Source and Summit

 

 

 

(Source) the place where something begins

(Summit)  the highest point, level or degree

 

 

     I’ve scaled some very small mountains, and hiked some higher cliffs without actually reaching the summit but even those climbs were grueling for an untrained out of shape mother type.

 

 

   Many years ago, I ‘found’ Jesus, little understanding at the time, that it was not really me who did the finding at all. It was more of a returning home really after a lengthy vacation abroad.  After I ‘found’ Jesus anew and was enlightened to His reality, I really thought my enlightenment was complete and my Christian growth was only a matter of filling in the few blanks remaining of what I didn’t know.  I realized how little I did know, and so began my quest to learn everything I could of exactly what I didn’t know! 

     After my conversion and return to Jesus I found myself firmly in the camp of Protestantism.  I had much to protest!  Mainly I simply could not understand how I could have missed this new found friend of mine named Jesus, in all of the years I had attended Catholic school and Mass.  How was it possible to miss the point so drastically as to miss the point??    I   almost immediately realized that my former ‘lost ness’ was clearly the fault of the cold, distant, authoritarian and misleading Catholic Church.   This conviction grew at the same rate as the fervor for my newfound love of God grew.  It grew as a rival plant in my carefully tended heart, supporting the great conviction of Solo Jesus, me Jesus and the Bible against the world.   I watered this plant into a growing suspicion of anything and even anyone ‘Catholic’. I was convinced that the Church was apostate and was leading many astray.  I’m sure my mother and father could attest to my strong convictions at that time, and of my insistence of their need to leave the apostate church.  It wasn’t long before I developed a firm resentment for things Catholic, distrusting the relationships Catholics had with their Savior.  I was certain that they, like myself, had been naively deceived and were living a distant fear-based religion that could not save them, as only  “Jesus Saves”.  It seems strange to me now that my great love affair with God engendered fear of and almost a hate for the Catholic Church. 

     To be fair, I was listening then, in my newfound fervor, to many a preacher promoting that very view.  My attitude was, I think, more reflective of Peter than Paul.  The Apostle Paul gave passive assent, by holding the cloaks of the men stoning Stephen, while Peter, leaping into action, thrust aggressively at the enemy of Christ slicing off the offending ear!  Both disciples had fervency, surety, and a strong desire to defend God, but perhaps I was more like Peter in his active pursuit of ‘helping’ God.  It is an odd kind of ‘help’ that seeks the destruction of the objects of God’s love. I think it is fairly indicative of the fundamental sin that has plagued our race from Adam’s time. Pride.  God must need ME to defend Him, at least that much was clear to me. 

 

     How, when and why my heart changed is still a mystery to me.  Grace was involved I know, but by whose love and prayers I won’t fully realize this side of the veil. I have come to appreciate the good humor of the original comedian, so to speak.   I’ve found that God rather delights in demonstrating to me my innate foolishness, all in good measure, of course. The fervent anti-Catholic fundamentalist Sola Scriptura evangelical has permanently altered into a fundamentally orthodox, traditional old-school Catholic firmly committed and rooted in …… obeying, the Magesterium in all things.

 

Man that’s weird!

 

   It seems today only the slimmest minority of Catholics actually believe that the “Magisterium in union with the Pope’s” teachings is the authentic voice of Christ, speaking on faith and morals in the world, even though this understanding is the actual “Catholic” teaching. It seems that Catholics willing to follow these teachings are even a smaller slice of the pie.  As a protestant I was very comfortable believing what I believed based on what I believed. As a Catholic I have struggled with conscience and reason and understanding on many moral issues, but when all is said and done I have yet to disagree with any official Catholic teaching in the realm of morals or faith whether it be abortion contraception or divorce.  This is also the product of a will that has already assented to the claims of Catholicism. The more I’ve investigated when conflict has arisen in my mind, the more I have come to accept and believe. The Church’s positions when clearly understood seem eminently reasonable to me.   Now, that is amazing, for someone who is a spiritual knowledge junkie needing the intellectual assent to faith.

