Dear Readers,
May we talk about religion a bit?
After all, we live in a religious nation, founded on religious freedom — and we still have “In God We Trust” on all of our money, right down to the penny.
It is pure speculation on my part, but I'd venture to say that most of us do trust in God, each in his or her own way — and I'd guess that the vast majority of us turn to Him far more often in times of need than when things are just rosy. To my mind, it follows that religion is important to the majority of us who cruise the ICAN website.So many of us are afflicted by cancer, or are giving care to someone special who has it! It's a huge club. And I would bet that almost all the people in it fall back on their religious backgrounds and talk to their Maker in a multitude of ways — as past or present members of the many religions represented in this diverse nation of ours — as they grapple with major adversities and worry about outcomes. I know I do.
Carol and I were both exposed to Catholicism as kids, through our dads. Carol also had a progressive Lutheran mom, while mine was a more conservative (Northern) Baptist. Of course, Carol and I had no idea at the time that we'd someday have need of these comforting links with the Almighty, but we're mighty glad we've hung onto them!
The development of my early religious thinking was haphazard. I was the child of Pa (a nominal Catholic, whose strongest tie to that faith was two years spent in a Catholic orphanage) and Ma (a demure Baptist who never expressed her personal beliefs till the kids were grown). Left pretty much to my own resources, well before kindergarten I came up with the idea that God was a tall, pale, skinny young man in a white sailor suit.
(I should add that my hometown [Long Beach, California] was a Navy town during World War II, teeming with men in uniform. I'm sure their presence in that Pacific Coast city from 1941 through 1945 influenced my theological assumptions.)
For want of religious instruction from my parents, I engaged my own imagination. When I attained the Age of Reason (age 7, per the Catholic Church), I was sent to St. Matthew's for my first confession and Holy Communion. As it turned out, I reasoned that nobody had the right to ask me a bunch of personal questions in a dark, little room, through a screen of some kind that obscured the back-lit inquisitor. I quickly made up some sins for the priest's ears, and began a history of deception.
I was set up by circumstances to fail to acquire the mind-set of devout Catholics. My folks never talked to me about God, let alone His Son, Jesus, except in the broadest of terms. They just didn't seem to have a playbook for all that!
Yes, they bought a big, leather-bound, family Bible from St. Matthew's, and they saw to it that we kids got to Mass and to catechism, but they never voiced personal opinions about the world religion they had thrust us into. Yet, for all their faults, Ma and Pa were the best parents in the world. In my heart, there was never anything to forgive them for!
It never occurred to me to ask Pa about God. As a small child, seeing Pa as the center of my universe, I was immersed in the wonder of him, and I may have thought he was God. Whenever I did ask him a cosmic question, he always came through. Once, after I had been listening to the radio for hours, I asked him, “Why are all the songs about love?”
His answer has stayed with me for life: “Because love makes the world go around!”
The nuns at the orphanage in upstate New York at the start of the 20th Century must have pounded a lot of rules into Pa when he was 8 or 9 years old. He later insisted that I attend Mass every Sunday till I was 18 (even though he went only at Christmas and Easter). For her part, Ma, having signed papers to raise all us kids Catholic, was a relentless enforcer.
The influence of Catholicism followed me into adulthood. I guess I was predestined to fall for a Catholic girl! Carol wanted to be married at St. Hugo's in Bloomfield Hills, but they were booked solid in late December of 1965. So, we settled for tying the knot at Grace Lutheran instead. It seemed fitting to me, because Carol's mother (who died in 1962) was named Grace Esser (née Bertrand), and she was a staunch Lutheran, to boot.
Carol had really wanted the pomp and pageantry of a Catholic wedding at the most gorgeous church in the Pontiac area. So, I told her we could repeat our vows there whenever she could get that scheduled. To date, she has never taken me up on it.
We got too embroiled in life, I guess. And later we were both too mad at the Vatican for mishandling the issue of gay priests (and their decades of sexual abuse of boys and girls in parishes around the world). So, we never revisited Catholicism to truly understand it.
Life is complicated, isn't it? There's love, marriage, earning a living, coping with all the challenges that pull us in so many directions, and, of course, Carol's scary diagnosis of small-cell lung cancer, which turned our lives upside-down as recently as last December. Since that scare, Carol has talked of rejoining St. Benedict's, the Catholic church she attended in her childhood and early adulthood, but she has talked about that possibility only to me and to no one at that church (conveniently located about a mile from here).
We may possibly never adhere to any one set of beliefs, but choose instead to eclectically absorb the religious values that impact us most. As I've said elsewhere in this blog, we're on a long journey, and it's hard to predict exactly where it will ultimately take us!
So, where are we theologically at this moment? Seemingly, all over the map! But maybe not … Carol and I seem to have slowly fashioned our own version of the Apostles' Creed. Our personal article of faith, which is still evolving, goes something like this:
We didn't make the world — or ourselves. God did. (Only He could!)
He has worked miracles in our lives.
He knows all of our failings — large and small — past, present, and future.
He fervently wants us to do better.
And He hears our prayers!
We also know, as we live out our mortal lives, that we should soon embrace the bit of wisdom emblazoned on roadside billboards throughout the South over 50 years ago … GET RIGHT WITH GOD. That one has really haunted me.
You know what? It's good that we have that larger objective — even larger than our vision of Carol's total victory over cancer — to wrap our minds around in these times of trouble and uncertainty. It means we are finally getting our priorities straight!
Just think. We have been in God's hands our entire lives, but are just now getting around to acknowledging it. (Better late than never!) You could say that Carol's cancer has made it possible for us to see our place in the universe. Things have a way of working out, just when you'd swear they haven't!
I have friends and relatives who don't know God. If you do know Him, you are, of course, stronger for it and rejoicing. If you haven't connected with Him yet, you can simply open your heart and mind to Him. He's out there, patiently waiting for every straggler to come to the party. I'm very glad I got what religion I did. I'm the richer for it, and I wish you that spiritual prosperity as well.
—Michael E. Hearons
