Shared on March 9, 2025

I am normally much more comfortable behind the scenes; a silent participant without much in the way of social interaction.  Funnily enough, this mirrors much of my experience growing up a Catholic.  I come from a strong Catholic family where weekly service was a must for everyone.  It wasn’t uncommon for us to attend service on Saturday evenings rather than Sunday mornings and from what I can tell, this was more about signaling our commitment to the faith: we just couldn’t wait to get to service ASAP.

I was introduced to participation by way of my role as an altar boy, sometime around age 9. At that time, we had over a dozen boys (not a girl in sight) ready to do their duty.  As I grew, my duties grew with me: I was given permission to leave school to attend daytime funerals as well as prep for special services.  I also accompanied a dozen fellow students for “church school” once a week during the school day.  We would walk as a group to the local parish center.  My biggest memory of that parish center to this day is how cold and mostly empty it was.  Not exactly a heartwarming memory…

On the topic of heartwarming things, my most vivid memory as a child that related to Catholicism and the family faith was the concept of a soul and sin.  It is the duty of good practicing parents to raise their children in the faith; the idea of sin was a complicated one for my parents to communicate effectively to my younger self: they settled on imagery that I will never forget: I was told to picture my soul as pure white and each and every sin put a black spot on it.  From then on, I was quite concerned with how black my soul was. Was it 10% full? 50%???  Heady stuff for a child.

As my understanding of the world evolved, so too did the questions I had for my community.  I wondered how things from the Bible actually occurred.  Noah and the boat?  Garden of Eden?  Good questions that I am still awaiting a sensical answer for.  Eventually I made up my mind that I wasn’t able to buy into the dogma of my religion. At the same time, I noticed the importance of the community aspect of our parish.  People helping people.  Being there for those who needed a hand the most.

Once I had made peace with my departure from Catholicism, I began looking all over for a spiritual connection.  I made forays into Shamanism and the Western Esoteric Tradition.  I also began to rely on nature as a source of connection to something powerful and awe inspiring.  Having made my mind up that community and service was a valued part of my spiritual beliefs, I found Unitarian Universalism to be a good fit.  I am drawn to the idea that a spiritual life is one of action and compassion for all.  The idea that there is not a single path to a fulfilling spiritual life is at odds with my upbringing, but I would not be the person I am today without those experiences.  And, once in a great while, I still wonder how much of my soul is filled up with black spots.  But only for a little while…