142/365 Ecumenical Dialogue

Why is it that I can have religious conversations with a Lutheran minister's wife in Texas but can't bring myself to do so with the conservative Catholic who sits behind me at mass?

For that matter, I can chat with and have a good time with the mom at my kid's school dressed in a hijab, a convert to Islam with her blue-green eyes and pale skin and completely white middle class name, but I can't bring myself to be anything more than thinly courteous with the Latin mass attendee on the next block?

My evangelical neighbors know more about my faith life than my Catholic ones.

Maeve's godmother is an Evangelical Lutheran (ELCA, I mean) and Leo's godmother is a Presbyterian (Presbyterian USA).

I share many values more closely with the Mennonite family in my girl scout troop than I do with my Catholic parents.

Why are so many Catholic feminists so very very angry? If they left, we could talk. But they stay and we can't get past the anger.

My few Jewish friends ask important questions about the Vatican, about conversion; my Catholic friends seem to have few opinions about either.

Yet I attended a Jesuit university because the Methodist one that was first on my list treated me terribly on my tour of the college when I visited. Perhaps they weren't interested in ecumenical dialogue. Perhaps they'd been talking to the same Catholics I've been avoiding.

Several times a week I ask myself why I stay. And I've already answered this question and stability is part of it and the biggest part, frankly, but that vow isn't just a promise, it's a deep love for place and denomination and parish and family and I stay because there's nowhere else for me to go, because Sr. Jean Frances told me most people don't have to leave from where they started to find the right place, because I've always been leaving or coming to a new place and I hate starting over and I've already converted too many times to try again now and there is this deep, deep rooted conviction inside me, maybe it's a part of stabilitas, that says:

Stay right where you are. Stay. Down and stay.

But stability isn't my problem. It's the conversion of heart: being a good monk, essentially. How do I be a good Catholic to my fellow Catholics? I'm so good at hospitality across scarred battle lines, but I'm fearful of my nearest neighbors?

Maybe it's because, within the Church, Ecumenical Dialogue has turned into Ecumencial Diatribe. I get sick of flinching.

216/365 Minority Religions

I have several friends, in "real life" and in the blog world, who belong to, or were raised in, small Christian denominations. A longtime college friend grew up as a Moravian Lutheran. Indigo Bunting up in Vermont has Church of the Brethren roots. I know Friends and Christian Scientists and Mennonites. My best friend in 8th grade was a Primitive Baptist. Yes, I know many non-denominational Christians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists, and of course Catholics, but it's those little churches that intrigue me most of all. Arguments over instrumental music versus a capella. Buttons or hooks and eyes? Drinking or no alcohol? Opposed to missionaries? Infant baptism? Creeds?

I know there is much lamentation over the splintering of Christianity. And yes, we as Christians should work towards a common ground. But in the end, almost all of us do stand on common ground (there are certain sects, I'm sure you can think of them too, that stand too outside such a patch). I think this separation is so human and so telling of our condition that I have to love it. Notions turn into ideas turn into beliefs turn into doctrine.

254/365 I'm Ready to Talk Advent

That was the title and the only sentence of the email the Presbyterian minister who is the pastor at the nearby church, the one where my girls' school lives, written to me this week.

So I'm going to be making some Advent banners. I am excited--two very different styles are expected. He wants pictorial, not abstract, and my parish pretty much wants the opposite. As Hildegard has said to me, we don't want to hit them over the head with it all. But from a quilting perspective I'm kind of excited about the different approach. Just sayin.