While the contrast of the dark tunnels and the light of day are enough to shake passengers from their subterranean daze, on sunny days we have another reason to perk up in our seats during this part of the ride.  As the T crosses the Charles, passengers turn around in their seats to capture a view of the city skyline and the sun reflecting off the tall windows of its high-rises. We can see a flock of white sails shifting on the river and its verdant bank speckled with pedestrians and cyclists.

On sunny days, the T passengers get a lovely, elevated glimpse of all this—which makes dreary days on the redline a bit heartbreaking.  Lately, we arise onto Longfellow Bridge surrounded by low gray clouds and the sticky mist of Boston summer rain.  The cars fill with light, yes, but a heavy, dim glow instead of the summer rays we long for.  We don’t turn around in our seats because we know that the sails are still folded in their boathouses, and the pedestrians probably walked to the cinema instead of the riverbank below.

But yesterday, amidst another damp afternoon, the young man sitting next to me turned around in his seat anyway.  As his gaze lingered across the river for those few long minutes, I found myself surprised and no longer so interested in the book resting on my lap.  And as I eventually turned with him to watch the skyline before us, I thought about conversion.

The word “conversion” has its origins in the Latin verb “convertere”—to turn around.  Pop culture often portrays religious conversation as it is understood in Christian evangelical traditions where it is a one-time, dramatically life-altering event in a person’s life.  Surely, this is the experience of conversation for many people, and surely, one could understand this as a “turning,” a sort of dramatic pivot in the path of one’s life.  But I never experienced a religious conversion like that. For me, religious belonging was not a one-time decision as much as a recurring experience.  I constantly struggle to turn toward Catholicism—to continue to convert.

Yet, as this young man turned around in his seat, he reminded me why I do continue.  “This guy doesn’t want to miss a potential glimpse of that beautiful view, so he even turns around on the ugliest of days, just in case,” I surmised.  I think I continue to convert because of the glimpses of beauty, and truth, and goodness I have seen in Catholicism—visions that somehow sustain my hope and faith through the very dark days of the Church.  Certainly, there are days when I think the hope that sustains my conversion might just be naïve.  Catholicism has had some very, very ugly days, and I think it is important to take that seriously.  But, surely, it is also important to take seriously the goodness that I witness in my experiences of Catholicism, too.  And for the time being, they keep me turning back to the Church.

Suddenly, the redline sunk below the street level and into the darkness again. The young man and I turned back around, and I began to collect my things. The next stop was mine.  But as I departed the train into the bustling station of raincoats and umbrellas, I smiled to myself.  I was thankful to know that in only a few hours, I would be boarding the train back home, and once again it would ascend to the Longfellow Bridge where I could turn to take in the view, rain or shine.

“The way I see it, a mystic takes a peek at God and then does her best to show the rest of us what she saw…she agrees to the quiet morning hour in front of God in exchange for a bit of revelation.  She doesn’t ditch tradition as much as take it for its word and peer inside its cavernous shell.  There must still be something worth saying, worth pointing to.” –Jessie Harriman, in David James Duncan’s God Laughs & Plays

At dinner the other evening, a long-time friend of mine asked me how things are going with the Catholic Church. This did not strike me as a general question; it seemed to be a very personal one about the Catholic Church and me—how we are doing—and that was a bit startling…which, in itself, was startling.

These days I spend a lot of time asking other folks how things are going between them and the Catholic Church. You see, for the past few months I have had the privilege of helping to facilitate a Boston-area writing group for young adults who are wrestling with the beauties and sorrows of our Catholic Communion.   Rather than attempting to voice my own relationship with the church, I have been listening to echoes of it in the profound articulations of others. And this has brought me a good sense of companionship.

Yet, when this old friend of mine asked me about my own life with the Church, I hesitated. I was speechless, really.  In the broken response that I proceeded to muster, I found myself talking about this blog.  Why had a question about my faith life led me to an explanation about this blog?  Perhaps my friend was wondering the same thing: “Oh, no, no, I didn’t mean to question you about the blog,” he said, assuring me that he was asking about my faith and really not trying to make me feel bad about my silence in the blogsphere.

What my friend’s question led me to realize, however, was just how much this blog is implicated in my ability to answer his question about my present relation to Catholicism. In the conversation that followed, and in the days of contemplation that ensued, I observed that the practice of blog writing has afforded me a space of discovery—of revelation—about where and how I am in relation to God and the Church.  Without it, I have become much less familiar with my location in relation to these very significant entities.  It is not that I am nowhere in relation to them so much as I am simply unaware of where I’m at. Unable to give an account of it. Unsure about toward where and to what I can point with regard to my life with the tradition.

Blogging more often might be a good way to get at this again.  I’m a bit out of practice, though.  My fingers don’t navigate the keyboard as quickly as they once did when I sat down to write; and this is really just a more physical manifestation of my internal aimlessness as I search my soul for some simple words to offer.  Yet it seems a worthy attempt to continue to sit down and try. I can sit in the quiet in exchange for a bit of revelation every once and awhile, a few words on the screen, a bit of insight into who I am and where I am today.  I’m a bit out of practice, but perhaps God will show up again. Eventually.

