Broken Faith

Retrieval II, Parts of Self

I am again in the common area of the EcoVillage, by the covered barbeque platform. Is is a brilliant day. Now, I barely have time to think of asking for fellow-travellers and Joe and Maggie show up.
K: Don't you guys have something more important to be doing?
Joe is grinning.
J: This won't take long. It's a nice break for us. And besides, you kind of matter to us.
M: So, come on, kid. Let's get this done!
She takes my hand and we are in the Midlands in no time, turning to the right over toward the Belief Systems Territories. I know where this is going, and I feel sick.

Sure enough, we go into a Roman Catholic Cathedral there. I have visited the Catholic section before with a visitor who was once Agnese of Assisi, who wanted to meet Jesus, and I know the by-ways and tiny alleys of this Umbrian style town. Umbria, where Assisi is. Assisi, where Clare and Francis grew up. I am shaking and feel very sick now.

The Cathedral is modeled on the Church of San Giorgio, which is where Clare and her sister Catherine (later Agnese) first heard Francis preach, next to which she lived, and at which she was first interred after making her transition. The inside of this church is in the High Gothic style, with pale beige-grey pillars, stained glass, and wooden chairs. The typical side altars are present, full of brass and gold illumination and candles. Such a far cry from its Romanesque origins. I know that Santa Chiara doesn't care anymore, but I feel the residual echoes of an 800 year old distress.

We walk in and there on 'Mary's side' [left] where I sat as a three-year-old child with neighbours, is a little child, in a Sunday frock, gloves, and small chaplet pinned to long hair. If I had dressed my daughter so, it would be her. But I know it is myself. and I know to whence this meeting is 'ever tending'. She is just sitting, quietly, as instructed, not fidgeting. I feel the power of the place, even as I do in 3D churches, the power of ritual, and faith, and the equally powerful peaceful quiet. If I were orthodox, I would spend a few aeons here too, as the inhabitants of this Belief System do.

Joe and Maggie have stayed a little behind, sitting a few rows behind. They think I can handle this.
I walk up to the row, and address the child by name in quiet tones, but she looks up and hushes me, whispering.
D: we are sposed to wait qui-et-ly.
K: I will be quiet.
I promise.
K: Where are the others you came with?
D: They went out. They will come back.
K: did they tell you to wait?
She looks doubtful.
D: no. but Jesus is still there so I can't leave him alone. Somebody has to be here if he's out.
She points to the monstrance on the altar. Shades of St. Clare are a tolling bell in my mind, remaining at vigil all night, lying on the cold stone floor. Making herself ill with fasting and mortification. So ill that she remained in bed half her life. Thinking quickly, I realise that I need someone to stay here in her stead so I can take her to the Children's Centre.

I look up, towards the vestibule, and  - I am in tears - striding in from the brilliant sunlight is Claire, my HS, dressed in the white and beige clothes of St. Clare's first days as a nun, her hair all covered. She reaches us and gives me a sparkling glance, before coming to sit in the chair before the child.
C: hello little one! What a nice girl to sit with Jesus for me! I was busy, but now I am back and you can go home with your neighbours here.
She gestures to Joe and Maggie, who don't look in the least like my childhood neighbours.
The child looks up at Claire in awe.
D: you are a sister!
Claire nods.
C: I am an enclosed nun, that means I don't leave my church and have bare feet. See?
She lifts the hem of her gown and shows a slender, aristocratic foot. The child giggles, as was her plan.
D: We play nuns. My friend and me.
C: That's very good.

There is a pause. The child is frowning. Claire is very good with children, I begin to see. Like Sister Luke in The Nun's Story, like Maria von Trapp...
C: is something wrong, little one?
D: The mass was very wrong today.
C: What do you mean, wrong?
D: The old priest was facing the wrong way, and speaking English, and there were guitars instead of the organ, and they stood instead of kneeling, up there -
She points to the altar rail.
Claire glances at me. I'm feeling it too, confusion, outrage, grief. This isn't what I came here [to the Roman Church] for. I came because it reminded me of Assisi... and now it's ruined. A thousand years of tradition, ruined for lucre. Claire thinks at me: 'It was no different in Assisi. That's what we were about, protesting.' To the child she says, sweetly,
C: that was just a special Mass. They will go back to the right way next time.
She pats her hand.
C: But YOU have been here such a good girl for a very long time, and you should go home and have your lunch. Maybe even some ice-cream -
She looks up at me, and I nod.
C: You can go with my sister Catherine here and she will make sure that you get home safely.
I nod, smiling at the subterfuge.
K: Yes, Mother.
D: Okay.
The child speaks with determination.
D: But they better not ever do that again, 'cause it was wrong. It wasn't special or holy, and everybody was talking like a picnic.
Out of the mouths of babes. She gets down from her chair and I take her hand.
K: Let's go have some nice ice-cream now. Thank you, Mother Clare.
Her eyes are laughing.
C: don't be too long, my extern sister, or Agnese will lock the door.

We go out with Joe and Maggie into the brilliant sunshine, and quickly over to the Children's Center, where we deposit the child with the Matron. She is soon sitting in the refectory with some others newly arrived, and eating the promised ice-cream. I ask the Matron,
K: What will happen when the infant gets to her age?
Mn: Oh they will be merged. All the fragment-selves are merged until there is wholeness. You needn't worry.

***
I come from a very Catholic family on my Dad's side. That imprinting, along with my experiences as a religious (nun, priest) in former lives, was strong enough to draw me toward the Church as a tiny child, even though my adoptive family were non-religious Lutherans. I was so drawn that I announced my desire to become a Poor Clare at the age of 15. Because living barefoot and silent, getting up at 2 AM and working at a labourer's tasks is what every teenage girl thinks is bliss....

My sense of 'wrongness' on that fated day when Vatican II came to the parish was enough to cause a break in my psyche, and it has been a battle ever since with the Church, at least in my mind. I agree with Joseph Campbell, who said in his interview with Bill Moyers in The Power of Myth:

There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. Even in the Roman Catholic Church. My God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. Every time…that I read the Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity. The altar is turned so that the priest’s back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward [gestures upward with his hands] like that.

Now they’ve turned the altar around; [it] looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration—all homey and cozy. They’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is: it’s to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

I have been mistaken for a Fundamentalist Catholic because of this preference for the old ways. But it really goes back to immersing oneself in sacred space, back to Francis and Clare, and my Ancel in the Scriptorium at Salisbury (also in the Middle Ages.)

That fateful day in 1966 brought me into as much conflict with the Church as Francis and Clare ever were, or even Ancel in his small, local way. And into conflict within myself, because I felt that I had to Stand Vigilant against the incursions of the profane into the sacred. So much that I have been stuck there for almost 50 years, even though I do not believe in the dogma of the Catholic Church as promulgated. Passionate rants against the wrong turning of Vatican II - its good intentions, but bad application - clearly gave people the impression that I was a card-carrying member of the Society of St. Pius X. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now, I can let St. Clare sit vigil. I no longer have that burden, taking me away from my tasks now. Clare can do it. I, this self, does not have to.