Catholic – Raye S. Leonard

Church Enough For Me

Me and Jesus, to quote the oft-covered song by Tom T. Hall, got our own thing going.

I spent the last 40 days – Lent, in the Christian tradition – on a journey back to what I’ve always known. I don’t need no fancy preaching. The shore marked with my own footprints, a pulpit made of stones, the hymn of the sea, and a handful of sand dollars.

That’s church enough for me.

I tried, like I did at Advent, to have a Catholic experience of Lent. There’s a rough rock tumbling around in my memoir project that has to do with being Catholic. I want to smooth it with understanding what it might have meant for my mother and grandfather to be Catholic. How did that religious persuasion shape their beliefs, inform their choices?

My personal Catholic experience was derivative, lightened to the point of a complete fade compared to the rigid French-Canadian Catholicism of my grandfather’s generation, and to a large extent my mother’s.

What I’ve been trying to get at in my Catholic journey is a sense of what it was like for them to be Catholic. My empathy game is so strong I probably feel it before you do, so it was no wild imaginative leap to believe I’d glean something of what they may have felt going through the liturgical year myself.

But my own feelings were the only thing I felt.

And what I felt most persistently was why am I here? I loved the ritual of Mass, and St. John’s full of so many souls on a Sunday made me want to kneel with them in the joy of simple belonging.

But I needed the laminated cheat sheet to make it through all the prayers. I never had enough cash for the second collection. And ultimately – unwittingly – I committed a mortal sin.

About mid-Lent, I bumped into an old friend from my Coastal Journal days after Mass. She pointed out I ought not to be taking Communion because I was not in a state of grace. It was a mortal sin to do such a thing. And if she didn’t say something to me about it, that would be her own mortal sin.

Like everything except the most basic Catechism, I am not entirely sure what it means to be in a state of grace, or why not being so puts a soul in such peril. But mortal sin sounded like I was marked for a smiting by God himself. That didn’t sound good.

Even though I am pretty sure I offend God at least five different ways daily – probably more – I don’t need to add mortal sin to the ledger of worries already in the queue of my midlife maladies.

I never went back to Mass after that. Half my Lenten journey was about as far from a Catholic one as you can get.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t holy. Me and Jesus, as I said, got our own thing going.

I knew there were rules about the Communion wafer. But I thought I just needed to confess my sins before I stuck it in my mouth. I figured I do that every single morning when I ruminate in my journal. And anyway, when I went to a UCC church, everyone got some bread to dip in the grape juice. Was it really so awful as to be a mortal sin?

He’d forgive me. Jesus, I mean. About Communion. That’s what I think.

I could hear him saying, “Look it’s not really like that. I don’t need you to do anything besides show up and actually care. If it were up to me, there wouldn’t be all this [waves arm in a dramatic scriptural gesture]. But if you want to be a Catholic, well, then you gotta do it their way.”

I hit the highway instead.

Or should I say the beach?

In my muck boots, I plodded along the low-tide Popham wrack line this Easter morning, sifting shells from seaweed with my eyes.

“What are you looking for?” A woman asked.

“Sand dollars,” I said, looking up.

She walked toward me with her hands cupped. “Here,” she said.

I opened a palm, and she tipped a handful of sand dollars into it.

“Are you sure?” I said, astonished. I’ve found a bazillion sand dollars since 2020. I still have every single one. They are the bread crumbs that led me on my own clumsy walk of faith. Each is an answered prayer, an idea born, a fear abandoned.

“I have more than enough,” she assured me, squeezing my other hand with her now free one. She continued down the beach.

Now that’s my kind of Communion.

“Peace be with you,” I called, and she turned back to wave.

Together and to each other we shouted, “Happy Easter!”

Revised on April 4, 2024.

(It’s not quite ready yet, but if you’d like to read more about “me and Jesus,” please subscribe to A Reading from the Journal of Yesterday, my coming-very-soon Substack. Originally, I thought this project would literally be posts of personal writing from 42 years of my journals – and my present-day reflections on getting to know the “people I used to be.” But I expanded it to include anything from my extensive unpublished archives, including the Jesus Shorts I wrote and shared with a few pastor friends in 2010. I’m having way more fun revisiting creative work, but culling through it takes more time than simply pulling 1984 from the shelf and wincing through pages of early adolescent breakups. A Reading from the Journal of Yesterday is free – but thanks in advance if you would like to pay a little bit for it. That’ll help keep me in motel fees while I finish my memoir. Either way, I hope you will subscribe!)

