It’s funny the turns our lives take. Mine took a drastic turn during the summer before my senior year in college. My boyfriend at the time and I were driving in his hometown, discussing spiritual paths. He was going to Japan and would be interning at a Buddhist temple. I mentioned my interest in Buddhism, but he said that I would make a better Catholic than a Buddhist. I kept this in my heart as I began researching Catholicism and reading the Gospels. Of course, he had meant that I have a guilty conscience very in line with the concept of “Catholic guilt,” but I didn’t figure this out until after I had jumped wholeheartedly into joining the Catholic Church. Funny enough, he became a Catholic a year after I did.
It wasn’t the rituals or the doctrines or the devotions that attracted me to Catholicism. At first, I was intrigued by Catholic philosophers such as Peter Kreeft and theologians like Scott Hahn. But it was the mystics that sustained my interest. Unfortunately, mysticism is not much understood in the Catholic religion and mystics have been actively persecuted at various times in the history of the Catholic Church.
After a serious bout of scrupulosity OCD from 2018-2020 (along with psychosis that fated summer after I graduated from school), I married a devout Catholic man and felt comfortable exploring my faith and holding it up to scrutiny. What I found was the shadow side of Catholicism: the sexual abuse crisis and systemic coverup, the history of persecuting mystics as well as those of other faiths, anti-semitism, misogyny, intolerance, and, the doctrine that haunted me most, the injustice and insanity of eternal damnation for unconfessed mortal sin.
Facing the shadow side of my religion brought up immense disgust, horror, and rage for me, as well as a grieving process for what I had once believed was the “true religion,” the solution to all my problems. It was a dark night of the soul. This internal struggle with “do I stay or do I go?” became a daily torment from 2021-2023, as I resisted with all my might the status quo of the Catholic (particularly the American Catholic) milieu.
But things changed. I’ve made my peace with religion. Catholicism is part of this role that I play as a wife to a Catholic husband, but it isn’t the ultimate reality. All religion points in the direction of Reality, but a lot of people substitute religion for experience itself.
Take the Eucharist, for example. The Catholic Church teaches that the consecrated host is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ through a process called transubstantiation in which the appearance of bread and wine remain while the essence becomes the flesh and spirit of Jesus. To try to make sense of this rationally brings us to absurdity. How can bread be bread and also be the flesh of someone who lived 2,000 years ago? How can wine be blood but still taste like wine? Is God so petty that He requires a priest to say some magic words in order to effect this transformation? If we look at the teachings about the Eucharist from a rational perspective, we start to see some magical thinking at play.
My understanding of the Eucharist is that it is the Body of Christ without needing to be transformed by a ritual. Yeshua/Jesus was a mystic. When he said, “This is my body,” he did not mean that the bread was now literally his human flesh. What is contained in the bread is the whole universe: the sun, the soil, and the water that grew the wheat; the labor of the farmer and the baker; the oil from Yeshua’s hands. Bread isn’t simply bread. It is the manifestation of a million causes coming together to make it so, and each of those causes is so connected that if you were to change even one, the bread could not exist.
And those same causes that result in the arising of the bread on the physical plane also came together so that Yeshua could walk the earth in 1st century Palestine. Because the bread exists, Yeshua exists, both brought to manifestation by the same web of causes and effects, without which neither would arise on the physical plane.
And both the bread and Yeshua continue in existence past their physical manifestation. The bread becomes nutrients that nourish the body’s cells and fertilizer for the earth. Yeshua, though no longer in physical form, continues on in those who consider him a teacher. There is no death and no birth, only Eternal Life and an infinite series of transformations from life to life.
So the bread is the Body of Christ because the bread contains the whole universe. And Yeshua is saying that it is his body because this bread comes from the same web of life that gave Yeshua existence. The bread therefore symbolizes the Oneness of All Things and the remembrance that Yeshua taught this Oneness. He called it the Kingdom of God. The bread is also the Reality: there is only God, ultimately, and God is both bread and body.
I keep these thoughts in mind when I eat my breakfast in the morning. My oatmeal is also the Body of Christ. The water I use to wash dishes is the Blood of Christ. The mind that sees that the oatmeal and the water are Christ is the Mind of Christ in me. And if I have the Mind of Christ, consume the Body of Christ, and wash my hands in the Blood of Christ, does this not mean that my true nature is Christ? Food for thought.
Because I’ve had glimpses into Reality, I can go to Mass and truly say, “Amen” to the priest who recites, “The Body of Christ” upon giving me the Eucharist. Amen, in the bread is Christ, my true nature is Christ, and the whole cosmos is Christ.
At one point in this journey, I wished all religion would be destroyed. I felt it was a stain upon human history. I believed it to be a great evil. I have a more balanced view now. There are people who need religion. It gives meaning to their lives. It gives order and structure. It gives answers, however flawed, to the uncertainties that humanity faces daily. I myself don’t require religion as such, but I find it a useful reference point in trying to access unitive awareness or begin to try to talk about it.
I’m equally comfortable at a Catholic Mass, in a yoga class, calling in the four directions for ritual, sitting zazen, or walking in the woods. To me Catholicism is not the end all, be all, but rather a color on my palette as I approach my life with an artist’s eye. Zazen and yoga and magical practice, too, are tools that I use. The Yamas and Niyamas, the Five Remembrances, the Eightfold Path, the Beatitudes: these are all supportive structures that point to a life I find worthwhile. I am comfortable with all paths because they’re all part of the One Reality: God’s unfolding game, His/Her leela.
If you are averse to religion, I hope you find your peace with it, as I have. I love this prayer of St. Teresa d’Avila for those times when I find myself disturbed:
“Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you.
All things pass away. God never changes.
Patience obtains all things. He who has God lacks nothing
God alone suffices.”
Yes, God alone suffices. Religions shall change, decay, and die. They will always be filled with that which disturbs and brings fear. But God never changes. And the one who knows that can be patient with religion, knowing that it’s all part of the kaleidoscopic play in which we all have our role. When you know there is no such thing as separation, hell ceases to be a reality and the sovereignty of knowing you’re truly a child of God becomes the only reality.
I have to thank my ex-boyfriend for starting me on this journey. It was only by passing through fire that my faith became true as tested gold. Had I become a Buddhist, I’m sure I would never have met my husband, who is a balm for my heart and a wonderful friend and lover. In any case, I am free to move between realms, Zen meditation centers and churches alike, so I’ve come full circle.
At this point, I recognize that every aspect of my journey, painful and joyful, has been necessary. Dear one, wherever you are, thank you for being my catalyst. And beloved readers, whoever and wherever you are, make sure to give thanks for those who give you the most trouble. You never know how instrumental someone is in your transformation until you look back and see the hand of God weaving all the threads together.
