Have Faith Will Travel

Have I committed a mortal sin if I've taken Holy Communion from Cardinal Mahoney and I'm not a Catholic? God only knows.

Over the years I've been a religious traveller and found the very little resistance from the gatekeepers. Unlike my status as a resident alien in the U.S. I am not required to show proof of religious citizenship so if I show up regularly at, say, a church or a synagogue, I'm taken at face value. As my Haida friend once said, to become a member of their tribe you must put on the button blanket. But that's another story.

In April this year I attended Easter Vigil at Our Lady of Angels Cathedral with my friend Mari, a devout if worldly Catholic, and I knew enough of their prayers and songs from my early days as an Anglican, that no-one was the wiser when it came time to take Communion. From the Cardinal, no less. Nevermind the fact that several adults were being baptized at this service having spent several months in religious instruction for the priviledge of taking in the body and blood of Christ and yet I could just waltz up there and take a share without so much as a Hail Mary.

As I sat in the pew surrounded by tapestries of the saints, a pale light over the altar flowing through alabaster stone sliced as thin as eggshell, I remembered years earlier when I was asked by the Rabbi at the shul I was attending regularly to come up and read from the Torah.

I had become over the previous decade a practicing Jew. Not by birthright, nor by formal conversion. I just showed up at Temple on a regular basis with my Conservadox boyfriend and after a while I lost the look of a confused tourist when there was a reading, I davened with the best of them, and I learned enough Hebrew to make it through most of the prayers like a native. I had special plates for our Passover seders, and I kashered the kitchen before the holidays. I had a drawer full of Haggadahs, Hanukah candles, and draydls. I spent Yom Kippur in Temple and fasted, resting only during the brief afternoon break before returning for afternoon prayers.

So when the Rabbi invited us up to participate in the Rosh Hashanah services, to stand with him during prayers, and then to take up the instrument to follow the Hebrew and read from the Torah, slicha but I said yes without a moment's hestiation. I felt deeply honored and humbled for the privledge, but somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that if anyone found out that I was just a goy in disguise, there would have been a revolt amongst the small, pious congregation and I might rightly have been sent out in shame and disgrace.

Up I went, and my friend let me know with subtle hand signals when it was time to kneel, to stand, and then the moment came when I stepped up to the ancient and holy book and read my passage. The Rabbi helped me a bit (not everyone is fluent in Hebrew) and I felt his kindly and supportive presence close to me in case I faltered. At that moment I loved him dearly for his confidence and generosity, and I wanted very much to be the person he thought me to be. Perhaps I was, perhaps the spirit of a genuine Jew found a home in me for a while. I know I felt blessed and close to God. The same God who was speaking down the street at Harbor Light Baptist Church, a point I've been trying to make at cocktail parties for ages.

Later I was allowed to carry the Torah down the aisles while we sang and danced. Others reached out with their prayer shawls and books to touch it reverently. With awe I held it close to my heart, resting on my chest, the beautiful scrolled silver so close to my breath it was like magic.

The boyfriend and I broke up a few months later and I never went back to the Temple. I gave up trying to be a Jew to please the relationship, but the Jew in me never quite went away. I realize as I wait my turn to drink from the chalice  my faith is so much a part of who I am that whether I carry the Torah or take Communion, God is always going to be there.

He may not be clothed in the familiar, but he is flexible enough to work with me and I have to respect that.

And I hope to teach Sweetpea the joys of finding faith on whatever path it takes her, and to build and cross as many bridges as she can. To that end we're starting by joining the Unitarian Universalist Church which takes a world view on faith. Which would be good except my brother-in-law the Baptist minister and my Rabbi friend both agree that those Unitarians are agnostic nutcases.

Oy! You can't win.

Blzz@spit, etc.

Our daughter is now talking.....sort of.
According to a study I read on language delays for Chinese adoptees who come to the States at 11 months of age, they are an average of 18 months behind other children until they catch up around 3 years of age (try to figure out those mathematics). It doesn't seem to be the case with Sweetpea because at 18 months, besides her ten or so words (mama, dada, Daisy, gampa, gamma, duck, up, down, out, bye, and now....'chicken' which is enunciated quite clearly while performing the chicken dance) she has begun babbling in earnest and is sincerely conversing with everyone and anything, including herself.

Babbling is a fascinating stage with kids - they have more vocal tricks than we adults could ever manage, including clicks, lip bursts, a variety of spitting sounds and tongue gymnastics of all sorts that result in a perfectly beautiful language performed with equally graceful facial expressions and hand gestures. She will babble as she walks purposefully down the street, then stop, pick up something in absolute, concentrating silence, and then, with a turn toward me, explain in lengthy detail what the object is.....baazzspli#+mffft, ending with a very wet raspberry. To which I nod in agreement and then we move on, happy companions on our outing down Mayberry Street.

I have a feeling talking is going to be very important to Sweetpea because she's doing so much of it now. And I also know this because the babbling was preceeded by a several days of psychic darkness - she was clearly frustrated because some part of her brain had matured before some other part and she was like a comatose victim who could hear conversations but try as she might, could not form a sound in response. In this state of angst she would gesture madly, roll her eyes, point and grunt, shake her head forcefully, and then when all else failed, drop to the floor like a rag doll and roll around kicking and screaming. Not very pleasant for Mummy.

Then one day it happened. Author Harvey Karp, M.D. says in his book, "The Happiest Toddler on the Block" that babies have to go through the equivalent of five million years of evolution by the time they reach the age of four. Whew! That's a lot of work. So Sweetpea was definitely in the throes of one of those evolutionary leaps when one day without any warning she stood rooted to the spot in the living room and suddenly began to spout what sounded like pig Latin. She even looked around as if to figure out where the sound had come from. The babbling had begun, and with each passing day the sounds became more sophisticated, the 'sentences' more lengthy. A peaceful look came over her, beautific almost. She experimented with everything, incorporating mimicked sounds she heard throughout the day like 'un, do, tee' with her own creations, which undoubtedly sound perfectly intelligible and uber-smart.

These days when she starts up a particulary gymnastic sequence, we laugh and then, awed by her efforts, we sit back and listen.

And stare.

It has come to our attention that our Sweetpea will one day, one moment, actually verbalize complete ideas within a grammatically correct sentence and break out of the baby prison to become one of us. It is an idea that is so fantastical, so bizarre we are not quite sure what to make of it. I mean, we are used to the Sweetpea of the hand gestures and the simple, pure, and clear emotions. Happy, sad, mad, delighted, sly, mischevious, deeply loving. Mix these up with the complexities of who this new person is and the possibilities are as endless as they are mysterious.

You know, she might even get better at this whole life thing than us. Frankly, the whole idea leaves me speechless.