Interior Catholic

  • Resting in God

    It’s been a while, but today I took my lunch hour at church. My lack of mid-week ventures hasn’t been due to lack of desire—I simply didn’t know where to go. There were many options when I worked in Manhattan, but most parishes in the suburbs are locked tight during the week. Except, it seems, for St. Paul’s in Princeton.

    I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by matters of life and work, so when I entered the mostly-empty church it was like a sigh of relief. The quiet time was partially inspired by St. Edith Stein, whose biography I delved into this week. Last night, I read her words on “resting in God,” and knew it had been too long since I’d done it myself.

    “There is a state of resting in God, an absolute break from all intellectual activity, when one forms no plans, makes no decisions, and for the first time really ceases to act, when one simply hands over the future to God’s will and ‘surrenders himself to fate.’”

    This rest is a kind of meditation, one I can’t admit to being very good at. The mind wanders. It dwells on situations, or people, or feelings. But I sat in the pew with my rosary (I knew there was a reason I never took it out of my purse) and accepted the quiet. I talked to Jesus. I talked to Mary. The simple sense of peace, even for that short period of time, tells me that they listened.

    Relevant Radio spoke recently about disconnecting from the constant bombardment of social media. Our brains are always engaged because we’re scrolling a feed, or immediately answering messages, and we’re on alert 24 hours a day (yes, the phone is even nearby while sleeping). We need rest. We need to disconnect. I haven’t gone hiking recently, and I can feel it. It’s like my brain needs a detox. When I’m in the mountains, I turn off the phone. It’s just me, my hiking companions, and God’s creation. When I start to crave the music of a streaming waterfall, you know I need to get out there again. (Preferably soon, with the forthcoming colors of autumn!)

    This rest isn’t merely for my own sake—that peace extends to others, just as stress and anxiety do. I’d much prefer the former, but we won’t have that patient, loving peace without resting in God. I’m happy to have found a place I can visit anytime (or until they lock the doors at 9:00 p.m.), where I can take a break. No obligations, no phone, and no concrete plans. Simply a time to rest, to pray, and to listen.

  • Femininity and the Church

    One of the first things I looked into when church-shopping was their stance on women. At my old church, I’d desperately tried to justify my identity based on a preconceived mold of womanhood. There were girls who went to college to meet a husband, and girls who skipped college all together to start a family; there were ladies’ teas and quilting parties and little girls in skirts chasing each other.

    How was a single woman in her 20s, commuting daily into Manhattan for work, fitting into that?

    The fear of “not fitting in” isn’t isolated to childhood. Perhaps it’s worse as an adult, because you have more sense of identity. But that confidence cracks when you don’t see others like you. Even in your fellow women, who you want to sit around and drink tea and laugh with. You’re all women of God, but your lifestyle doesn’t match those of the strong, Godly women around you.

    This was one of many hesitations about the Catholic Church, too. Even if I happened to agree with their teachings (ha, that’s a long shot!), I saw their women as either mothers with a gaggle of children or pious nuns. But my friend invited me to Theology on Tap, and the atmosphere (literally a bar) was unassuming. It wasn’t a Church with a capital C. So I went, and the speaker that night was a consecrated virgin.

    I sat at my grimy bar table, staring at her, and she looked so… normal. I hadn’t been aware consecrated life was a thing. She wore the same kinds of clothes I did. She was overweight, and joked about her sin of gluttony. I liked her. She had dedicated her life to God, in the same fashion other women dedicate their lives to their husbands.

    That night, I realized there were options.

    I began following Catholic feminist bloggers, and studying femininity in the Bible. How quickly I learned that women of the Bible aren’t docile baby-makers. They are overwhelmingly caretakers, certainly, but they are warriors. They are judges. They are servants. I learned that on the way to his death, Jesus only spoke to the women. They loved fiercely, and he honored them in return—even as he died.

    Catholicism has helped better define womanhood and where I fit into it. Rather than remind me that I should “be fruitful and multiply,” there is more focus on the love itself. Maybe that love is meant for biological children. Maybe it’s meant for orphans. Maybe it’s meant to help the poor, and those without homes, or those who can’t leave their homes. I’d rejected femininity because it appeared weak, but I’ve relearned what femininity even means. It’s not being a doormat, or letting the men do the heavy lifting. It’s a different kind of strength, more of the emotional sort, where we can spread comfort and love when there seems to be none. Like fix a broken heart with a hug. Or buy or a knit a blanket for someone who is cold.

    It’s not a lesser humanity. It’s complementary, and it’s where I belong.

    Femininity isn’t about fitting into some predetermined mold. There are options, and it’s not just one thing. You can be a wife, or a worker, or both. You can dedicate hours to the Church, or teach your children good values, or both. Once I was freed from the expectations of a life I didn’t fit into, I learned all the many things I’d been overlooking—including, maybe, some of those things I’d originally rejected.

And they said to him, “Inquire of God, we pray thee, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed.”

And the priest said to them, “Go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the LORD.”

—Judges 18:5–6

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