311/365 Win My Soul for Jesus

So I got really drunk last night playing mah jongg, which means to me that I need to play mah jongg more often so I don't feel like I have to push myself over the edge when I get to. The girls who play mj with me live on my block; except for Jackie (who had left before we started the conversation below) we are all in our mid-thirties and have kids between the ages of 22 months and 14 years. And while on paper our character sheets (roleplaying game reference) look pretty similar, we are obviously not the same. Among other differences, three of us are Catholic and two of us aren't. There's another girl who plays with us pretty often, also Catholic, but wasn't able to make it last night.

The two who aren't are Zelda, a non-denominational Christian of the best sort and Gretchen, a recovering Baptist who is now a Presbyterian (USA). She's Leo's godmother and attends the church that houses my girls' school for the moment (until we don't fit in their building anymore!). The pastor of the church is the one who had me make advent banners. His kids go to our school, too. So all of this is kinda intertwined as you can see.

And we were drunk. And Gretchen, who perceives things sometimes that surprise me at first and then make me say, oh, yeah, said in the height of this conversation (after several times telling me to be quiet so that she could ask the other two Catholics a question without my interfering), "You are going to wind up at my church."

I laughed, because I'm so dyed in the wool about ritual and the jarring cracked reflections of ritual at mainstream protestant churches. There's no way I could go be a Presbyterian, any more than I could go be a Lutheran or Methodist or Hindu. The only one that draws me is the Friends, and that's really only an affectation if I admit it to myself.

I turned to Zelda, who was the only one not drunk by that point and said loud enough for all to hear, "Gretchen's going to win my soul for Jesus."

Zelda smiled wisely at me, and later, after the hangover, after the nap, I reflected on this. I want to be Catholic. I want to be a part of where I am. I'm not a Presbyterian. But sitting in RCIA some Sundays I wonder why I'm doing this. Sitting in Worship Commission Wednesday night, I looked at those changes in the language of the mass and thought about the nit picking and the hierarchy and just wanted to chuck it all.

What keeps me here? My parish keeps me here. If I moved, I'd have a hard time integrating into a new parish, starting over. Since that's unlikely to happen, a more solid question is "if our pastor leaves and we get some shit-for-brains pompous dickweed for a pastor" or, with more trepidation, "if our parish closes"....then where am I? Where do I go? I think about that line from John 6: Do you also want to leave? Master, to whom shall we go?

I'll probably always be Catholic. Stability really calls for it, frankly. This is who I am and where I am.

But I don't think that precludes finding other streams to draw water from if this well runs dry for a season or two.

Gretchen will probably not win my soul for Jesus. I love her pastor and I think he'd probably be good to listen to. He is a good person and adores me (which is always a plus). But the energy required to make that change for good is just not in my soul: I am not a convert. I would not be surprised to have a summer home, but my mailing address will always be at my parish.