Part 1: A Separate Peace
Every so often, I have a flashback to my catechism class at Saint Peter and Paul's Catholic Church in Pierre, South Dakota in the 1950s. The class was segregated by sex, so we were all girls. It was held next to a scuffed, tinny piano at the north end of the church basement. We sat in a semicircle of folding metal chairs on a tile floor. Sometimes I would look up and see an inquisitive chippy outside the basement window, or scrappy sparrows fighting over a bread crust.
The teacher was Miss Hengel. There were several Miss Hengels (seriously, there were) and they kind of blend together in my mind. They were nice, sincere, devout ladies but not trained teachers-- nor did they have any particular natural gifts in that line. So they relied on memorization.
One of the first things we memorized was the Ten Commandments. It's time to give the ten commandments their due: If you have to memorize something.... those commandments are not a bad thing to memorize. They come in handy sometimes, ya know? Kinda like the alphabet. The multiplication tables. “A pint's a pound, the world round.” Stuff like that, all quite useful actually.
But there was something we had memorized even before we memorized the Ten Commandments. It was a question and answer, short and simple:
"Why were you put into the world?”
"I was put into the world to know, love, and serve God.”
That was it. A question and answer, beautiful in their stunning simplicity, became embedded in my psyche's hard drive for better or worse. And so today I'm sitting here, more than half a century later, on a sunny day in rural South Dakota, thinking... “The Hengel sisters coulda done worse than teach us those Commandments. My parents coulda done worse than send me to them every Sunday.”
The flashback continues: After Mass and catechism, I would go home to a Sunday brunch of pancakes, eggs, bacon, fresh fruit... the only day of the week that we had such a sumptuous brunch. Afterward came the next Sunday treat: reading the Minneapolis Sunday Tribune which my father bought every Sunday morning at Pierre's Corner Drug.
Dad got to read whatever section he wanted first: The other sections would be scattered around the living-room floor. My brother and I, seated on that floor, fought over the sections, especially the comic strips: Li'l Abner, Little Orphan Annie, Rex Morgan MD, Mary Worth, Archie, Dagwood and Blondie, Family Circus, Peanuts, “They'll Do It Every Time”....
Fast-forward half a century or so. To be blunt, I find the current earthly head of the Catholic Church--Pope Francis-- absolutely appalling in every way. Because of that, I even left the Catholic church for several years.
I rejoined the Church recently after concluding that all modern churches have the same culture wars going on within them, and the only way to escape that would be to remain completely unchurched. I was not happy in that status: I missed the readings, the rituals, the music, the fellowship, and most of all the sacraments. So now, I simply try to concentrate on the local scene, thinking as little as possible about the often odd (to put it mildly) goings-on in Rome.
Having thus come full circle, I take communion in the same little church where I was baptized in November 1944. Vatican intrigues seem blessedly far away in Redfield, South Dakota in 2022. It's a compromise that works for me during a time in history when many of us are doomed to make such compromises.
For we are no longer the dominant culture. We are the counter-culture.
It's a status I've finally come not just to accept.... but to embrace.
Part 2. HUMBLE BUT PROUD
In 2016, Hillary Clinton notified me that I am Deplorable.
In 2021, Joe Biden warned that he was losing patience with me, along with all the other creators of The Pandemic of the Unvaccinated.
In recent months, Merrick Garland explained that I am a Domestic Terrorist, and Justin Trudeau pointed out that that I am an (honorary) member of a Small Fringe Minority With Unacceptable Views and besides, people were tired of me blowing my horn.
Yesterday, Vladimir Putin labeled me a supporter of Neo-Nazi Drug Addicts. Meanwhile (somewhat confusingly), Mitt Romney implied that I am a traitor who should be hanged by the neck until dead.
I'm trying not to get a big head or anything, but gosh dang it.... I am just so proud!!