Growing up I was carted off to Wednesday evening schoolings about God. All in the pursuit that I’d get a stamp on the back: “You’re confirmed kid, get outta here!” sort of thing.
We’d sit in the bleachers of an eerie abandoned massive basketball school system. Private. Christian. Eventually namecalled and carted off into a hallway that seemingly went forever until we invaded a random classroom. Bright white was each travel.
Whatever seat you selected so you could still see the nametags of the day-schoolers. Here we were, nightcrawlers in the name of God.
Apparently we had some assignments, sometimes. It was a span of many years, but I never did any homework. I didn’t know anything much of all, other than the same prayers beaten into you after enough listening. There were a few kids that went to private schools (always christian) and could answer the (what felt like) 30-minute class teacher.
Sometimes we’d visit an underground place of prayer, with a narrow stairway; felt like a Jesuit in those moments, waiting for the Black Pope to assure me these are the next steps toward our domination of the world.
They’d light a candle in the corner with a red vase around it. She’d whisper to us that He was in the room too, you know, whenever we decided to talk about anything at all.
But it was better to keep to yourself, mostly. Even though I saw all the same ones through the years nothing more registered than their first names, now forgotten. The proper challenge was enduring that 30-minute(?) class without any friends nor any clue what was going on or why we’re talking about these things.
Sometimes there’d be arts & crafts. Sometimes we’d cut out famous scenes, or something, or had some eateries – sometimes there was the ice cream with the wooden paddle attached.
As the Confirmation neared so we had some extra moments together. My saint is Thomas Aquinas: ironic, isn’t it?
It’s funny as a kid, since you couldn’t understand why anyone would want to believe in Something More. Now as whatever I am, it’s strange how the adults weren’t more fervent about the glory waiting, or assured there’s nothing between: there’s nothing here but suffering. Maybe that’s why they signed up to be these teachers of the night. I wish I could’ve asked why. They did seem a bit solemn.
Roaming a Christian School as a Public School Menace sure did had an air of sterile about it. Walking into their library and they had a circular descent of stair and iron in it: may as well transport me to the cathedrals. So many hidden rooms it seemed, wishing to pull a book and find another.
The thing about Christian beings is that it’s in your blood. I didn’t know anything at all, and a good bunch even today, even though I sat down to read most of the Old Testament and the Gospels of the new: trying to reconcile the pain of our feeble humanity.
Though I couldn’t hear a thing, I didn’t need to: it was already within. It’s within this family tree spanning back centuries. May as well have been the miniature friar budding even though those classroom minutes were most spent doodling and dodging questions about H-E-double-hockey-sticks. Though if I was actually assigned the title I’d be mediocre, probably.
It’s been a long while since I’ve knelt in pew but so some verses stay ingrained: some certainty that there isn’t much of anything except an uncomfortable bind with this two thousand year history. Whatever Christianity is, so it works as patchwork does – the stitches are delicate and with enough verse sewed in, and there’s a scrappy blanket underneath where, with enough tugging, so undone everything becomes. Picking at scabs.
The pages are so flimsy of the few editions I have, and so uncomfortable I do wonder whatever myth my ancestors held before our Edict of Milan made it so. Not that I’d even hear their call.
When I read more conspiratorial stuff and new age things I remember coming across a letter about how’d they destroy Christianity.
I guess that’s a bluff if anything.
Or is it?