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This weekend in New Orleans I popped into the St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square, a building I've walked by several times but never entered. The usual things brought me inside this time: curiosity, a compulsive search for cool pictures that increasingly defines my days, and a sudden desire to find a calm spot in a nonstop city I love that can nonetheless can be exhausting.
St. Louis is one of the oldest cathedrals in North America, established in 1720. Inside, it is the usual Catholic combination of simple wood pews and votive candles, a brightly muraled ceiling and an ornately carved altar with Jesus and Mary and a few of the finest gilt archangels keeping watch over the proceedings. It's also a tourist center steps away from Cafe du Monde (beignets!) and Central Grocery (muffalettas!), so there are people milling around, taking pictures, lighting candles, a number of them kneeling and praying.
I was raised Catholic. I'm a cradle Catholic, culturally Catholic, "I survived Catholic school" (14 years, counting graduate school) kind of girl. I know what I'm talking about relative to this church. I've heard it harshly criticized and been told it is the one true church, the way, the truth and the light. And although I don't practice this or any religion anymore, there is still something in the spaces that hold it, in the words and the rituals that give it its shape, that I find comforting.
At the heart of that in so many ways is my grandmother, born Marie Louise McGrath, herself raised in the church in early 20th century Washington, D.C., way pre-Vatican II, a time of May queens and no meat any Friday, ever, not just during Lent. She went to Holy Comforter School, a few years behind my grandfather, in classes with one of his ten sisters. She dragged me to 7:30 Mass more weekends than I can count, and before her mother, my Nanny, died, she'd go along, and I'd sit next to her and she'd keep her arm around me the whole time. Nanny never went to Communion. She'd said "bastard" too many times that week, she said, and not gone to confession, so she'd just sit there with me. This transgression of profanity lasted for nearly 10 years, and I didn't understand it until I experienced the horror of the sacrament of penance myself. Mass with Nanny is one of the most visceral memories of my life, such that it may be the last thing I see before my eyes when I die.
When I hit my knees in New Orleans this weekend, these women, along with my mother, a convert and my grandmother's daughter-in-law, were the reason why.
I had no idea that's what would happen when I walked in the door. The plan was to take a few pictures, get out, go get a muffaletta. But the more I walked around the place, paid attention to the details - the stained glass Stations of the Cross, the French inscriptions, all the candles burning for someone or some personal intention - the more I just I wanted to sit. It turns out, I wanted to kneel.
My life has been loud lately. There's a lot of movement, a lot of change and stress. I'm really tired with no time for it. As full of great stuff as my brain and heart are on a daily basis, there is also worry, uncertainty and confusion. Some people I love are having a really rough time. There are some unsettled questions. I've been doing a lot of work, inside and out.
The very act of kneeling is surrender. Outside the constraints of who I pray to, it felt like turning it over, all the junk and the stress. Take it, whoever you are, please, plaster cherubim at the end of the aisle. I'm doing the work, I'm holding it down, trying to be smart and make good decisions, trying to step up or back when it's called for. But it's a LOT, dude. It often feels like a "FAIL" in a "FTW" world. So I just need a little help, a freaking blazing neon sign would be nice, kthxbai God.
My God has a sense of humor and speaks LOL, apparently.
I steepled my hands on the back of the pew in front of me the way I'd watched my grandparents do it when I was
