I am five years old and I have felt the presence of God.
Not the glorious, extravagant presence a young Catholic might expect to feel—it was more an esoteric miracle, a minute impossibility realized for a small audience. He arrived without fanfare and acted quickly. There was no need for Him to boast in this moment.
Our Father, who art in heaven...
I am four years old and my father reprimands me for not yet having memorized the entirety of the Lord's Prayer. I am as devout a Catholic as any four-year old can comprehend, but I have trouble remembering the words. The obvious issue is that I don't understand what they mean. No one seems interested in helping me learn, though. What matters is that I know them by heart.
And I want to learn them. I want to learn because as best as I can tell, knowing these words is an important step towards strengthening my relationship with God—though I can't be sure why. Maybe someday these mysterious words will all make sense, will have for me answers instead of questions. Yet I have to wonder: does my father understand them?
He sets goals for me: I must learn a new phrase from the prayer every week until I know the whole thing. If I fail to remember a phrase any given week, a punishment is inferred but never specified or enforced. So I am four years old and I am being interrogated by my father about words that are not a part of my vocabulary, awkwardly shifting in my chair and guessing at unfamiliar syllables.
...hallowed be thy name.
I am five years old and I have mastered the Lord's Prayer. I still do not know what the words mean, but that is a fact that I keep far away from my thoughts. I focus instead on the sounds they make, the melody we sing in church. Depending on the church we go to, the prayer may be spoken, or it may be set to one of two or three different melodies, all of them simple enough to recall on the spot.
But the melody that helped me learn the prayer is one we never sing in church. It is from a 1970's rock version performed by Sister Janet Mead. In addition to being very religious, my father is a huge fan of rock and roll. Growing up, this fact was much to the chagrin of his even more religious mother, who considered all such music to be “works of the Devil, Jimmy.”
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...
I am eighteen years old and I am at my grandmother's funeral. It is a very Catholic ordeal, much like the last several years of her life: she was kept alive on a painful, tedious regimen of dialysis because everyone was afraid that letting her die without putting up a fight might be against God's will. She often complained about how much she hated the procedure, how cold it was in the room with the machine, and had nothing to look forward to but solitaire and memory loss.
I sit in the pew as my aunt delivers a eulogy that sounds too much like a grade school book report. (“Sarah Weingartner was a woman full of contradictions. On the one hand, she held very traditional, conservative beliefs, but on the other hand...”) My father quotes rock lyrics in his, an odd combination of defiance and love. The priest covers all the formalities appropriate for a Catholic funeral.
What comes to mind, though, is the fact that she was not raised a Catholic like I was, like my father was. She was raised a Southern Baptist in the 1920's, and was completely ready to marry a Southern Baptist by the 1950's. But when she met my grandfather, a Catholic immigrant from Hungary, and chose instead to marry him, the religion predestined for me changed and her family disowned her.
...on earth as it is in heaven.
I am five years old and I am singing along with the Lord's Prayer as performed by Sister Janet Mead. So are my sister, my father, and my mother. We dance in the living room. We share the same beliefs, and we are happy.
Give us this day our daily bread...
I am seven years old and the Mass has ended. I try to hurry my mother out of the church while the last song is still being sung, excited to show her something. Earlier that week my best friend Jason and I had found a little nook to the side of the church's entrance, where we could tell no one ever went because the walls were covered in lichen. Jutting out of the brick back there was a slanted, grey stone, also covered in growth.
Jason and I discovered that using a stick, we could scratch the lichen off of the stone, effectively writing on it. We played a game of tic-tac-toe in this fashion, and then I proudly etched my name above: “Nicky.” Shortly thereafter the bell was ringing and we found ourselves tucking our collared shirts back in, heading for class.
The closing hymn has finally ended and I walk my mother down the steps and around the corner to where I have made myself a part of the building. I point to my name on the stone, still proud of myself for having found this way to connect with the church. I expect my mother to be as pleased as I am. Instead, she gasps slightly, and speaks, concerned yet assertive:
“Nick, that's graffiti!”
This is a word that I have never heard before, but as with “hallowed,” I get the sense that its importance warrants my pretending to understand.
...and forgive us our trespasses...
I am nine years old and I am probably the only one who takes this class seriously. I expected it to be different. At the public school I go to, I can understand why my fellow students might choose not to pay attention. But this is religious education—and aren't all of my fellow students here Catholics?
As usual, the teacher is unable to get the class under control without first showing us a video. As usual, this video is Horton Hears A Who. I try to watch carefully, even though this is the fourth consecutive week I have seen it. I am distracted by the two boys sitting behind me, who are trying to get my attention. I ask them what they want, hoping not to get in trouble.
