Catholic @ MindSay

So, my first Easter after quitting Catholicism. No mass, no reading from the Bible. No easter baskets either, but I can live with that.

 

My feelings of this event are best expressed by pop music:

 

"So what?

I'm still rock star
I got my rock moves

And I don't need you

And guess what

I'm havin' more fun

And now that we're done
I'm gonna show you tonight
I'm all right
I'm just fine

And you're a tool

So what
I am a rock star

I got my rock moves

And I don't want you tonight

You weren't there
You never were

You want it all
But that's not fair
I gave you life, I gave my all

You weren't there

You let me fall

 

So, so what..."

-Pink

I'm so sick of the guilt that comes from just the way I was raised and my Catholic high school, a place that I've been trying to leave behind as soon as I became a freshman there. I used to pray with phrases like, "protect me from what I want", but now I have to ask, what's wrong with wanting? What's wrong with feeling pleasure or passion or taking a step away from something? I want to stop thinking about where I'm going after this life or if this is something Jesus would do. I hate the knot in my stomach and the shame I feel after my boyfriend touches me. I hate crying each night from fear and guilt preventing me from taking the next step.

 

I want to walk down the street with confidence, I want the ability to raise my hand in class and say what I really mean. I want to not be afraid of breaking walls. I want to be intimate with my boyfriend and smile instead of wipe tears away from my eyes. I want the courage to take the next step.

 

Confidence, courage, expression. Those are things tha I want. I want to smile and be proud of the person that I've become, and the person that I am growing into. I don't think these are things that I need to be protected from. I need to be protected from the things that takes me away from them.

 

Protect me from what stops me from gaining these things.

 

Amen.

I was beginning to feel that the intellectual portion of this blog was slipping. I kind of felt like it had been a while since I practiced my research skills, learned something new, and shared it with all of you, my readers. So I started my sleuthing with that very question.....and:

 

YIKES!

 

The last time I deigned to educate the masses was back on November 30th. Well, clearly, I must now do something to correct this oversight.

 

So here we go.

 

Happy Fat Tuesday!

 

Oh yeah, lucky for me today is the last day of Mardi Gras. I wondered how many of you actually know anything about the history of this day--as in, why do people use it as a reason to get drunk and stupid?

 

Do we really NEED a reason? No, of course not. But there is one...

 

Mardi Gras (literally translated from the French as Fat Tuesday) is always the day preceding Ash Wednesday. For the non-Christians in the bunch (or the atheists, pagans, agnostics, wiccans, etc. who may have dropped by) Ash Wednesday is the day that marks the beginning of Lent. Lent is the 40 days (not counting Sundays) that lead up to Easter. Easter being the most important holiday in the Catholic (and many Christian) religions. Easter Sunday is the day that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, three days following his crucifixion.

 

The 40 days of Lent are representative of the time that Jesus spent in the desert, where Satan was present to tempt him over and over again, to no avail. Lent is thusly used as a time of fasting, repentance, and prayer, to prepare us for Holy Week (commemorating the last week of Jesus' life on earth and includes the well-known holy day of Good Friday) and then Easter, where Jesus was risen.

 

Got all that? That was my quick tutorial on Christian observances of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (read the links if you need more)

 

So--that still does not explain why we have Mardi Gras. Does it?

 

Here's what it comes down to. Mardi Gras is an ancient tradition with its roots in Catholic conversion from paganism. A feast was created to allow the people to revel, creating excitement in the faith, since the day following the feast was the beginning of Lent. During Lent, people fast and refrain from temptation, giving it a somewhat tame reputation. It is a tame time, where people do not feast on meat, they do not celebrate, they pray--a lot, and they refrain from all sins. But trying to convert pagans to this way of life...well, they saw this and were pretty much uninterested. So, before making them observe the rituals of Lent, they tempted them over with feasting and revelry in the form of Carnival; which eventually morphed into today's modern Mardi Gras celebrations.

 

So, today, people from all faiths and beliefs celebrate Mardi Gras (or some variation) for a couple of weeks leading up to Fat Tuesday, the final, uproarious celebration. And then Lent begins and we Catholics do our thing.

 

I guess what we've learned is this. If you want someone to do something they don't want to do; like convert from their system of faith to yours, the best way to get them in board....?

 

Get them really drunk first. They'll do whatever you want.

 

See, life lessons from long-dead Catholic leaders. And you think religion has no sense of humor.

 

Ha!

 

19 days until my own day of revelry.

 

 

 

 

On Friday, Kathie successfully walked to the van using a walker with some assistance from Jenny, her therapist at TIRR.  You can see the picture of Kathie sitting in the back of her Mazda van after she walked to it and opened the back.  Unfortunately, she did not have the strength to lift her wheelchair on to the van.  But she was able to walk with her walker around the car to the driver's seat and get in with her new prosthesis. (See Kathie in the picture in the driver's seat with her hand controls installed and ready to go!). 

 

Unfortunately her left prosthesis kept coming off.  This is normal.  We have to go back to the prosthesist on Monday or Tuesday and get that problem adjusted.  Fitting of the prosthesis is most important as it is suction to the leg stump and it must fit perfectly or it will fall off and cause an amputee to get injured.  Kathie has a wonderful prosthesist and I'm sure he will do his best to fit her well.

 

Friday evening we went to orthodox Jewish services at the Chabad House where we are staying.  Kathie was just a visitor as she is Catholic (she went to church this morning in fact).  But she is a good sport.  It was her first experience of an orthodox service where the women and men are separated by a wall.  She complained about not being able to see all the "cute men!"

 

After services, the Rabbi invited us back to his house for dinner.  The dinner was wonderful with all the traditional prayers and songs.  But there was a surprise.  First we said the blessing on the bread and the wine.  The Jewish bread or challa was homemade and sprinkled with salt, poppy and sesame seeds.  It was the most delicious challa I've ever tasted!  The Rabbi had seven of his nine children at the table with his wife and nine guests including Kathie and me.  He poured the wine into what looked like a pure silver server that poured twelve cups of wine at once!

 

Then they served fresh trout stuffed with squash and carrots (with the head on).  After we ate the delicious fish, we thought that was it.  But that was the surprise, it was just the appetizer.  The next course was homemade matzo ball soup, then fresh green beans, asparagus, a wonderful eggplant casserole and then baked chicken.  After that they served homemade apple struddle a la mode.

 

Saturday night we went to Kenny and Ziggy's deli for dinner and wonderful desert followed by going to the Laugh Stop comedy club with some friends we knew from Midland who got transferred with Marathon Oil: Don, Sue and Brian Hall.  We had a great time.  Sunday I met my cousin, Michael at the Buffalo Grill for breakfast.  He too is married to a Catholic girl, Ilene.  Both of them are attorneys at the top of their game.  Both are type A personalities.  Ilene took Kathie to church this morning and Michael and I met them afterwards for breakfast.  After that I spent the day catching up on work for Fasken Oil and Ranch where I work. 

 

 

Today in church we were sitting there waiting
for the second offering to be collected, and
instead these people were passing out postcards.
On the postcards they told us to put our name
and address. They did not tell us what they were for,
well I didn't fill one out. Well many people were looking
confused and didn't wanna sign. Then the priest stands up
and says that the postcards were going to Arkansas
senators (since I go to the church on the Arkansas side)
to help protest Pro-Choice and get laws in Arkansas
passed that were Pro-Life. So then I definitely didn't
fill one out. People were looking at me with judgmental
glances, and one lady asked me why I didn't fill one out,
and I told her I was not going to be a hypocrite and fill out
something I did not believe in. I forget that mostly everyone in
the Texarkana region is conservative. I miss Boston