In recent weeks when the news spread that the Vatican is making significant strides to revise its handling of clergy sexual abuse cases–all while allegedly linking the severity of these sins to the ordination of women–the questions came in, and I started to ask myself, “How are you feeling about this, Jessica?  How are you doing?“

I couldn’t stop thinking about the story my friend Katie told me the other day. During a recent weekend, she volunteered at a middle school camp for inner city youth run by the Catholic parochial school where she taught for a few years after college. On that Sunday morning, she went to Mass with the students and their teachers in the camp’s quaint wooden chapel. The presider was gracious with the kids, and a good homilist, too. “But the tabernacle there–” she told me.  That’s what got her. “The tabernacle looks just like the boy’s Catholic school down the street. Like the shape of their building.”  I began to smile as she went on.  I delighted in the fact that this friend anticipated the wonder I would share with her as she recounted this experience for me.  ”This is what Catholicism is about, isn’t it? Recognizing Jesus inside an inner city school like that? Like that?  Believing that Jesus dwells with the underprivileged so much that you make a symbol of it with the most important part of your sanctuary?”

I nodded as we savored this moment that captured the best of our Church.  In that small moment, we didn’t have to convince ourselves that we are so blessed to belong to this Church.  We are blessed to have  church that views inner city schools as tabernacles, and tabernacles as inner city schools.  And blessed to be raised in a church that has given us the eyes to see the world in this way, too. “I wish I had moments like that more often,” Katie said. I think she was referring to the tabernacle at the camp, but I was thinking the same thing about the moment we had just shared–that moment of unwavering pride for our faith.

I’ve been telling a lot of people that, for many reasons, I feel sad and disappointed about the recent Vatican stirrings.  And, really, I’m feeling tired of feeling sad and disappointed. But I am also trying to tell a lot of people about my hope. I’m trying to talk about that, too. I’m trying to tell them about the eyes this tradition has afforded me–Katie and me.  Eyes that recognize miraculous transformations in places and people that much of society overlooks. Eyes that see Jesus in the sometimes harsh and unglamorous realities of our cities.  Eyes set on recognizing God’s redemption of our world in any and every place.  Even in our Church.

In Lauren Winner’s memoir, Girl Meets God, she recounts her transition from Orthodox Judaism to Anglican Christianity.  Couched among the tales of her various love affairs, the story of Winner’s tumultuous conversion mirrors her romantic relationships with men.  Winner writes of how she found herself consistently enamored by Jesus while persistently fighting against her burgeoning devotion.  In the end, she gave in to the love affair.  I read this book for the first time when I was sixteen—at the age of first love and first heartbreak—and undoubtedly, it gave me a paradigm for understanding my increasing attraction to the Catholicism of my upbringing.  If becoming Catholic was like falling in love, perhaps leaving would feel something like a break-up.

We have rituals for break-ups, for mourning the loss of a lover, a once-constant life companion.  We let ourselves cry.  We call our friends, and they show up, sit on our couches, and hold us as we try to catch our breath, like Kate. We take down pictures and put old letters into shoeboxes that we shove into our closets, perhaps opening them from time to time for grieving. When we have no paradigm for life without that ex-companion, friends tell us to wake up in the morning, to get out of bed, and they promise that someday it will be a little bit easier. Those around us testify to a hopeful future until we believe it.

Later in the day after reading Kate’s blog entry, I sat at dinner with my boyfriend Jack, telling him how I had carried her heavy words with me all day.  Jack leaned forward to speak—then paused. “I have a frank question for you, if I may?” he asked. “I know you don’t think you can leave, Jessica.  But do you ever wonder if you could, maybe some day?”  Jack has stood beside me during Episcopal liturgies where I wept silently, yearning to belong to a community like that—a more egalitarian space where, for instance, a woman could consecrate the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  Afterward, I told him I was crying because I could never imagine leaving the Catholic Church, even in the moments when I want to.  Feeling stuck in my relationship to the Church hurts sometimes—but I have no paradigm for life without the liturgy and people and tradition that I have loved for so long, even with its major imperfections.

“Sometimes I think it’s possible,” I responded.  “But, I think I would need a funeral first.” Jack tilted his head, wearing a confused look.  This was not a clever way of saying I will be Catholic until I die.  It had simply occurred to me, “I would need some sort of ritual. You know, at funerals everyone who loves you gets together, and they celebrate your life with them.  They mourn your absence but they commend you into another space.  At the very least, I think I would need that to leave Catholicism.  To feel okay about it.”

For many people, leaving Catholicism is a courageous decision made in response to the painful circumstances imposed on them by the Church.  Many suffer within Catholicism for many years before they leave, and for many leaving is a concerted effort to salvage Christian faith.  It is not a rejection of it.  More than ever, it is apparent to me that we need a pastoral response for those who need to leave.  We need some way of communicating those messages of condolence and hope that we share with our friends as they mourn the loss of a lover: “It seems that this is the best thing for you right now, even as it hurts,” or simply, “It’s going to be okay.” We need to go sit with them, and listen to the stories of their grief.  We need some way to say, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”

It was a friend’s mother who gave me Girl Meets God in high school.  She was raised Catholic, and during her college years she increasingly attended a local Protestant church. She became involved in their ministries, and eventually she found herself identifying with this new community much more than the Catholicism of her upbringing.  One summer she was at a Christian camp with young people from her church, and she befriended a Catholic priest who was also there with a group from his parish.  She told him about her life in the Church, and how she had decided to leave Catholicism for this new Protestant community.  This priest offered to say a prayer with her, one that would mark her departure from Catholicism and her entrance into this other Christian community.  And indeed, their prayer marked this transition for her all those years later.

When she told me this story as a high school student, I thought it was so strange. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would intentionally seek a mark of separation from Catholicism. Excommunication was the only thing I could equate to this type of event, and that is something forced on people—not sought out. But today I wonder what a prayer like that could do for people like Kate, or for many of the people I know and love.  And I wonder what the offer of a prayer like that would do for me.