“Do you have a dick?” they ask. Because I live a wholesome, innocent life with wholesome, innocent friends, I am not sure what they are actually asking me. I have to answer quickly, though, so I don't look like I don't know. I have to guess.
“No,” I respond, as calmly as I can. I turn around to continue watching the movie. They laugh to themselves behind me (“He doesn't have a dick!”) and I attempt to glean some religious wisdom from the cartoon.
I am ten years old and today is the feast of the Epiphany: the day when the three wise men bestowed their gifts unto the Son of God. My mother decides to bestow unto me an epiphany on this day: she reads me “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus.”
I am excited as she finishes, responding, “I always knew that Santa was real. I knew that we couldn't afford all those presents every year.” She hesitates, and goes on clumsily to explain that by “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus,” what she really means is “No, Nicholas, There Is No Santa Claus...But It's A Nice Idea.”
I do not tell her, but I am crushed. I can not tell her, will not tell her, because I have to act as mature as she has clearly trusted me to be. I am not angry that she has lied to me. I am depressed that such an unambiguous force of good has turned out to be hypothetical. My father enters the room, aware of the epiphany that was taking place. He jokes with me, completely oblivious to what I am feeling. “Of course you realize this means that there's no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy, either...”
I think something that I immediately regret.
And lead us not into temptation...
I am five years old and I could listen to this song forever.
But the music is beginning to fade out. We sing the last few lines, and then my dad folds his hands, closes his eyes, and speaks: “Dear God, please put the song on again. Amen.”
...but deliver us from evil.
I am twenty years old and my thoughts are under the influence of Satan, or so I am told. Perhaps they were when I was ten and found out about Santa Claus, too: even though I immediately regretted it, I still thought of responding to my father by saying, “Or the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” I felt bad for thinking that not because it went against my father's beliefs, but because it went against my own. The guilt I felt was a well-ingrained reflex, and it was guilt I had to keep entirely to myself.
But now that I am twenty I don't feel guilt for admitting that I didn't know what the Lord's Prayer meant. I don't feel guilt for realizing that being asked if I had a dick and being asked if I believed that our Father's name was hallowed were much the same thing. I don't feel guilt for drawing the best conclusions that I could.
Comparing me to Satan is an attempt to create in me that meticulously programmed guilt, but it will not work anymore. I understand now. I understand that record players have automatic repeat functions. I understand that there is an important difference between belief and knowledge. I understand that as religious as I was throughout my childhood, it was largely because I was afraid of the alternatives. I couldn't even imagine any.
We have had the same Bible on our bookshelf for my entire life, but I cannot recall any point in time when anyone in my family took it down and read it. I have recently taken an interest in doing so, but have had to keep it somewhat secret. Ironically, actually reading the Bible would be unusual enough to arouse suspicion, so I have to sneak it out and read it in private.
I take particular interest in the stories that go ignored and unmentioned in church: one in which God kills forty-two children for making fun of a prophet, one in which God demands that a man live up to his promise to make a human sacrifice of his daughter.
As I am flipping through the book I notice something on the inside of the front cover.
Presented To:
Barbara Bradford
By:
United Methodist Church—Holland, Michigan
Date:
September 13, 1970
A strange, nameless emotion consumes me. I can vividly imagine my six-year old mother being given this book. The image doesn't quite feel right, though, as if somehow I am seeing something that I shouldn't. I am suddenly given a wider perspective on the long chain of events leading to my own religious beliefs and it feels voyeuristic.
This book that I am paging through, curious what unspoken horrors lie within it, utterly detached from the stories it tells, was given to my mother when she was a child. A well-intentioned gift that, despite whatever else I may think of religious indoctrination, was given with love. I wonder if she was excited to have been given her own Bible, if she read it often, or if it was something she appreciated but was not particularly thrilled with.
I put the book back on the shelf and realize what is bothering me so much: I am essentially seeing into my own past, realizing the ways in which I was brought into a specific set of beliefs. I remember when I was given my own Bible, how I set out to read the whole thing but never made it past Genesis. And although it makes me feel rather uncomfortable, I can't look at it with pure negativity. I have to bear in mind all the times I had to draw conclusions without all of the necessary information.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever.
I am five years old and the music has stopped completely, but the turntable continues to spin, tumbling the words on the seven-inch record in and out of readability. The arm pauses at the end of the groove, then ascends. It hovers an inch above the black vinyl completely on its own, and moves to the outer edge of the disc before lowering itself once more.
A brief moment of silence, and, miraculously, the song begins again.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...
