Going to Church

I was seven years old.

I remember cutting little round circles of construction paper and then putting them in a Dixie cup. I then wore my pink quilted bathrobe backwards and tied my rosary beads to the belt. I lined up all my stuffed animals and affixed tissues with my mother’s bobby pins to the heads of all the “females”. I made the sign of the cross and then administered first Holy Communion to my make-believe congregants.

I was a little girl intrigued with the power of Catholic priests.

On the season finale of Nurse Jackie, a dying patient asks Jackie Do you go to church? She responds No—I stopped going a long time ago. The patient nods and says You may leave the church, but the church never leaves you.

Later in the episode Jackie administers last rites to that dying patient in the absence of a priest—something few Catholics ever have the occasion to do. Because only ordained catholic men may bestow the seven sacraments but for in the rarest of circumstances—like imminent death.

   

And like Jackie, I too do not attend weekly mass. Yet I pray every day and make an effort to accept all that is good as blessings. I consciously aspire to Jesus’ example—doing on to others as I would have them do on to me.

I seek grace.

And forgiveness.

I walk with God behind, next to, and in front of me.

In silence.

With reverence.

I am the same little girl fascinated by transubstantiation.

And while I have left the church, the church has never left me. It remains instilled. And living with belief minus the one hour Sunday obligation per week is a better alternative in my world than attending mass weekly, yet believing yourself abandoned.