Epiphany: Unexpected Gifts

After attending an accordion pocket book class at Lulu’s Barn with book binder Joelle Webber of Mermaid Bindery, I was inspired to adapt the project to make an Advent calendar for everyone in my weekly writers’ group, plus two poets in my monthly book group.

I came up with a writing prompt for each day, printed them, and cut them into little slips I tucked into each slot, along with handcrafted tea by my friend Kate’s Merry Auld Tea Company.

A writing prompt for every day of December … or whenever.

I got them in the mail just in time so everyone received them by Dec. 1. I told myself this would be my only Big Make of the holiday season because, as I’ve mentioned, I set out to be properly sad for a change.

(I had so much fun coming up with prompts and making these little books that I plan to do it again. If you would like to be on the list to receive one in time for Advent 2024, please email me and I will be in touch when I work out the design. I will likely charge a small fee to cover the cost of supplies and shipping, just to be totally transparent.)

I handed out Trader Joe’s Advent calendars to my family at Thanksgiving. Even the cat got his own box of daily delights.

This Trader Joe’s cat Advent calendar could satisfy a small colony of cats. Each door contained a handful of salmon and seaweed treats. More than one cat really needed, however, this cat managed just fine.

Each day, I opened my own Advent calendar. It was filled with promises for future together times, reminders that I am loved, chocolate, and baubles given by my husband, a dear friend, and my oldest son. My middle son who was away at school added a song to special Spotify playlist for me every day, and my youngest surprised me with occasional Italian pastries and bougie chocolate. They even cleaned their room!

I don’t know if this Advent calendar is meant to be used year after year, but if you don’t bust out the paper doors, it’s totally refillable. Thank you, Etsy!

It was no small thing for me to ask for my family’s help celebrating Advent in this way, but it was worth feeling a little vulnerable so I wouldn’t know what was behind each door. That they happily obliged was a tremendous gift in and of itself.

This Advent and Christmas season also brought me unexpected gifts every day, or as the little Advent book refers to it, “evidence of God’s grace.”

I set out to grieve during the holiday season instead of ignore it’s dull ache by endlessly doing. All these years, I thought I was avoiding the emptiness Christmas brings because my mother isn’t here to make it special the way only a mother can. But I’d probably have been sad even if she was still alive. I have an endless capacity for bleak thinking.

In my unwrapping of all I box up and keep out of sight, my own expectations and disappointments probably hurt me more than anything else.

Maybe that’s why the unexpected gifts meant so much (and will forevermore).

I won’t itemize all of them, but a few stand out.

There were no farm animals at Our Lady Queen of Peace’s Live Nativity in Boothbay Harbor on Dec. 2.

Where were the lowing cattle? The sheep? And goats?

But, of course, live Nativity meant real people dressed as Mary and Joseph, King Herod, the wisemen, all clustered around a manger with an actual baby in it.

John Leonard, husband of my stocking sister Donna, was a fine King Herod, even if there were no chickens in his box of gold.

I already mentioned I’m a sketchy Catholic, but I felt utterly daft for expecting some kind of holy petting zoo. I laughed out loud at the absurdity of my mistake.

An unexpected gift. Usually, I crumple with embarrassment when I get something so completely wrong.

Another bit of grace came from a woman who tried to help me help my college freshman who was overcome by chronic tonsilitis and a terrible cold at the end of the semester.

She said, “What would we do without Mummas,” as she scribbled a name and number on the back of a business card and sent us off with hope of salvaging some grades.

Indeed.

I don’t often feel very effective with my well-intentioned but fumbling support of my third kid in the ways they need most, so I appreciated the nod that perhaps I was getting it right. In that moment anyway.

A couple of school cancellations arrived as miracles that made it possible for me to finish the final assignment of Organizational Behavior, a graduate class I took as part of the Certificate of Advanced Study in Adult Learning I am working on.

I also sent my adult ed brochures to the printer on time, thanks to the focus working from home on them allowed. The office is often the last place for getting anything, especially like this, done during the busy lead up to holiday break.

Thanks to limiting overdoing I was present enough to notice these surprises in the moment.

Something else snuck into my awareness, too.

I tell myself a story that I fell from grace when my first marriage ended. That’s no big deal really. I just made it more awful by blogging about it because at the time I was a successful pro blogger and that’s what bloggers did. This post originally veered way off course – and into dangerous emotional territory for me – detailing that tailspin 13 years ago. None of which needed to be said.