 

 

     I remember a woman I met while I was still a Protestant believer. She and I had just left a bible study at the little congregational church I attended at the time, and as we conversed, she revealed to me that she attended both the Catholic Church and the protestant church. This oddity perked my interest of course and I probed her strange behavior.  She responded, “It’s just that the Catholic writings are so much deeper than the protestant offerings.”    I wasn’t sure what she meant. I did know that most contemporary Christian books were of the self-help spiritual variety and did leave me also wanting something deeper. I asked her to explain and she shared with me some of her journey. It was a little thing, but being a “thinker type” at least according to a personality test I once took, it explains the staying power of her little comment about the spiritual depth she found in Catholic writings.   Around that time a friend introduced me to Thomas Merton, who was a deceased, artistic atheist become Catholic convert, monk and writer.  His words opened a world of spiritual thought, depth and pondering to me. No Man Is an Island, Thoughts in Solitude are some of the writings that stimulated within me a growing hunger for even greater depth and richness. I simply consumed his thoughts and although I couldn’t always grasp his exact meanings, I got the gist of his expression and a greater yearning stirred within me. I developed a voracious appetite for reading other Catholic writings, such as the History of the Church by Esubieus written sometime in the early 300’s AD and various other extra-biblical works by the early Church Fathers. It was a journey once begun that led almost directly across the street.  

 

    Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church, Village St Medway Ma. situated diagonally across and only a stones throw away from my church, the Medway Village Congregational Church hosted a pro-life meeting one evening.  I attended.  It is difficult to give credit where credit is due in this case, but it is an undeniable truth that National Public Radio aided my reversion back to the Catholic faith. NPR was and had been for several years the source of my nightly fare of information, and as information is what I constantly crave, I listened every night.  The subject at hand involved abortion, although that term wasn’t exactly used. It rarely is in polite discussion of the topic. The pro-life movement in today’s vernacular is always coined as either anti-choice (a self-proclaiming bad thing since anyone against choice must be bad) or anti-abortion (two negatives) verses the obviously enlightened position of pro-choice (two positives) the choice being to abort an unborn human, that is. Sometimes the obvious bias in expression is so mainstream in acceptance that even I, a thinker type, am slightly confused about who is who and what is what and who am I.  In any case, that particular evening the bias in favor of abortion expressed by the host was so verbally deceptive that my gut and mind revolted suddenly, violently and completely against receiving any more sustenance from such a morally poisoned silo. I have never by ‘choice’ listened again to NPR despite the fact that my husband loves All Things Considered!

 

      I did however begin to seek out avenues supporting the pro-life cause and so a short time later, I became involved with Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church, as it alone, of the four churches in Medway, took a stand against abortion and was actually attempting to do something to oppose it.  I found there, a few people of moral courage coupled with what I thought was extraordinary kindness and so began a convergence of thought, experience and desire that led in the end to our family’s final walk across the street. 

 

    

    It was five minutes to ten on a Sunday morning.  Our two daughters separated John and me in the seat; Sarah age six and Abby age two.  Our ‘Church Family’ was just beginning to finally quiet down after a loud and friendly time of warm fellowship when the worship music finally began. John and I glanced at each other as married couples sometimes do, and our eyes locked, communicating an abrupt convergence of thought.  He whispered to me “We don’t belong here anymore”. “I Know” I replied in a whisper of my own.  What are we going to do?”  “I don’t know” Why don’t you take Abby out that door and I’ll take Sarah out the other door and we’ll meet out front.”  “OK” was all I could manage, so as inconspicuously as possible I slid out of the row in one direction and made for the basement exit while John headed for the side door.   We had been discussing changing churches for a while and had even visited a few.  We were considering the Episcopal Church, but john’s feeling was that if we were moving in ‘that’ direction, why not go all the way!  I was not yet convinced of the Catholic Church’s validity, the validity of its claims that is. John never cared a jot nor even understood its claims of teaching infallibility. It wasn’t even a consideration to him. I must say that it did become so later on in the living out of those claims!  At the time, however and still today, he will declare the same basis for leading us across Village St.  and into the ancient Church of Rome. He converted to Catholicism because he wanted to kneel.  His grandmother Isabel had arthritic knees and would kneel despite her pain. She was Church of England.   John out of deference to his Grandmother’s painful stiff knees simply liked the way Catholics are forever kneeling and how it sometimes hurts.

