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The (Irish) Heathen in Me Tries to Pray
The world is in ashes, and I don't know what to do
Beginning
I could write pornography with less discomfort than confess that I’ve started to try to pray. But I have. I left the Church in anger with my 12-year-old daughter over the intransigent disrespectful treatment of women.
I was raised in a devout Irish Catholic family and indoctrinated in twelve years of relentless Catholic school. To add to that, it was an extended Boston Irish Catholic family in which my father was a year away from the priesthood, the dream of dreams for any family. My mother came on the scene to rescue him from a life in which my siblings and I agreed he would have become an asshole. But whole branches ignored him for years. I was not a particularly holy child to start, and I just ran out of gas with the years.
But I have threads of spirituality stuck to me as on a sweater. There are the words of women and men throughout history that I turn to for inspiration. I have been moved by the monastic traditions, with their deep connection to the earth, the moving power of chant, and the gifts of silence. But I have no discipline. Prayer is so private, so vulnerable and I am afraid to make it important.
