282. My Church

We sat talking on Travis and Zelda's porch. They even went in for a while and said good night to their kids before joining me and Gretchen again outside on the concrete steps. They even offered us wine, but neither of us was interested tonight.

Gretchen was going through a plot of a movie she'd seen and why it was important to her, but kept making me laugh because she referred to the characters by their actors' names and all I could imagine were those people having conversations and doing things, but not in character.

We were talking about schools and churches. Besides our families and our places of work, we all have these two major influences in our lives. Bree just started at St. Fidelis, which seems to be going well. Eliza is still at the same place, and Fiona and Daisy, of course, are at Oak Grove, one in a new classroom and one in the same (they are multi-aged rooms). Gretchen and I asked how Bree was doing, and Zelda described her reaction to their first mass. Fidelis is Catholic; the family is not. But Fidelis is probably the best Catholic school in the city to attend if you aren't Catholic, frankly. No matter what that one nutty girl scout mom said to me. But that wasn't tonight. And Zelda already knows all about her from our talk in person.

Churches is always a topic I like to discuss with these two families because we really are the most alike philosophically but we are not the same denominations. The other Catholics on the block, while definitely my friends, are not as close as these two families. As my pastor has said to me in the past, Catholic is a big tent. Gretchen's friend says it's like being American. You move to Canada, you're still American. You get annoyed at the president, you're still American. You hate the politics or the opinions of the senators, but you're still American. Yes, people leave the Catholic church all the time. But when non-Catholics ask me why I stay, this comes closest to explaining it for me. I'm Catholic. It's what fits me best. It's what I am. Here I am.

Gretchen started talking a bit about her church. Zelda had a couple of things to say about theirs. Mine is an episcopal hierarchy. Zelda's is completely congregational. Gretchen's seems to have the worst of both those worlds, frankly. We talked about youth groups. We talked about service/mass times. We just chatted.

And Gretchen said that she was talking with Nick about church in general, and that the conversation ended thus: "Our church, Nick? Our church is this block."

Gretchen's been saying a lot of true things of late. And this was one of them. We all belong to different parishes and different denominations but if St. Paul were still writing letters, there might be one addressed to between the sycamores. We do what churches do. We take care of older people and youngest people. We make meals when you're sick or just had a baby or somebody died. We have discussions about faith and our place in the world and how we live it out. Nobody puts the bible down on the table and opens to chapter and verse, but Zelda sent me two proverbs in an email this week after we'd talked in her living room. "These were the two I was thinking of," she starts. And she was right to be thinking of them.

I'm not leaving the Utah Vestibule behind. My church fulfills needs in my soul that can't be met in a neighborhood--mostly the need for ritual and order to my faith. But when it comes to my daily living of faith, this is where it happens. I am a far better Christian, a far better community member, now that I live here, than ever before, and it's not just that I'm older. I am better here. It is my monastery, frankly. Stability starts at home. So does conversion of heart, and don't get me started on obedience. And no murmuring allowed.