 

     So, we met in front of Medway Village Church, held the hands of our two young children, and crossed Village St. just in time for the 10:00 am Mass.  I closed my eyes, head down and prayed a prayer as we walked across the street.  I said, ”Lord I’ll do this but only if what the Catholic Church claims is actually true, otherwise I just can’t and P.S. you’ll have to prove it to me.”  I knew that I simply wouldn’t join the Catholic Church if I didn’t believe its claims of authority.  I also knew that what the Church claimed required more faith than I actually had.  Besides, I really liked the protestant church and I didn’t want to leave it! The people at MWV church had been good to us and I was afraid to leave the ready-made support system we had there.   Never the less

Within a month we were on the fast track to officially joining the Mother Church.  John was enrolled in the RCIA program for adult converts and I had once again received the sacrament of confession and communion.  Father McKenzie was more than a little pleased with our presence in the Church, as there had been a steady flow of parishioners leaving and crossing the road in the other direction.  We it seems were rather unique.

 

     One by one my doctrinal doubts came into focus and one by one I became convinced of the “Fullness of Truth” preserved in official Catholic Teaching.  As a child the nuns would always say that phrase, in referring to the Catholic Church, and its unique place in Christendom but I never had understood before exactly they meant.  My heart was wide open and I wanted only the truth.  There was one very important doctrine left that I needed clarified in order for me to fully accept my destiny as a devout Catholic. All of the others made sense to me but for almost seven years I had attended churches in which communion was proclaimed as a symbolic act only.  It was indeed, as claimed, in the Protestant churches only bread and Welch’s grape juice, yet now, I was expected to believe that Jesus himself, present in the form of bread and wine, was to be my food.  I was receiving, yet I simply didn’t know if it was bread or the flesh of God.  It is rather an important distinction. How is one to know for certain such a thing!  We were attending Mass for perhaps two months when I began to wonder and question and then to even to worry about it. Before that time I really hadn’t given it much thought.  In the bread of life discourse in the Gospel of John 6, Jesus himself declares:  

 

     “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.  For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”  After Jesus declared this seeming absurdity the scripture declares plainly that hundreds of his followers simply abandoned him. They apparently thought He was a madman after all. They understood him to mean a literal eating of his flesh and He did not correct their thinking, He did not assure them that he only meant a symbolic eating…. He allowed them to leave. He let them go. Only the twelve remained and Christ turned to them with the question, “Will you also leave me”?  Jesus was neither softening his teaching nor changing it in any way.  I instinctively understood when facing my own doubts that The Eucharist is the dividing line, just as those early followers had realized.  They said,  “This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?’

 

I too knew that if I could not accept it then I could not remain Catholic no matter how many other doctrines I was coming to appreciate and even to love.

 

 

    Now to my mini miracle.

 

     I began to dwell on my doubts more and more, especially at Mass.  The moment of worship when the priest raises the host above all and holds it suspended above the congregation for a second or two longer than is absolutely necessary. That moment demonstrates the historical faith in the sacrament, and I challenged it by my doubts each time I attended Mass.    How was I to know?  I finally decided that maybe I should be simple about my dilemma and just ask.  So that’s what I did. “Lord are you really present or not? I really have to know.”

