10/16/21
For six or seven years, I have been a regular musician for the adult choir at the Saturday evening mass at my local Catholic Church. The church is proud of its size – – 5000 families – – and it was only by wedging myself into the adult choir that I could find a community, and only by finding a community could remain Catholic. God knows, there have been enough calculated insults through the years when I heard God’s voice saying clearly, “You gave at the office, my beloved, now get the hell out of Dodge.” But I stayed, superstitious. It was easy to talk about my love of the Catholic sacramental language and culture, and that was truly authentic.
But this afternoon, as I printed out the music, I was puzzled by my reluctance. Covid has decimated our ranks, and my friend, our conductor, has gone to another parish. The new director has reached out to me in caring listening ways, so I will probably remain. Yesterday I listened to a podcast by my former rabbinic student reflect on how her grief for her mother’s death five years ago was shaped and given voice by her Jewish faith. I could say the same of Catholicism, although I now view so much of that culture is unhealthy, borderline, grotesque.
Much of my faith now flows from my practice both as client and provider of spiritual direction, and from my decades as hospital chaplain. Now, I see no point at all to the Catholic sacrament of penance, as long as I try very hard to deal face-to-face with those I have offended and who have offended me. I’m not sure how to deal with institutional or cultural sin, and as I watch our “faithful/believer” legislators, it appears that they don’t either. Except for the Eucharist and “Extreme Unction”, I don’t find much meaning in the rest of the sacraments.
A couple of weeks ago, I sought consultation from a peer supervision group member about my work with one of my clients. I was concerned that I wasn’t being serious enough, that we laughed too much. He laughed, too: “How wonderful! That’s how God gets to enjoy laughter.” His comment has become a mile marker in my continuing journey to discover where and who God is in my daily life these elder days.
It’s not as though Catholic ritual, from daily mass to prayers at every meal, was merely rote for me in the past. I wrung the readings dry to find God’s message that would make sense for me. Now, the Scripture stories mean most when I read by myself. I am scornful of priests who waste my time by not preparing a sermon that will reach to our daily lives, handing out instead undercooked exegesis detached from experience.
These days, I find nourishment in a daily 30-minute contemplative prayer group that meets via zoom. There are 20 or 30 of us regulars, some of whom know each other well enough to stay afterwards for three or four minutes to check in further. I generally begin 30 minutes ahead of time by feeding Phoebe, my cat. I take my place in my rocker, and set up my iPad. Phoebe flies into the living room and leaps onto my lap. If I don’t pay sufficient attention to scratching her chin, she gently pats my face, then pulls my glasses down to the end of my nose. By the Time the chime rings at 5:30 for our prayer, she is ready to nestle into my lap. Writing this, it strikes me that all I, too, nestle next to God for that time.
Although The model for contemplative prayer as it is often practiced today is Buddhist-like, to clear one’s mind completely to allow room for God’s voice, that’s not how I pray. In my prayer, God makes space, even before I do. Sometimes I hear God say, “Maggie, I need to rest. I’m going to sit in the other rocker, and you rest, too.” Sometimes God and I watch the sunlight through the fall leaves outside the patio door. Sometimes we chuckle at “our” squirrel, who never manages to master the leap from the fence to the birdfeeder.
So on one level, I wonder if elder spirituality is more interior, quieter, than earlier in life. I was mulling this over while I tuned my bowed psaltery to accompany the choir for mass tonight. It was good to see everyone; we haven’t been together in many months. The director made special effort to make sure that I had a comfortable place and a stand for my instrument. He and I played through the communion, then he brought the Host back to me. The congregation extended hands in blessing over new catechumens, now midway through their year of preparation for baptism. As we did so, I found myself tearful, seeing how glad the congregation was to reach out to them. The Indian priest was earnest, and the congregation listened politely, perhaps wondering what four qualities of Christian leadership had to do with their daily lives. I was moved by the final short video of the multitudes of ways that parishioners kept the church alive through these two years of separation. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in how hard this congregation works to care for one another and the surrounding county, despite my experience of being lost in the vast numbers.
So now, I’m a little embarrassed. I had a marvelous theory of faith development in elderhood. But like a boomerang, I try to sail away but tonight, once again, I’m drawn back. When I can no longer get to mass, no longer accompany the choir, I know I shall be forgotten. Perhaps that, too, is a facet of elder churchgoing spirituality. Like losing old friends who die before we do, we no longer have the energy it takes to invest in new relationships, new friendships, and God and we move on.