The short of it is that I’ve lived with a lot of shame over the last decade. Shame is even more painful than sorrow.

“Shame,” Brene’ Brown writes in Dare to Lead, (my book choice for Organizational Behavior) “is … the fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of connection… Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”

That’s been me for over a decade. I’ll completely unpack that box someday, too. But not right now.

I’m busy unwrapping my heart, the most amazing unexpected gift of all.

Thank you for reading along with my Advent and Christmas writing project. I’m about to launch a busy spring semester. It’s my intention to blog again before summer break, but we’ll see. Stay tuned and feel free to stay in touch!

On the fifth day of Christmas …

Did you know it’s technically still Christmas? If you are Christian (maybe, specifically Catholic), you probably did. In fact, Christmas Day is just the beginning of Christmas. Those 12 days we sing about with the partridge in a pear tree? It’s a real thing.

I knew this and also didn’t know this because it wasn’t until this Christmas that I set out to experience it as something more than something to just get through. So when the small, free book I picked up at St. Mary’s called Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas, by Susan H. Swetnam, didn’t end Dec. 25, I thought, oh that’s right. There’s more.

Advent – from the Latin adventus – is about waiting, anticipation, the arrival, the coming of Jesus.

But as every new parent knows, birth is just the beginning. It’s everything that comes after that’s the journey. After the baby showers (and these days, the gender reveal party), and the big bang of being born, you’re left to figure out how to live with what you brought into the world.

Or, in the case of the consumer-focused holiday we celebrate on Dec. 25, how to incorporate your new oven mitt, nautical chart, Duke Cannon Man soap supply, and flannel sheets into the flow of daily life, announcing not only the thoughtfulness of the item, but your appreciation of it.

Me and my refillable Advent calendar before the 2023 journey began.

Social media memes point out that the time between Christmas and New Year’s is a special somewhat unmoored time out of time when you’re not sure what day it is or even what hour. You might wear the same pajamas … forever.

Judging by the handful of hanging-out-at-home clothes I just put in the wash, I made it through this week with commendably few wardrobe changes. Our meal plan was leftovers. When we ate through those, we scavenged the stockings for hard candy. Girl dinner became dark chocolate sea salted caramel snowmen, a handful of German candied nuts, and the last of the charcuterie d’affinois (a buttery, melt-in-your-mouth, soft French cheese).

It is as it is (sort of) supposed to be.

Maybe we don’t celebrate the feast of St. Stephen (Dec. 26, or as some call it, Boxing Day), or the Day of Holy Innocents (Dec. 28), or the Fifth Day within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord (Dec. 29). I know all of this because of my little Advent book.

But this time is meant to be not like other time. Social media doesn’t always get it totally wrong.

The little Advent book says Dec. 27 is St. John the Apostle’s Day. But this day is significant to me for other reasons because my mom died on it. I may not have known all the saints and feast days until this year, but this day is as much an annual observance for me as any holiday. Just darker. Much much darker.

I set out to have a specific experience this Advent season. I wanted to actually show up for the grief that comes with every Christmas like the nonsensical, stupid, not-funny joke gift that nobody should get stuck with at the Yankee Swap.

This year, I wanted to turn around and look this unwelcome Ghost of Christmas Past in the face as it sidled along beside my shopping cart that I filled with stuff meant to blot out it’s rude intrusion on what’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year.

Instead of waving this mean spirit away with a broomstick in my hand and sweeping the broken pieces of my heart into a corner with the red-and-white jimmie sprinkles and crushed candy canes, I wanted to kneel inside my sorrow and hold each shard in my hand.

I would not toss a holiday-checked tablecloth over the ghost (even as it played musical chairs with my memories). There would be no over-baking, over-decorating, over-giving (over-spending), over-eating … Anything I typically overdid (with all the bells on and tangled in bows), I would not overdo this year because it was so totally and completely overdone.

My grief, on the other hand, was overdue.

My kids were little when my mother died 18 years ago. My youngest was not even a year old. It’s easy to leave sadness packed away, an ornament too precious to hang, when the holiday decor is more about soft items little hands would not break. My grief was safely kept in a box padded and molded in the shape of my heart where it would not shatter …. I mean, actually, where it would not shatter me.

I dug it out of the attic shadows this year and brushed the dust off the lid.