      As a young Child I simply accepted what I was taught about my faith, but my spiritual journey had changed all that. Now I wanted to know. I needed to know.   There is another scripture that comes to mind, ‘Seek Me with your whole heart and you will find Me.’ Lord knows I did that. God is interested in the heart. It’s the heart that has the power to love God and accept Him as well as the power to hate Him, reject Him or even simply disregard Him.

 

 

     It was probably a week or so later when God answered me.  It was a bright sunny autumn day and I was chosen to be a chaperone for Abby’s fall field trip to the Big Apple, an orchard located only a few miles away in Mendon.  As we waited in the bus for the nursery schoolers to board, my mind was mulling over the day’s expectations.  Abby settled down next to me and I put my arm around her.  Soon we would be eating apple dumplings or maybe even a candied apple.  There was a small turn around in front of our former church, which was the home of “The Good Shepherd Nursery School.”   John had carved the school’s sign a few years earlier when the church had begun the ministry and I had done the design.  My thoughts were set on the beauty of the day and the happy time I hoped for.  As the bus driver made the turn around I was thinking autumn colors and of the apple pie I would bake for dinner. I glanced out the window to my left as we passed Medway Village Church, still daydreaming of fall delights.  Then we began to pass Saint Joe’s on my right and I gazed in that direction.  We hadn’t quite passed when a very odd thing happened to me.  The best way to describe it is by directing you to the image of the Sacred Heart.  Jesus, His heart exposed, thorns atop, heart on fire.   My heart began to burn.  That’s the best way to describe it.  It wasn’t a painful burn but it was an intense sensation that was physical, right in my heart.  It felt like Love made tangible, physical, as if you could hold it in your hand.  The memory of that feeling still resonates in my being although I’ve never felt it again.  Remember I spoke earlier of a glance married couples share in a moment of understanding?  At the exact moment when I fixed my eyes on St.Joe’s, I felt the burn and I knew beyond doubt that our hearts had joined and that Jesus was telling me of his real Presence in the tabernacle.  He said to my heart, it is because “I Am here”.  I have never doubted the truth of His Real presence since. It is indeed the source and summit of my faith just as the Church teaches.  It is the single reason that I will never leave the safety of the Ark again. How could I?   To quote Peter (John 6:67,68) When Jesus asked him, “Will you also leave me?”  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You alone have the words of life.”  Only the twelve remained, all other’s had left Jesus over the “hard” saying regarding eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

     Now when I genuflect, upon entering the pew, for the celebration of Mass, I have one consistent prayer on my lips and in my heart.  I say,  “Thank you Lord for letting me be here. And please don’t ever allow me leave.”

  

When Cats Die

 

      Cats are mysterious creatures.  I grew up knowing dogs, not cats and never really appreciated felines nor even liked them.    Mostly they annoyed me.  Dogs are so understandable, humanlike, man’s best friend as they say.   Owning a dog is somewhat like owning a best friend only perhaps a little more satisfying.  The dogs we’ve had reflect back love and devotion as a best friend will but without requiring the element of mutual relationship responsibility.   If you are a somewhat decent owner it is actually almost impossible to offend your dog.  Dogs always forget and return with a smile and hopeful wag of the tail no matter what the offense may have been.  Cats on the other hand as any cat ‘owner’ knows are never owned.  They deign to allow you to dwell with them and to serve their needs.

 

   Perhaps it is that element of cat ownership or the lack there of, which has revealed the true failing of my spiritual life, and why it has taken me so long to warm up to them, cats that is.  Humility, and the lack of mine, has been displayed in my relationship with the   intrepid cat.   Dogs are humble.  Cats are too, demonstrated by the very firmness of their own interior knowledge of their instinctive pre-eminence.  Of course being human, speaking personally that is, my innate conceit is challenged by the Cat’s humble superiority.  

