Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
I was a raised in a small evangelical church in an Appalachian steel town. To be "raised" in the church means that the church is the center of your life. We attended services twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays. Our social activities were either church-based, or we hung out with church friends at secular social events. My friends at school were other members of the church. My family went on vacation with another family from the church.
I grew up loving my church family before I really understood the faith. My church community was literally everything to me. Vacation bible school, church camp, the quiz team, choir trips.
But there was a problem. I was a gender non-conforming gay boy. I wasn't that interested in sports. I felt more comfortable spending time with girls. And although I was very devout in my faith, more so than the majority of the other kids my age, I was ostracized and bullied by the other kids, and the adults turned a blind eye.
So my family did the unthinkable. We left.
We eventually settled into a new church, but it was never really the same. I didn't grow up with these kids. I knew some of them from school. And I never really felt like I fit in. When I started college and began to deal with my sexual orientation, I decided that if God and gay are incompatible, there can be no such thing as God. So I became an atheist.
That began to change a few years later when I was working on my master's degree. I had shed my internalized homophobia and finally had accepted myself. And I decided that I would not have let somebody define what Christianity is, what Jesus's message was, and who can participate in the faith.
After graduation, I moved to China for five years. Living abroad has a deep effect, I think, on most people. Many of my friends became more American. Their love of country was greater. Mine was not. It was the Bush era, and I was ashamed of being an American. But I was proud of my Appalachian upbringing. And I had this yearning to return to the church.
But I was in China. I attended services at a community church a few times. Foreign churches in China operate under heavy regulation and that made building the church very difficult. For a lot reasons, it wasn't a good fit for me. So I started downloading podcasts from several United Church of Christ churches in the United States. Every Monday morning, I listened to sermon on the bus to work. And every evening, I listened to a different sermon on the way home. Monday mornings are rough for a lot of people, myself included, but those sermons really gave me a sense of peace.
I eventually left China and returned to the United States to get my PhD. While in graduate school, I attended services at a small, liberal Protestant church. It was nice, but I never really felt like I "fit in". That's always been the thing for me, fitting in.
This spring I was on the academic job market, looking for a job as an assistant professor. My goal was to land in a medium-sized religious university somewhere within an eight-hour drive of my hometown. I eventually landed at Catholic liberal arts university less than three hours from the tiny mill town where I grew up. It is the perfect job.
Moving to a new place involves finding new everything -- new hairdresser, new primary care physician, new psychiatrist, new mechanic, new dentist, new Asian grocery store, and for me, the most stressful new thing of all -- a new church. And here, I had so many more options that I anticipated. And that was a problem. I'm not really good at decision-making....at all. I actually really suck at it. I usually put it off, which makes me very anxious, and then I make a quick, impulsive choice just to get it over with. Exhibit A: finding an apartment. Exhibit B: choosing a retirement plan.
Anyway, I decided that I couldn't decide, so I started going to the weekly community mass at my new school. Every week, for one hour in the afternoon in the middle of the week, the school shuts down. No classes, no meetings. It is forbidden to have any kind of required or mandatory academic or work activity. The entire community has the hour free to attend mass at the chapel on campus.
The first time I went, it was in part, out of curiosity. I'd never been to a Catholic service before. And boy was I confused. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, kneel, stand up, sit down. There was a little more cardio involved than the Protestant services I was accustomed to. I was confused and I didn't know anybody. I could never go to the luncheons after because I had to teach right after mass ended.
But I've kept going. I find the services very relaxing. And I've learned a great deal about the role of the church in the institution, and how the school implements that Catholic Intellectual Tradition. I still don't understand everything. I've picked up most of the songs and speaking, accept for one really long bit. But I really enjoy it. And I've come to rely on it so much.
In fact, a few weeks ago, one of my colleagues suggested scheduling a meeting during mass. I had an immediate, almost visceral reaction. NO. It didn't come from my head, it came from my heart. But I suddenly realized how important community mass had become to me. The idea of missing mass was as unthinkable as my going off my Prozac. This is the first time I've felt this way about church services in over 20 years, since my family left the evangelical church we called home.
But this is the thing. I don't really know anybody who attends mass. I have a friend who comes sometimes. There are people I run into and say hello. But I mostly just slip in the door right before and stand in the back (so nobody sees how confused I am). I don't have that sense of community I had at my church growing up.
And then I had this realization. For over twenty years, I've been looking for that church community where I was raised. I wanted that back. Every time I attended a new church, if I got the sense I wouldn't find it, I disengaged. But I didn't do that here and I found myself falling in love with mass. All these years, I was looking for community and I didn't allow myself to worship and experience my faith. And the reality is that the community I thought I had growing up didn't really exist, or they wouldn't have let my family walk away under the circumstances which we left.
It's taken me a long time to realize that, for me, faith is about a private moment with God, separated from the craziness of the world. I never expected to learn this, a gay Protestant at a Catholic university. But sometimes, these lessons happen when you least expect.