My sorrow shines just like it did when I put it away, catches the light just right, sparkling like snow in headlights.

It’s kind of like Christmas, you know? It keeps it’s promise.

A very special gift that will be a great aid to my knitting.

A Clueless Catholic Goes to Mass

I’m getting my Catholic on this holiday season.

I can’t really say I was raised Catholic because for those who truly were, my story falls far short. I also don’t want to trade on pop culture cliches of Catholicism to convey what being Catholic meant to me. I never wore a plaid school uniform because I did not go to Catholic school. I’ve surely sinned, and done plenty of penance. But I don’t recall many formal confessions.

I was baptized late – at age 4 – after my younger brother was born and I was well on my way to heathenism. I am not sure I set foot in St. Mary’s again until I was 7.

I was signed up for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) classes so I could make my First Communion on time, likely at the behest of my French-Catholic grandfather, who I called Papa. He took me to Mass with him on Sunday so halfway through I could be dismissed with the Catholic children who had years of religious education on me. We sat in a circle in the basement community hall learning catechism from picture books.

A bit makeshift since I could not find a proper metal Advent candle holder. This will have to do. The purple candles are for the first three Sundays of Advent. They represent hope, peace, and joy (in that order). The pink one is for the Sunday before Christmas and it stands for love.

I wrote about some of my Catholic memories many years ago in a column for the newspaper where I worked. The kind of Catholic who probably knew for sure when to kneel and when to stand during Mass came to the office to complain about the column to my editor.

I no longer remember exactly what I wrote, but I still feel ashamed of whatever ignorance caused me to write something that offended that Catholic. I revered Catholics like her who genuflected without hesitation, unlike me. I made the sign of the cross on a two-second delay to make sure that’s what I was supposed to be doing. My face still flushes at memories of making shapes with my mouth because I didn’t know the words to a prayer.

Additionally, an uncle called me to share his concerns when that column ran. He was not even from the Catholic side of my family. But he was the kind of older relative who insisted that because he knew me as a little kid and teenager, he knew me still, decades later – better even than I knew myself. My uncle shared that he had no memories of me going to church with my grandfather.

Interesting. My uncle’s wife – my aunt – was none other than my godmother! There she is in pictures of my baptism holding my younger brother over a gold basin while holy water poured over his head.

My uncle implied I made up my church memories.

It may not have been the Catholic story of my mother, who was raised with all the rites, plus extra restrictions only the French could divine from Scripture. But I didn’t imagine it. How could I forget learning to get dressed and sit still on a Sunday morning after spending 7 years watching cartoons in my pajamas instead?

So I am wary of writing about my Catholic experience at all. I never felt like I was doing it right. So I worry I won’t be able to write about it right. I’m about as clueless as a Catholic could be – or should be if she’s going to call herself Catholic at all.

But I want very much to experience Advent as the spiritual – and for me, Catholic – journey it’s meant to be. It’s not just a chocolate countdown to Christmas.

So I showed up as the admittedly bad Catholic I am at St. Mary’s Mass on Dec. 3, the first Sunday of Advent. I mouthed over prayers, kneeled and stood when everyone else did, and put some money in the collection basket while we sang a hymn.

Afterward, I wandered around the sanctuary admiring the stained glass windows that so mesmerized me as a child. I used to track the light that poured through them at 10 o’clock family Mass, the sun signaling it was about time for coffee and refreshments, a highlight of my early church experience.

On the sill of each window was a necklace of rosary beads formed in the shape of a heart. A card said they were compliments of the Knights of Columbus, but just to be sure, I asked a woman who was passing out fliers if they were to borrow and bring back, or if they were for keeps.

“For keeps,” she said, and told me about a book study group starting soon. She wrote her phone number on a flier and handed it to me.

I chose a strand of purple and green plastic rosary beads with the Virgin Mary on the cross. Somewhere, I know, I have the rosary Papa gave me. That was for keeps, too. I searched my mind for where it might be kept after all these years. I wanted to hold it again in my hands, follow along with the instructions for How to Pray the Rosary, also compliments of the Knights of Columbus.

But all I really had to do to experience Advent as something holy was open my heart. I call forth my own imperfect Catholic story, tucked like a folded note hidden in a hymnal. I didn’t choose it, and there are parts I wish could be changed, but it’s unquestionably mine.

I unfold it now and hold it in the light of Advent. The first candle is for hope.

And I sure hope I am doing this at least a little bit right.