 

     Foxy was the first cat I learned to like but before knowing her, I knew Tony.   Tony was the first cat that lived with us.  He was a refugee from a lobster trap found by my husband near the docks in Boston.  Tony the cat from Southie, I only tolerated.  Upon arriving at work one morning, John heard the feeblest of cries, coming from an apparently abandoned shed and being a cat lover and friend of cats, he had to investigate.     He found the tiny kitten barely alive, trapped amidst the dead bodies of its’ siblings in a lobster trap that had indeed done its work trapping.  A passing car had hit their mother, leaving Tony the sole survivor, his unfortunate siblings having starved to death.

 

 

      Of course Tony rode home that day to begin his new life in the suburbs.  He was content.  I on the other hand, wanted no part of him or any cat.  He became, within a short span of time a big old Tom Cat, picking fights with any available other feline.  Some body part of his was always bleeding and in need of expensive veterinary care. One time the entire skin of his tail had been ripped down to the tail tip, as if some vicious opossum had clamped down on Tony and recognizing defeat, Tony had simply run in the opposite direction. Amputation was necessary.

       

      He had an incessant and unquenchable hunger that stemmed no doubt from his early experiences of deprivation.  I remember one time not clearing the dinner leftovers rapidly enough as Tony managed to devour an entire large bowl of leftover spaghetti, sauce included, before we had even finished our meal.   From that time on I recall, cats tripping me, cats on counters, cats in bed with us, cats mad, cats marking territory, usually my husband’s side of the bed, “thank you God for small mercies” and cats with fleas.  

 

      Now Foxy…  Foxy lived with us for a little over a year and she didn’t live longer than that.   We had finally verged into the realm of dog ownership about the same time as we brought Foxy into our family.  Humble was the dog’s name.  He was a three-month-old Black Labrador retriever. That says it all, if you have ever been ‘mad’ enough to do such a thing as own a Lab pup and kitten at the same time.  If you have, you know of what I speak.  At that time we had moved from Medway to the beautiful and scenic town of Sutton Ma into a small-antiquated cape on the main throughway to neighorboring Oxford.    Our desire was for an antique house and it certainly was antique in certain respects but not in the ways we’d hoped for.  The well was surely of the original shallow and hand dug variety and the septic was no doubt in its original form desperately needing updating.  The home itself was sadly lacking in original detail, although it was picture perfect from the outside.   Our family had grown to three children ages 12, 8 and 4, two

parakeets, Bud and Sky, the puppy and a kitten.   The kitten we named Foxy.

 

 

     Foxy was named for her bright orange coloring and bushy tail. She was foxy indeed, but most importantly, she didn’t annoy me.  She ate only cat food, never scratched, and never tried to trip me in an effort to get my attention. I liked her for her mature and undemanding ways. When she became a mother cat I grew to admire her even more.  She was firm yet gentle in the mothering of her kittens.  Rather than waste time bothering me for her extra nutritional needs, she simply provided for herself.  She was a marvelous hunter.  And my garden thrived that year, as there was a dearth of small critters eating my much labored over produce. 

     From the start, she and Humble became the very best of friends.  I can remember her leading Humble on wild games of chase throughout our tiny house.   One particular time I recall Humble being a rather overweight sixth month old puppy leaping off our newish delicate queen Anne style couch in hot pursuit of Foxy’s tail. I was so proud and pleased with that couch.  It was the first couch we had ever bought and it was beautiful. I waited ten years before we could afford to buy that couch.   By the way, Humble never could catch her. 

 

     That wild and memorable scene still brings a smile to my face, demonstrating how the passage of time can wear down the conceit of even the most resistant cat owner.  I had finally learned that I simply could not rule over any cat and perhaps I should accept a cats being a cat and the obvious limitations of my humanity.  My reluctant growth in humility and resignation was due in no small part to the instinctual superiority of will of the CAT.   If cats were to be part of our life, and John would have it no other way, then a long awaited delicate antique style couch would necessarily be subordinate to the wants of the cat.

