crossroads

i talked to my mother last night sometime after midnight eastern time and into the central time new year. and sometimes she gets philosophical and religious, both combined wit her make a bad combination.

after a decent conversation, which lasted too long anyway, she proceeded to tell me about my cousin eddie who married last summer. he was not a churchgoing boy (he's my age) and went with the flow. when it came time for mass, though, i do recall him going. but i guess in the past five years, its been that long since i've really seen him, he stopped going. however, he has since renewed his interest in the church and now attends with "his new wife." i think that's great,i really do. eddie's a really nice guy and i'm happy he found a woman to settle down with and have a family.

the problem with my mother's conversation is i am married, over three and half years now, and for me it was theopposite. after i married, i stopped attending church and then have stopped talking about church activities and functions. the assumption on my mother's part, and problem others in my family, is that dawn (who is a non-practicing catholic) influenced me to stop attending church and believing in any kind of higher being and to denounce the catholic faith.

well, while that may be a natural assumption, it's quite incorrect. the only correct part of it is that yes i stopped attending church after i got married. however, when i first got married i did go to church. then i stopped about five months later.

what my mother fails to realize is it wasn't dawn who kept me from going and believing in anything, it was me. my beliefs had already shifted to something else even while living at home before i got married. however, to keep the peace ever week, i kept going to church. but what i was really doing was going through the motions, attending every sunday and going to the days of obligation that catholics have to attend.

if anyone looked closely at me, he or she would have seen a shell of a person sitting or standing by the pews, shaking hands when needed, sitting when equired and kneeling at the appopriate time. that's all i was then. i hadn't gone to confession in yearss or, much less gone up to receive the host. these are things my mother should have seen because it was evident. if she chose to ignor these things, then that was her business. but that's the way it was for years before i met dawn.

it's not fair to blame my wife when it comes to this subject. she didn't force me to do anything. now, i can walk to church services and not even cross a street to do it. it's my choice not to go.

i guess i've reached a crossroads in my spiritual life. it's a time to pause and look around the paths before me before continuing. but in some strange way, i feel that i already am traveling down a spiritual path, granted it's one where i do not attend church and believe that god or jesus lies within the four walls of a building. that's silly. i am also on a path where i don't think jesus is the only savior of humanity. there are many others who also help achieve salvation.

so perhaps i'm traveling on a frontage road, parallel to vrious main roads. but i'm going just as fast as the rest and i will eventually get to my destination like the rest moving through those other paths. and it's kind of a fun path i'm on, too. it's much freer than others out there and it stil allows me to be spiritual in my way.