Thoughts on Nuns (#1)

I’m currently working my way through Mother Theresa: Come be My Light, a collection of her private letters and interpretation by some priest who totally isn’t important when talking about Mother Theresa.  She is a woman who always fascinated me–her entire selfless serving to her faith and to the poor in India.

I was just starting my conversion to Catholicism when I met a real live nun in Dublin.  I didn’t know she was a nun at first.  I was dating a woman at the time who attended a Catholic college, and she had invited me to go to Easter Sunrise Service on Howth Hill and the pancake breakfast at the Pub thereafter.  We were talking to a woman in a plaid skirt and sweater, wearing a gold claddagh on her hand.  We were chatting away, and then someone referred to her as “Sister [Mary, maybe?  Good guess]”.  I have a knack of saying things before I think, and blurted out, “you’re a nun?  But you don’t have a habit!  And you have a wedding ring!”  She laughed at me and said, “well, not all sisters wear habits.   But I am married.  To our Lord.”

So if all the nuns in the world are married to Jesus, and refer to themselves as “sister”-wives…how does this differ from polygamy?  I’m just curious.

Anyways.  Nun-fascination.  I’ve got one.  I’m not too far into the book yet–I always find reading about religion unsettling as I fall asleep.  And the contents of this book were hers, and she made her wishes quite clear that she did not want them shared with the public, let alone publish.  But to realize how dark it can be for someone we thinks radiates such good is something that needs to be out there in the world more often.  I just came across this passage:

Why must we give ourselves fully to God?  Because God has given Himself to us.  If God who owes nothing to us is ready to impart to us no less than Himself, shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves?  To give ourselves fully to God is a means of receiving God Himself.  I for God and God for me.  I live for God and give up my own self, and in this way induce God to live for me.  Therefore to possess God we must allow Him to possess our soul.

I’m only on chapter three, not far past this passage, but I begin to feel a mix between pity for and in awe of the courage of Mother Theresa, to understand so fully what it meant for her to be a nun and dedicate her lift to God and Christ and the Church, without ever receiving feedback that what she was doing was the right thing.

That’s why I could never be a nun.  I’m not guided nor have been called by God to follow a path of missionary work.  But I wonder if I would have been strong enough, would be strong enough if that call ever came.

The cynic can easily look at the above passage and say, “huh, vow your undying love and loyalty to someone who you never really talk to, don’t have sex with, and work under the knowledge that all of these others in habits (and apparently, the chameleon ones that walk amongst us plain-clothed)–that’s just stupid.  It’s stupid to put your faith in someone when what you so willingly give is not so willingly returned.

Hey Catholic Church?  I’m gonna do some more thinking on the whole polgamy with the nun thing you’ve got going on.  But in the meantime, I’m gonna be stupid, and continue to pursue my faith in love.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, amen.

Update on the Mormons

From Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

Federal civil unions, with no difference in governmental or civil differences between these unions and marriage?  I’m all for it.  And sense the Mormon church is as well, let’s press them to fund these campaigns and lobby efforts.  Or else their angel will fall off the temple.

Well, not really.  Unless Foster gets there before I can stop him.

Thoughts on passing Prop 8

About a year and a half ago, I was on a gay family cruise in the Caribbean. We left from Miami, and about an hour or two into the first night, we noticed that the engines had stopped. A staff member came over the PA system, and said not to worry–that someone was injured and had to be airlifted back to Florida, so we were just holding tight until the helicopter got there. People shrugged and went about gorging themselves on the buffet, wondering what had happened. Story got around that a woman had fallen in the shower and broken her leg.

But it wasn’t true.

Not many people actually knew the truth (but, me being me, I had quickly fallen in with the right people that had the dirt from the staff). An hour after we had left shore a woman had fallen in the shower–that much was true. But she hadn’t broken her leg. She had had an aneurysm. She, her partner, and their two children were airlifted back to Miami and rushed to the hospital. The woman was still conscious when they admitted her, but the hospital staff would not allow her partner nor her children to come any further than the lobby, since she wasn’t her spouse, and the children were biologically the other woman’s kids.

The woman died, alone in a hospital emergency room far away from home, separated from her family, a few hours later.

Out of respect for the family and the fact that the public was not told, I have never told this story. But it’s one that needs to be told, because in my mind, this is what the gay community is fighting right now.

Just last week as I filled out paperwork for an IRA at work, there was a page to list beneficiaries. My choices were “spouse”, “trust”, or “other.”

And no, even if I was straight, I would not have checked the “spouse” box, since we aren’t married yet. But it hurts knowing that, legally, I may never be able to.

When Amy and I got engaged this summer, it wasn’t because suddenly we could, it was because we wanted to. And from May until now, gay people in California have been able to legally wed, and check that “spouse” box. They want to, and they can. Some 17,000 couple could and wanted to.

But not now.

A friend of Amy’s is one of those 17,000 couples. They have now had three ceremonies. They do not know what the change in law will do to their legal status yet again. And she is as good humored about it as possible, and said “well, next time I think I’m going to buy a new wedding dress.” No one should have to buy another wedding dress to continue to be married to the same person. It’s just not right.

For what I believe is the first time in US History (my googling skills are not the best, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), an issue was declared unconstitutional, legally granted, and within six months stripped away. Where this differs from civil rights issues such as anti-miscegenation is that once Loving vs. Virginia was ruled upon in 1967, no amendment was put forth, and subsequently passed, to rule what was found unconstitutional actually constitutional after the fact.

On what should have been an extremely exciting and hopeful election day, Amy and I went to bed that night with two very different thoughts. As I watched the election returns scroll across the bottom of my screen as Obama gave his acceptance speech and declared:

I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.

the numbers reported from California showed a different story. I headed to bed soon after the speech, deflated and desolate. Amy stayed up for another hour or two, constantly hitting the refresh button on CNN.com, trying to convince herself that there were only 65% of precincts reporting…only 72%…only 80%…

She came to bed bitter and a bit angry.

As we sat at our respective workplaces the next day and our emails zinged with their usual rapidity, we didn’t talk about it. We talked about her co-worker quietly whispering “Obama!” each time she passed Amy’s desk. We talked about my co-worker announcing, “I didn’t like voting yesterday. This guy called me a racist because I voted for McCain. It’s not racist because I’d rather be governed by a white guy than a black guy”. We talked about pressing our luck and seeing if we could score tickets to the Wicked lottery that evening.

We decided to try for the show, but we weren’t successful. Instead, we headed next door to get a couple drinks and some dinner before walking home. The combination of libations and very slow service got us a bit tipsy, and only then did we allow ourselves to begin discussing Proposition 8, culminating in Amy’s pronouncement that she “didn’t want to sleep with a fundamentalist mormon duck–or a flock of ’em!” (I prefer the alliteration of “I don’t want to fuck a flock of fundamentalist mormon ducks” myself, so that’s how I choose to write it).

After the jump, the issues that we talked about in a Scottish bar on Hennepin Avenue over beer, vodka tonics, and not the best bar food.