OoKneel to Pause

So, yesterday I had a specific motivation to pause. I found out early in the morning that a member of a family that I was once a part of had died. 

Divorce is a very strange phenomenon to me. I guess it shouldn't be, given that my parents divorced...but nonetheless the experience of being close to a family for eight years and then being almost entirely severed from that family is very odd to me. One of my defining characteristics is the value that I place on long-lasting relationships, and the experience of divorcing and losing relationships that I invested in with people that I cared about deeply was...well, I guess it felt uncomfortable at best and mournful at worst. The experience was made more difficult when my ex-husband's grandfather and father both died during the course of our divorce. I can't really explain in words how it felt to go through that situation. I guess I felt... lost. Like there was no good way to deal with it. I tried to do what seemed socially appropriate--making calls, sending cards...and I wanted the family to know that I mourned the loss of those two men and that their lives had impacted mine in some very significant ways. I am not sure how much they were able to hear of that message, or whether they cared to hear it, but I tried to put it out there. 

Yesterday I found out that my ex-husband's Aunt Bobbi died, and while I had only a few me

mories of times spent with Bobbi, I felt really sad about it. I felt sad for her beautiful and kind daughter, for her two wonderful grandchildren. I felt sad for the family as a whole, as they have suffered so many losses over the last few years. I felt sad that I don't have contact with Nathan and I could not tell him how sorry I am for his loss. I just felt sad. 

In this sadness, I felt like it was a good time to take pause. Yesterday I was working out in Pacoima for our study. I finished up a little bit early and I had planned to meet Geoff and our friend Shiri downtown for dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. Rather using my extra time to beat traffic on the 101, I googled the closest Catholic Church. I was looking for a place of refuge in which to take my pause.

The Guardian Angel Church in Pacoima is not in the greatest neighborhood. It is surrounded by low-income housing and it is close enough to Van Nuys Boulevard that if you listen carefully you can hear the traffic. It is a small church with a small K-8 school on the property. The church itself is brick and concrete. The front doors were locked, so I went around the right side, past a statue of the Blessed Mother surrounded by the tall saint-themed Mexican candles you can buy at the 99 cent store. I was able to enter the sanctuary from the side door. Next to the door was the most interest holy water font I've ever seen--it was made of clay and the likeness of the Virgin Mary--she was holding out her hands and you dipped your hands into hers to bless yourself. I sat down on the right side of the church in the third pew and I started my pause.

I am now realizing what a heavy entry I have started here. I guess this was a pretty heavy pause.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

That is about as far as it gets right now, and then I have to skip down in the Apostle's Creed to the part about believing in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. I am not sure about all the stuff that comes between. I am certainly no longer a practicing Catholic, though I have a great respect for the Catholic community as a whole, and am deeply grateful for the influence that it has had on my development. I would not be who I am without the faith that I held in my younger years. I don't agree with the Church on some rather significant points, namely homosexuality as a sin and same-sex marriage as wrong, and thus my adult conundrum. However, this isn't a blog to stir religious or political controversy, just a place for me to be honest about what happens when I take pause. In this case, my pause was related to religion. I feel God with me everyday, and I have no doubt in God's presence and blessings in my life. No doubt. I believe in an higher power, something that is beyond what science can explain, beyond what sense we can make of the Universe. Beyond that, I am not sure what I believe anymore. However, what I do know is that when I am looking for God, I sometimes find it easiest to go to one of his houses.

As I sat in this little church, I was not alone. There were people around me who were also looking for something. Maybe a pause, maybe salvation, maybe comfort, maybe just sanctuary from the cold. There was an old man at the front of the church, who stood right in front of the altar, reading from a prayer book with a magnifying glass, holding a cane. He read quickly in Spanish and thumped his cane for emphasis after certain passages. I have no idea what he was saying. I only know the words for dog and green in Spanish. There were two older women saying the rosary to my left. Both had their eyes tightly closed the whole time, and wore handkerchiefs on their heads. Two younger women entered and sat in different areas. They did not kneel, but sat and relaxed, looking like they came here often to hang out.

It was hard for me to settle into pausing. At first, my mind raced through thoughts about Bobbi dying, about Phil and Grandpa Rodhe...memories. I tried to concentrate on the task of pausing by saying the Hail Mary. I say the Hail Mary a lot actually. When running, when anxious, when trying to fall asleep. I have been doing that since I learned it in kindergarten. The Hail Mary wasn't helping. I said it several dozen times and my mind continued to race. I tried the prayer of St. Francis, another favorite. That one reminded me of my friend Chris and the music he wrote to accompany that song for me one time, which made me cry. So much for pausing. Then, I thought of my Buddhist father and decided to just do a mindfulness activity where I concentrated on the sensory experience of being in the church. I examined the concrete walls, and the office-tiling of the roof. Some of the tiles had fallen off, just like in my office. There were three versions of the stations of the cross--first in the stained glass of the windows, second in some fairly cheap but standard looking hanging plaques on the walls, and third on some hand-painted tiles that were cement-glued to the lower walls and maybe created by some member of the church. There was a large corkboard near the alter with pictures of all the young men and women from the parish who are serving in the War. The corkboard was completely covered in pictures, and I was surprised by the number. There were flowers around the base of the board and prayers written and taped around the edges. The nativity scene was still up from Christmas--the plastic kind you can buy at Kmart--it was set up in the front of the church and I kind of wished it was plugged in so that the whole family and animals and onlookers would glow. Most interestingly, there were 6 very large, plasticy-looking chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. They each had several lights burned out, but the lights that remained glimmered in all the plastic crystals. All in all, my conclusion is that this was a very poor church, but it was full of love and a beautiful place to pause. Sitting under those plastic chandeliers, I felt full of love. A calm came over me, and I imagined this same calm and peace flowing to all the members of the Rodhe family. I asked God to watch over them and to send them comfort. It took me 25 minutes, but I finally achieved a pause sufficient to wipe away the stress of my day and my racing thoughts to connect with something more important.

In each pew, there were laminated prayer sheets. The prayers were for a new church. I got up and went into the church office and made a donation to the the building of the new sanctuary. Whatever my beliefs about God, it was clear to me in that moment the invaluable contribution that this church must provide for this small Hispanic community. I also realized how grateful I am that I can Google a random Catholic church, walk in unannounced, and find sanctuary to take pause and ponder my place on this earth. 

This was a significant pause for me, and honestly not one that I was likely to make without the practice initiated by this blog project. I don't often take time out of my day to really take inventory of how I am feeling...especially when things happen that are hard. I tend to push, push, push through with all my might. I broke that pattern yesterday, and it felt really good. I went to dinner feeling a sense of peace that I had not expected.