel to trade shows. On one trip, my colleague Caroline and I didn’t have a meeting until late Sunday morning. She rose early, showered, dressed in her crisp navy blue suit, and made a phone call. Through the haze of my hangover I asked what she was doing. “I’m going to Mass,” she said simply, pulling back the curtain to keep an eye out for her cab. I had nothing to say as I burrowed back under the covers. I wanted to mock her but suddenly nothing about what she was doing seemed funny. She was in control; she stood for something. I felt a glimmer of respect.

Sometime after that, one of my employees, a single woman, became pregnant. Martha told me that she was Catholic. An abortion was not an option. She would have the baby and put it up for adoption. I was stunned. “An abortion would be so simple,” I said. “Why let one mistake ruin your life?” I reminded her that both her mistake and her choice could remain private. That’s what Roe v. Wade was all about. But she was steadfast. Her love for the child she carried reached a place deep inside me. I was shaken. What did I believe in that deeply?

By the time I was in my late twenties, I admitted to myself that I was a desperately unhappy woman. Years of drinking hadn’t erased any of the pain I’d battled, and though I couldn’t imagine continuing down the same road, I didn’t know where else to turn. I had no belief system, nothing I could cling to in a crisis. I lacked a cohesive philosophy of life, but I realized one thing: I wanted a rock. I yearned for the strength and bravery I had seen in others.

When I pondered what it would be like to have a concrete set of beliefs instead of the fragile mosaic I’d created from the sand of secular culture, I considered the lives of people I’d known. How did other people live? What had I learned from that subconscious registry I’d compiled?

There was Jack, with his Catholic upbringing. He’d taken a dramatic detour from his faith in his twenties, but eventually returned to the Catholic Church. From the moment we became friends, Jack was there for me, no matter how removed I was from the faith and morality he embraced. I thought of Jack’s mother, Loretta, her gathering-in of the lost, the family’s acceptance of strange, heathen me. There was Jon, solid, unwavering. Stephen and Kim. I remembered Caroline, calling a cab from a hotel room as I slept off too many Bloody Marys. And Martha. Oh, the thought of Martha made my heart hurt. Having her baby no matter the cost in time, dollars, or peer ridicule. Martha touched me at a level so deep, I didn’t know I could feel that way anymore.

Other pictures sprang to mind, too: the mockery of classmates when I realized I was “nothing.” The manipulation of someone I’d trusted, attempts to trick me into salvation by pizza. Catholics who slept around on Friday nights and slipped into pews on Sunday morning, as if life was a box of tidy compartments that didn’t touch one another.

In the trial for religion, I’d filed away all sorts of testimony. I’d known genuine practitioners and transparent posers. At various times, I’d been hurt, angered, repelled, indifferent, and attracted.

I knew now what I wanted.

I had been watching people, consciously or subconsciously, all my life. I had tallied points without knowing that’s what I was doing. In the final analysis, the witness of people whose faith was honest, sturdy, and real swayed me. They had faith that they openly lived, faith real enough to change lives, as it was changing mine. These witnesses had faith that challenged and sometimes scared them, made them blush, put them in positions of ridicule. They stood tall and held fast, and their faith in God was so radiant it couldn’t be dimmed, contained, or compartmentalized.

That was the faith that shone on me, made me squint and blink, and initially look away as it blinded me with its oddity, until one day when I realized something about these people. Theirs was a light I wanted to soak up. I wanted that kind of brilliant conviction to burn away my pain and transform my soul into something dazzling and new.

Until I saw how some people lived, I hadn’t believed in God. But thanks to a faithful, resplendent cloud of witnesses who modeled real Christianity for me, a new light was dawning.

These people were the evidence that God believed in me.