We had always gone to a Catholic school around the block, my sister and I, the very same one where Mommy and her sisters had gone. The Catholic environment, while potentially restrictive, worked well for me. Along with the dogma, fear, and guilt to which you could get attached, there was the ritual, the Ohhhm of prayer, the quiet of the old, massive church on dark afternoons while some special mass was being offered, and the hypnotic smell of burning incense. The stained-glass windows that covered the walls like wallpaper from top to bottom and back to front let the light from outside come in by appointment only. Sometimes it was sunlight; sometimes just daylight, but once invited in, the light grabbed the colored stories told in the frames and instructed them to vibrate into life. Unbearable reds, blues, and golds struck a severe contrast with the dull shades of just about anything else.

The masses were still in Latin back then so you didn’t really understand the prayers, but it didn’t matter at all. All I really needed to understand was the feeling in the prayers and that was evident to me regardless of the language that framed them. There were only short excerpts from the Bible without any particular importance or feasible explanations attached to them. I recently asked a good friend with whom I had shared these experiences why we were never schooled in or encouraged to delve into Biblical truths. She said maybe “they” were afraid we would find out that there was nothing to be afraid of and “they” would be out of business. I think she might have been right.

We had special events at church back in the day. I liked all of it. It allowed for that supernatural communication to take place and I was satisfied, knowing without a doubt even then, that most of the priests and nuns involved with this little community heard nothing but cold hard silence. That’s where the indwelling began. I think it’s called meditation now and lots of folks spend tons of money learning how to do it.

A less costly solution is to put on hot woolen clothing in July, sit really still and try to become invisible. The hardest part for me was to keep my thighs slightly parted under the long tent of skirt to give myself a little bit of respite from the prickly heat that had a summer residence there, only for it to wetly sneer at me again as soon as I started lumbering back to the stifling classroom. The church was around the corner from the school and the school around the corner from home, so it was all very convenient and safe. On schooldays we walked in line, in silence, from classroom to church and back again. It was fine with me; I didn’t want to talk to anybody anyway.

It was here that I learned that if I drew near to God, He would draw near to me.

By Nora Straub

From: United States