One man’s journey from the mechanical through the metaphysical to the spiritual

My father was a southern Baptist, a merchant sailor twice divorced before he married my mom. She was a member of the Roman Catholic Church from the coal mining valleys of Pennsylvania, where she learned from her mother that “dirty black Protestant” [...]

One man’s journey from the mechanical through the metaphysical to the spiritual

My father was a southern Baptist, a merchant sailor twice divorced before he married my mom. She was a member of the Roman Catholic Church from the coal mining valleys of Pennsylvania, where she learned from her mother that “dirty black Protestant” was essentially one word. She divorced her first husband as a drinker, gambler and abuser, back in the days when good Catholic girls from the Pennsylvania valleys didn’t do that – instead they bore babies, and bore up. She took her two young daughters with her when she left, to Washington, D.C. to make her way in the world. The year was 1944, and it simply wasn’t done. In time, my parents met, they wooed, and they wed. And in time, I was born.

He being a Baptist, she Catholic, they compromised and decided that mixture made me Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church had all the ceremony of the Catholic convention, with none of the guilt – it was Catholic-light. My mom could close her eyes and feel at home. For my father, it meant at least that we weren’t Papists – it’s amusing to reflect these days that such divisions and classifications as my parent’s generation felt as viscerally as the air they breathed are nearly meaningless among the faithful today, at least as far as I can tell. Your car is blue? I prefer red. And so on.

I was raised in the “high” church – an incense filled sanctuary of choral Eucharists and lovely teenage girls in Sunday-go-to-meeting dresses whose chastity and piety evoked in me a response that was very far from sacred in my own teenage years. I was an acolyte, or altar boy – fortunately the Anglican Church allows their priesthood to wed, so I was spared the indignities that have attended such service in other quarters, about which well enough has been said. As an acolyte, you are immersed in the mechanics of faith – just how and when to present the gifts, to ring the bell, to wash the dishes, as it were. A layer of the sacred curtain is pulled back, and you catch a glimpse of the little man at the controls.

And again, there were those lovely young ladies. I was conflicted – try to keep thinking about how He suffered for us and our sins, when what you’re really hoping is that the rays of sunlight arcing through the stained-glass windows might catch that summer dress in just the right way. I felt guiltily like a wolf among the sheep. I considered myself a relatively intelligent, logical young man – and the inconsistencies of faith, all faith, and the arrogance of youth combined in me to create a level of deep skepticism. I spoke to one of my priests, and told him that I was undergoing a crisis of faith – how was all of this to be believed? He told me to read the bible, to think on what was witnessed therein, to realize that if it all could be proven scientifically, then faith would be unnecessary, and virtue would be mandatory – therefore not virtuous at all, but merely self-interested. Where would free will be in all of that? It seemed to me small beer, pat, perhaps even rehearsed.

My parents died within four months of each other when I was 21. How could a just and loving God have taken them away like that, so quickly? I was angry, and so very certain of my own perfection of thought, and being – what need did I have of these petty-bourgeois sensibilities? I was my own man; I would craft my own morality, and like Ulysses I would drink life to the lees.
Continue reading On Faith

Was Sunday, December 7th

That used to have real resonance, not that long ago. My pop was of the “greatest generation.” A merchant marine officer, he got paid to sail cargo to the Brits and Russians before the war and during it. Used to sail the Murmansk Run. A tough one, that. Bombers, U-boats. [...]

You’d date the F-16 and marry the Hornet That’s a picture of an F-16N and an A-4E over the Dry Tortugas, west of Key West, Florida about 70 miles. Those were two of my squadron aircraft back when I was an adversary pilot, the third being the F-5E (not pictured).

The F-16N (N- for [...]