Blind Faith, a Salve for Pure Pain

Darn if I can't find my church bulletin from Mass in Malibu, California on July 31.
But these are from Sis's church in Connecticut and a church I often attend on the Cape.

I have great pain in my life at the moment. It is too personal to write about here. It is interpersonal. It is heartbreaking. It is taking a lot for me to throw my shoulders back and carry on. To wash my face, brush my teeth, put on my heels and meet the day.

But I can write about a salve I reach for, again and again. The salve of going to Sunday Mass. I won't be on this earth forever, just as my mother, Anne, and four of my five cherished aunts [Peggy and Mary on the Irish side, Claire and Edith on the Italian side] and both of my grandmothers [Irish Alice and Italian Rosie] aren't. But all of them went to Mass. I wish I could talk to them about what it meant to them, how it held them, if it mattered at all--or if it was a lifeboat in choppy seas. For some reason, it's the women I want to ask, not the men. Didn't they turn to the church also?

I want to write how I feel so that some day, my daughters--or you, if you are searching or wondering--can find this post and understand.

I was tempted to sleep so late yesterday, to sleep right through the last Mass at noon. H. was up with Punchy, so I could. But something inside told me to get up and go, that Mass might be a tiny gauze for an open wound. And indeed it was, after the drawn-out battles with Punch finally putting on her socks and getting into the car.

Yesterday, I turned to my church again. I sent Punch down with our friends after Mass for a few minutes and slipped five folded singles into the slot in the metal box under the bank of white candles in tall glass holders.

Pure white, cotton white, hope white, new white candles--lined up like angels, or soldiers, lined up and lit with, fueled by, the prayers and wishes of men, women and children. Hidden prayers, obvious prayers, painful prayers.

Lighting that wick, choosing that candle, the second from the right in the second to last row, my candle, hope candle.....allowed me to make a choice. To have faith. To choose to have faith. I didn't even know how to form a prayer. I just looked at the flame as it flickered.

That is what church is, Mass is, faith is. It is there. It is constant. It doesn't go away. It doesn't abandon you. It offers magic, soothing moments, if even in a flash, like the words of a song you've heard all your life, like the brilliant red circle of light reflecting off the stained-glass window onto the carpet in the Crying Room. That room is for fussy kids, but even though Punch is almost 10, we end up there a lot, so she can admire the babies.

I turned to my church again, to the Blessed Mother statue, the kneelers, the stained glass, the gold chalice, the Bread and Wine, the little children, the Holy Water, the weekly bulletin, the altar linens, the altar servers. The ushers, the Stations of the Cross, the crucifix, the views of frosted hair and ponytails and crewcuts as the people in pews ahead of me bent forward to pray.

I found a little bit of my soul yesterday, and I still can't put it in words. But if you are my daughters, or nieces, or even my best friend, and you are reading this, I want you to know that faith is not false. It is not fiction. It is not just pomp and circumstance. It is not fake gold or real gold or white lace or polished mahogany. It is a deep, quieting sense of belonging--to yourself, to your family, to your God, to your life. It is solace. It is spirituality. It is peace and it is strength.

And my eyes are filled with tears as I write this.
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A MAP TO MY CHURCHES, FOR MY DAUGHTERS

I have sunk into solace in many churches in my lifetime. If you ever want to find me, you might, in the shadows or light of one of these places or in the hopeful, shaky smile of a young woman praying alone--whether she is surrounded by people or not.

