It's been years since I've attended Catholic Mass or considered myself part of its community. After a wide absence from the Church between leaving home to attend University and baptizing my two daughters Catholic, I once again stepped away nearly ten years ago when my husband began cancer treatment. And not for the reason you might think. It had nothing to do with waving my fist in the air towards heaven and cursing God for burdening my husband with disease. It had everything to do with trying to find a small piece of solitude away from caring for someone going through chemotherapy. My husband continued to work throughout his treatment for Hodgkin's Disease, but I found that his short shifts away from home Monday through Friday were not enough for me to take care of myself, in order to take care of him. Besides hosting a radio show for four hours a day during the week he also hosted a Beatles' show from 8-10 on Sunday mornings. He and my oldest daughter would leave at 7:30 am and not return until 10:30 am, leaving me time used in meditation while my youngest daughter slept.
During this period of my husband's treatment, the pastor of our small church in Wallingford was sent to Africa to act as a missionary. I found his replacement lacking in the passion Father Paul injected every Sunday morning. When I returned after my husband concluded chemotherapy and radiation, it took only a few Sunday's sermons to start making excuses for not going to Mass. In the ten years absent from Church, other reasons for abstaining from Mass and the other sacraments, came into play including the exclusivity of most religions. I cannot understand why doctrine teaches Heaven is only for members of "its" church. In my mind, there is only one God, regardless of a person's religion. Logically, there is only one heaven. So how could any theology restrict who enters that heaven, provided they have lived a good life. I had always believed this even while attending Church, but one evening the message hit me in a newer, more profound way.
My husband and I had friends over for the evening who were Jewish. I had excused myself from the conversation of my husband and our friends to check in on my ten year old daughter who was curled up in bed with her dear friend, the nine year old daughter of our guests. No sooner had I walked in the bedroom to check on the girls, my daughter asked me to explain how it could be that her friend could never go to heaven because she didn't believe in Jesus. I looked at the two sweet faces as one thing became quite clear. There was no way either of these girls would ever be denied peace in the hereafter. Dogma that I had shrugged off as being a mere technicality, suddenly became a point of contention between my the Catholic Church, or any other Church that mirrored this belief and myself.
I've studied eastern religions in the meantime, both Buddhism and Hinduism and enjoyed learning the history and partaking in their ceremony. Bells and flowers, incense and horns, chanting and song alike. The rituals are what I crave, and what keeps me still inside, whether from my Buddhist Monastery or a Catholic Church. I need ritual throughout my day, whether it be waking up at the same time every day, descending the stairs, letting the dog out, picking up the newspaper from the front stoop, feeding the dog, feeding the cat, making the coffee and lastly drinking the coffee in front of the window while I wait for appearance of an my Anna's Hummingbird, racing from tree to feeder. The process of ritual orients myself to the day, like making sure the box car is on the rails before the engine pulls away from the station. Days when I have overslept, and time does not allow for the same cadence of ritual, difficulties arise and more energy is required to complete the same tasks as approached on a day when my morning ritual is in tact.
I recently began working with the Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center for the Seattle School District. Specifically I work with Level One Students. These students run the gamut from no English to some English mastery, but not enough to place them in the regular classroom. One girl I work with has moved here to Seattle from Somalia. In the six months she has been here, she has gone from being preliterate to understanding some speech and writing. When she first arrived she had never even written her name in her native Somalian language. She is fourteen years old. I do not know what conditions prevented her acquiring the most basic of skills to write her name. Was it not considered important to learn? Were there no tools with which to write? Was there no one to teach her. It is difficult to me to understand, as someone who must write, who must constantly simulate herself with new vocabulary in English and other languages to my ear and to the page, how someone could go fourteen years without learning to write the symbols representing something so vital to a child - their given name. Was she, her family so busy surviving, that writing fell away as important. Was it ever important? Was it ever ritual?
What is the first word a child learns? Her name, would be one guess. What we are called. On the page, the letters forming the sound of something singularly attached to ourselves, regardless of how many others have gone by or will go by; our name. Let us, for the sake of privacy, call this girl "Khadra". It is the first word she learned to write, and she can spell it with her voice or her pencil. She takes a hushed pride in being able to print the letters and takes care to set them proportinately correct and evenly spaced and will erase one or more letters an infinite number of times before she is satisfied with the results. She will make trips back and forth from my work area to her backpack on her desk to find just the right pencil to accomplish the task, ignoring my pleas to sit and be satisfied with what she has written. Perfection is allusive this morning and I see her grow frustrated that the letters will not behave. Is she worried she will forget how to shape them? I stare at the letters trying to understand what is missing. Finally, I cover her paper with my hands and tell her it is beautiful. It is perfect. Hoping to see a smile, I only see obedience that for now she will leave her name alone and go on to her spelling assignment.
She is still trying to understand our alphabet. A few letters still give her problems: b, d, and p. We sound the letters back and forth, recognizing the subtle distinctions between the letters and how her lips and teeth must change, connecting the assigned sound to the corresponding letter over and over with limited success. I remind her, she has a "d" in her name. She knows perfectly how to form the lowercase "d". She recognizes the sound and the shape. She nods her head; she understands. Her name has become a touchstone. She glances back and forth between the name on the top of her assignment page; between the "d" in Khadra and the "d" in desk. Recognition. Still no smile. She is intense and frustrated and relentless in her work. I imagine she is like the giant cutting machines below the earth that cut out the tunnels for the downtown bus system and the newer light rail. This is her job. She is steady and persistent. Sometimes, frustrated by her lack of understanding she makes wild guesses. I show her a new word - she looks me straight in the eye and says unapologetically, "window". The word on the card in my hand is "snow". We spell it - sound it, letter by letter. I explain that at least, the words window and snow share the common letters "n", "o" and "w". She repeats: "n", "o", w". She nods her head integrating this new knowledge. The nodding of the head has become ritual and I imagine the physical motion of her petite head up and down like a buoy on the waves, helps the information to become knowledge; accessible and permanent.
I think of all her rituals: The writing and re-writing of a certain letter, perfect to begin with, she is merely erasing and tracing the existing indentations in her lined paper. Still beautiful, still perfect. She is setting the train on its rails. The trips back and forth to her pencil box in her knapsack: a walking meditation. The knodding of her head up and down: the recognition of knowledge given, and received. Yesterday I gave Khadra lined newsprint - the type given to children in primary grades to help them with penmanship skills. A top and bottom line for limitations and a dashed line to show the top half and bottom half of the letter. Today she returns to school and writes out words for an assignment as I spell them to her letter by letter. They run from the pencil with ease and I sense the increased relaxation in Khadra's hands and forearms as she prints the words one by one. She starts to erase a letter, looks at me for a reaction to which I shake my head and chant "Beautiful. Beautiful." She smiles for the first time since I began working with her two weeks ago, turns her face back to her desk and orients the graphite back to the page. I see a subtle nod of her head back and forth. I hope she is integrating her comprehension; her knowledge. I see her smile again and hope she is congratulating herself. I hope this too, becomes ritual.
