Why I am raising my kids Catholic: Part II

     I have always been generally a big fan of ceremonies and traditions.  This is largely because -regardless of the situation- I never know what I am supposed to be doing.  I really feel like there should be a manual out there for people like me that give hints onto how to behave when running into an acquaintance at the grocery store, or attending a party when you only know the host.  (Protip: Find a deli tray and shove your mouth full of food as fast and grotesquely as possible to ward off any potential social interaction.)

     Now that I have a little one, my whole life is centered around little ceremonies and routines.  Kids- well, actually probably adults too- need the little rituals and celebrations that mark the passage of time and remind us that there are patterns that guide our daily lives.  We sing a song at bedtime; We wave goodbye to the water at the end of the bath; We hug when daddy comes home from work; these are necessary predictabilities in an overwhelming world, and deviation from the pattern can prove pretty perilous for everyone involved.
     While Catholicism does not necessarily address interaction to quite that level of detail, I have found religion to be a comfort in marking both important and trivial life events.  When I decided on a life partner, I really wanted to celebrate the occasion with my family and community, in a way that was both solemn, but joyful.  There is a ceremony for that.  When Amani was born I wanted to present her to the world in a way that both cherished her as a precious entity, and initiated her as a member of the human family.  There's  a ceremony for that too. There's  a ceremony for just about everything.  If you need event planning ideas, the Catholics can definitely get you started.
     Recently, my friend's husband died.  It was sudden, and left my friend to care for her baby girl without a partner.  We were all shocked and frightened.  What do we say?  What do we do?  How can we help?  There were no words true enough to express our feelings.  There were no actions that will bring peace.  So we did the only thing we knew: we had a ceremony.  The ceremony that our ancestors had prescribed and shared for millenniums   We sat together and mourned.  We read words from the wise and listened to songs that might lift our spirits.  We reflected on our own lives, our children, and our spouses.  We were grateful for another day.  We remembered that his was not the first death, nor will it be the last.

     In her book To Dance with God, Gertrud Mueller Nelson points out how ceremony and tradition make an event both special and ordinary.  They create a space that both allows for the sacred and the commonplace. They create point through which we celebrate the individual, but also join with the whole of human experience.

     Now there has been this terrible atrocity in Newtown, right at the time when the Catholic Church reflects on God's presence during a time of darkness, cold and desolation.  What do we do? How do we go on when it seems like everything is pretty much just...terrible...forever?  We light a lot of candles, and sing a lot of songs.  We reflect on what happened and where we are headed.  (The Catholics are really big on reflection.)  We try to be extra nice to people, and eat a lot of chocolate.  We remember that under the barren, cold, joyless surface, there is promise- within the world and within each person.  Somehow, by singing songs, and making cards, and making an effort to bring a smile to loved ones, I reminded that there is a sacredness to life, and I am comforted that I am not alone.
     I want Amani to know that this world is not just meaningless wasteland.  I want her to be able to have markers throughout her life that remind her to reflect on who she is, where she is going, and the role she is playing within the Body of Christ.  I want her to know that she is not alone, and that there is a path that she can follow, both when things are happy and sad.  

I mean- how could anyone possibly navigate on their own.

Why I am raising my children in the Catholic faith: Part I

First reason why I am raising my kids Catholic:  Math

Oh, you heard me.

I am terrible at math, and not very good at Catholicism, but I still really like them both. Both math and Catholicism take a lot of thinking because they are things, but not in the way regular things are things.  It's pretty fun.

I promise you that does actually make sense.

Okay, so let's start with math.  Math isn't a regular thing.  You can't see it, or touch it, or even explain it without using more math.
Try it.
Prove the number two.
Okay, so maybe you can write down the number two, but that is not actually two; that is the symbol for two.
Maybe you can show me two fingers, but those aren't two.  Those are fingers.  There is no such thing as two in the traditional sense of "such thing".  Two is an understanding of a relationship.

But math isn't just simply relationships.  Triangles and algebra and the quadratic equation: they are real things.  It's not just how you look at the world; math is a universal truth that you either get or you don't.

This has never happened to me.

God is similar.  When I say God, I don't mean a man in the sky with a flowing beard.  I don't really understand the whole man in the sky thing: I have never witnessed the clouds part, or had any beatific visions.  I can understand it as a metaphor, but taking it literally sounds a little like a children's story to me.  I am not saying it is impossible; I just have never experienced anything like that.
For me, God is the connection between man and his community, man and nature, music, science, math: basically everything.  And it is not just my personal perception of these connection; it is an actual connection that people have to be taught to see, and have awe for.

He knows what I am talking about.

They are both very cerebral, and kind of mysterious, both God and math, and even if you have been taught to understand both of them, they can still be kind of hard to grasp.
Plus, for both, people who aren't very good at understanding them get really frustrated by people who do understand them, sometimes to the point where the other person is kind of embarrassed to admit they understand.
But if no one on Earth could see math or God, they would still be there.  Neither needs humanity to perceive them for their existence.  They just are.

This isn't just me and my enlightened sense of religion.  This is Catholicism, Baby.  We refer to it as a sacrament (with a little 's') meaning that Catholics see God in everything, from sunsets, to math, to music, to each other.  Other religions rely very strictly on the their texts and priests, but we Catholics see God everywhere.

Who wouldn't want that for their kid?  Who wouldn't at least want her to be able to understand that mystery and awe can be found in everything?