1. The original Saint Mary's in Dumont. This small white clapboard church with steeple stood on the corner of Washington and New Milford avenues, near the traffic light. My earliest memory of going to Mass is at this one. I guess my parents brought all four of us kids [I'm the baby], though all I really recall in my mind's eye is going up the front steps; I don't see any of my family, though someone was surely carrying me or holding my hand, right? Here is the church and here is the steeple; open the doors and out come the people.
2. Saint Mary's on steroids. Bursting at the seams, my #1 vanished, replaced while I attended Saint Mary's School by this much larger red brick church--so big that it has a whole lower church for overflow Masses. Yes, that's how thriving Catholicism was in Dumont when I was a child. This is the church I walked to on autopilot soon after the call that my mother had died when I was 20, soon after Dad put down the clunky black rotary phone receiver. I made my First Communion, was confirmed, walked in the May Procession there. Place where our teacher, Mr. Vafier, watched from behind at Mass and told us he better not see our rear ends resting on the pews [we should kneel up straight]. Church where I sang in the eighth grade choir [they took anyone; I can't hold a note] and kept an eye out for the boy I liked, secretly hoped he would notice my white ribbed sweater on the walk back from Communion. Heartbeat space where I got married, where Moey got married, where Lorraine got married. Location of funeral for Mommy, Grandpa and Dad. In this church, I grew from girl to woman. 
3. Voorhees Chapel at Douglass College. I found safety and security on the pretty blue cushions in the pews there, and became close friends with Meggy. We walked over the swinging green Ravine Bridge to get to Mass on Sunday mornings. I was homesick, but hearing the same prayers I knew my mom was saying back home at 12:45 p.m. Mass made me feel better.
4. A church in Bradley Beach, on the Jersey Shore, that, to tell you the truth, was not a soft landing for me. I cried when a cranky old man yelled at me outside: God doesn't want you to come like that! [I lived at the shore, was tan and wearing white shorts.] Ironically, it was by the beach but I didn't find much warmth there, except for the gracious older woman who talked to me about her days at Douglass College.
5. New York City churches. As young woman, magazine writer, expectant mom, working mother, I knelt in prayer on my lunch hour sometimes, walking to Saint Patrick's Cathedral for ashes or to ask God to bless and guide me and H. before we married. 
6. Saint Cassian Church in Montclair. Home base now. Our first apartment as newlyweds was literally right next door and somehow we would still be late for Mass. We started at the old, small, dark church but then that was replaced with the bright space we pray in today. Both Figgy and Punchy were baptized in this parish--Baby Fig in the school gym, when the new church was still being built.
7. Saint Therese in Cresskill. I couldn't go there when I was young, because that's where Saint Mary's defectors went, and my parents wouldn't like that. But when Dad moved to senior living in Cresskill, I sometimes went to Mass with him there--and prayed next to the much older version of the man who had brought me to church as a child.
8. Church of the Visitation in North Eastham on Cape Cod. To be at Mass in that small, sun-filled church on the bay side was everything; it usually meant I was on the Cape for several days, or a week or even two, long enough to be there on a Sunday. I could pretend I lived there. I prayed with people I did not recognize and might never see again, except for the priest, the organist and the altar server.
9. Our Lady of Lourdes in Wellfleet, on Route 6 on the way to Provincetown. It's a perfectly fine place to pray but it's not Lucky #8, above, which was closed, its parish folded into this new build. Last time I saw #8, it was abandoned, weathered and up for sale. I felt sad.  
10. St. Joan of Arc in Orleans, also on the Cape. Also fine, though not #8. Like all Cape Cod churches I have visited, it is pretty packed on summer Sundays.
11. St. Francis of Assisi Church in Belfast, Maine. Right near H.'s brother John's house. Charming, small-town New England hospitality, with beautiful stained glass and old-fashioned pews. I recall praying here with Figgy as a child on Christmas Eves and later, when she was not well in high school.
12. St. Brendan the Navigator in Camden, Maine. Turns out that #11 paired with this one and Mass times alternate between them. I especially love the name of this church by the storybook coast. I love Camden, so just about any excuse to drive there is fine by me.
13. Our Lady Star of the Sea, Stamford, Connecticut. Now that Sis and Don live in Stamford, I go here sometimes, and I love the historic ship models in one of the front rooms. I also love the name. And I like to pray next to my sister. She holds my family history in her mind and in her heart.
14. Our Lady of Malibu in California. I'm so glad I drove there in my rental car this summer. I naively expected a fancy or wealthy parish, since after all, it's Malibu, right? But it was modest, simple, airy. Yet again, as in college, I was far from home--on the opposite coast--and saying the same prayers. They did serve excellent donuts after church, though, and they were whole, not cut into halves as they are at our parish. Differences: At one point, maybe for the Our Father?, people joined hands, but not just in their pews--across the aisles, too. So you stood in one long line from one end of the pew to the other end on the opposite side. It was welcoming. Also, I felt like I recognized a movie star there, a man with glasses, but couldn't put my finger on it. And: There were, honestly, lots of beachy blondes, both children and adults. And I don't remember many sermons, but I do recall the one the visiting priest delivered here. It was about paying it forward, how he was shopping for his favorite ice cream and overheard a young man on the phone with his Dad, saying he didn't have enough gas money to get to work. The priest gave him a little cash. After Mass, I walked along the garden path up above the church and saw a grotto. It felt very California, succulents and all.