Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

I grew up believing in Easter the way all Gen X kids did – yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s get to the candy. We watched the Rankin and Bass holiday shows, much inferior to the Christmas shows. Wear a new dress, eat some ham.

I had no clue, like most Catholic kids. No clue what any of it meant or why we did it, a lack of understanding that pervaded most things church related. We did things because we were supposed to, dutifully defiant in precocious but uninformed ways.

In college, I took some theology classes and was active in campus ministry where I learned what the rituals meant and why we partook. It was Easter my senior year that I tapped into my sinful, shameful Catholic status for the first time.

Our campus was small so when it came time for our priest to wash our feet on Holy Thursday, in the way that Jesus did at the Last Supper … he chose me. I knew it was an honor, but it felt like my heart had been pierced and all of the chambers where I had carefully tucked away the pains and privations, melded together in a toxic harmony, threatened to just pour out. That is a terrible sentence. In more ways than one.

I did not want to do it. Foot washing was about humility and service. Facing a real moment where I, a sinner, with so much hidden shame, would be treated with tenderness and value by a person of authority was horrifying. In my mind, this ritual would exacerbate my anguish, not relieve it.

Now what should have happened is that Father Bill should have ministered me through those feelings so I could truly benefit from the ritual. But I kept these things inside me and just kept refusing.

Good Friday was something I internalized much earlier. My mother told me Jesus died at 3 PM Eastern Time, so I mimicked her pre-Vatican II beating of the breast and weeping. I through my all into this moment, practically emotionally wrecked by the atrocity committed in our names.

It never occurred to me that I should connect the story/tradition/ritual with actual lived experiences and atrocities committed in my name. I never considered that there was a real world application, not just a historical reminder of my nature.

Because I felt the weight of sin and shame, even stigma, very heavily in my young heart, body, and soul. And everything I learned in Christianity reinforced that. I understood I was supposed to feel freed on Resurrection morning, but I was just faking it. Each year, this artifice wound the shame tighter around my heart much like a crown of thorns. The programming by my grandmonster didn’t help.

I don’t remember the foot washing. Most likely, I did it because I had been melded into obedience, taught to suppress my instincts for the greater good. It was a traumatizing experience much like every Good Friday, leaving me more spiritually wounded each year. I was ripe for the time I spent with charismatics – maybe more intensity would help! Then I moved to Baton Rouge which is 187% Catholic, took a missionary trip to Mexico where I hallucinated a guardian angel named Pablo, and finally ran away to be a lay missionary in Western Kentucky. I did keep hoping Pablo was real. To be honest, I had dreamed about him before that trip.

Clearly, I was on the run from and toward a Divinity. I pushed myself deeper because it was supposed to work. If I did it right, it I devoted my life to service, if I could just figure out what else to do … maybe it would work.

Father Bill was a nice man (he’s still alive, running a parish somewhere in the DMV.) He was young, maybe early 30s and exuded a kind vibe. One year, flu ravaged the dorms and I was swept up. I landed in the infirmary where I was distraught about missing a midterm or a final, some test that I had prepared for fervently.

At some point, I woke up and Father Bill was sitting at my bedside praying. When he realized I was awake, he gently asked me how I was feeling and if he could do anything. I asked for water and he refilled the pitcher. I told him how sorry I was about missing the test, desperate for him to understand that I didn’t intend deception by influenza. He shushed me, assuring me that I could take the test when I was healthy, not just better. Then he asked me if he could pray for me.

I got an A in that theology class. I earned an A in that theology class.

That’s the memory of being served and treated with humility that I hold close to my heart. It wasn’t Easter, there was no show or trauma. He came, served me, and comforted me to ease my distress. It still remains one of the truest experiences of Christianity I have ever had. I felt such relief that I could be sick, get better, and there would be no punishment, no price to be paid.

Forever more, I will be a Catholic, I will miss being part of the Catholic community. But what I know now is that much like capitalism and liberal democracies, trauma is embedded in all of Christianity. I understand that people take private comfort in their unique Christian experiences, but I suspect they also fail to truly understand that their participation contributes to the trauma, no matter how well intended.

So Easter stirs up a lot of things for me. Fortunately, it will be quickly over and everyone will return to the chaos reigning down upon us. Pun fully intended.

I don’t trust Christians in the same way I don’t trust Republicans. None of these “reform from within” excuses. You are on the wrong side.