 

 

        It was a bright and sunny early summer day and my girlfriend Ann had just left after a pleasant mornings visit when the inevitable happened.   Ann, a cat lover herself, was the one bearing tidings of sadness that day, not joy.  She had hardly pulled out of our drive when she returned with the news of Foxy’s sad demise.  You see our road had become something resembling a small highway, a trucker’s delight, few if any cops, almost no lights and no stops.   “ Louise I think Foxy’s been hit.” she said before I had even finished smiling my surprised re-welcome.   “It’s an orange cat.”  It’s pretty bad”, she continued.  I was going to run out to the road but my oldest daughter suddenly appeared asking what was the matter. She knew something was wrong by my friend’s expression.  I called John to investigate and he dutifully grabbed a shovel and wheelbarrow and headed towards the road.  Ann said her goodbyes once again and Sarah burst into tears. Technically speaking, Foxy was Sarah’s cat.  As I attempted to comfort Sarah our little son made his appearance and with his large worried eyes, he asked the same question.   I told him simply that Foxy had been hit by a car and she had died.  He promptly burst into tears as well.   Sarah’s head was now on my shoulder and Gabe’s little hands were grabbing my leg, both were crying with something like abandon, when our middle child came running outside to join the family gathering.  Abby arrived just in time to see her father entering the driveway and pushing the remains of Foxy in the wheelbarrow up the small slope of our drive and into the yard.  I turned towards her as she echoed for the third time,  “What happened?”  As I answered for the third time, I was somewhat relieved, although surprised, that she did not burst into tears as her brother and sister had, rather she stared intensely at the wheelbarrow for a moment, and then spun on her heels and ran swiftly back into the house.

 

   . Perhaps five minutes later, I was still trying to calm the roiling sea of emotions pouring out of both Sarah and Gabe, when I twisted around and saw that Abby had returned.  She had a somewhat enigmatic little smile upon her face and exuded a quiet confidence.  “Don’t worry,” she said.  “It’s O.K.”  I questioned her, “What’s O.K.?”  She just repeated herself assuring me once again that  ”It’s O.K.”   “What do you mean Abby” I attempted once more to gain an explanation of what was O.K.   “I saw Him,” she said with matter of fact assurance. Then she smiled.  “What do you mean? Who did you see?” I asked.   “I saw God” she replied. “You saw God?” I queried somewhat doubtingly.  “Yes I saw God”, she returned in her pragmatic non-emotional way.   “You saw God”, I said once again making a statement that was really only my repeated question.  She nodded and continued to smile.  Then I smiled in return and asked what any reasonable person would ask, “ Well what does he look like?”  She waved her hands back and forth at me rather impatiently, and replied, “Oh you know He’s up in the clouds just what you’d think, He has a white beard.’’ He was in a rocking chair. “Oh really” I replied with some incredulity.  “Yes, and in His lap was Foxy and He was patting her.”   Then Abby’s eyes grew wider and her sky blue eyes sparkled as the sometimes do.   She continued explaining, “I asked Him when I went inside, whether or not, when cats die, ‘Do they go to people heaven or do they go to cat heaven?’  Then her smile grew a little wider still and she nodded saying, “They do.  They go to people heaven.”  Her smile brightened  even more and became as the noon day sun on a summer day.  

 

 

     I couldn’t help but be a little awed by Abby’s ‘vision’ of God, if that ‘s what it was. Truth is, She asked an honest question and she got an honest answer.  I don’t know about the theology of Cats and heaven but there is a lot I don’t know.   What I do know is that children more than adults, have the gift of clear sight and simplicity and we should follow their example in the realm of faith.  Jesus said so.  “ Unless you become as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”  

P.S.

Several years back I did a painting about this story.  My brother owns it today and it’s still one of my favorites.   It’s called, When Cat’s Die Do They Go To People Heaven?

If you would like to see it, you can check out my web page highlighted on the full profile page 

of this blog site: )