Travelin' Light

Today was a great day. If more of my life were like today, I’d be a more satisfied individual. Today I finished the book I was reading, started, read, and finished another book, and started reading another one after that. In between books I made banana bread and tended the laundry. Oh, and I watched the special All Saint’s Day programming on the Catholic Channel.

I have always had a fascination with Catholicism. In the small town where I grew up, there was a small, reasonably understated Catholic church. I never saw the inside of that church, and knew only one boy in the town that claimed to be Catholic. Nevertheless, the parking lot was full on Sunday mornings. As we passed by it on the way to the Baptist church, I remember asking my Mother what made Catholics different from regular people. I only remember that her answer involved some kind of dispute about the interpretation of the Bible. And that sometimes they prayed to the Virgin Mary. These reasons, as I understood them, seemed too insufficient to have rent the entire Christian faith in half. What I did know was that I was born Protestant;becoming anything else would involve some kind of a conversion, and would have been tantamount to spiritual treason. Perhaps this is why, for me, Catholicism has always been shrouded in mystery, obscured as a priest behind the lattice of a confessional closet- separate and intangible. This is also probably why, some years later, I developed an obsessive distrust in organized religion that, in retrospect, superseded rational levels of cynicism. My imagination was fueled by the wild conspiracy theories I spent hours covertly unearthing with the aid of the library's computer bank; I was too paranoid to use my own.

When I set foot inside the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, it was not the first time I’d been a tourist in a Catholic church. But it was the first time such a place seemed holy. The distant ceilings and cordoned relics of the churches I’d visited in Florence were too removed to stir anything within me. I might as well have been a sparrow, hovering in the doorway of an old barn, enjoying the shade. But when I stepped inside the church in New Orleans, it was all around me all at once; the air inside was close, faintly perfumed, and cool as a mother’s hand on my skin. I could feel the people here, even though presently there were no worshippers, only tourists. The atmosphere of the place seemed stained by countless candles lit to burn away the desperation borne on the parade of hearts that had been marching here for centuries. I could sense the sadness absorbed and accumulated within the plaster icons. It seemed to give them a radioactive glow in the dense calm of the sanctuary.

When I began attending Mass, it was mostly out of curiosity. But as an outsider, the impenetrable mysteries of the faith remained intact. Yet, the things I found most puzzling about it were the things I liked the most. The group incantations and gestures awed me then, and continue to capture my imagination. Sometimes, like today, I marvel at the piety and rapture that such rote behavior can inspire in the faces of the faithful. I shut my eyes and the tumult of recited prayers tumbles about my head and shoulders like a sheaf of papers in a windstorm. I try to snatch them from the air, to inspect them for sincerity. But the edges of their voices are hushed and they commingle like shadows, melting into one low sound that flows out and away from us. It is a sighing sound that carries our sorrows on its shoulders like red autumn leaves. And I think about sound waves and time and all the prayers that have ever been prayed rolling around in outer space, clicking together like marbles.

I’ve often wondered if I shouldn’t just convert to Catholicism once and for all, to finally appease my curiosity. But something tells me I wouldn’t like it. I find a hike through the National Forest to be more spiritually invigorating than going to church on Sunday morning. And it would be terribly disappointing to have to exchange the mystery and romance of the Catholic church in my imagination for a patched plaster reality.