Confirmed

I got Confirmed. After 20 hours of classes including a filed-trip to the newest Cathedral in the world they let me take the sacrament.

I'm not the most faithful of people. I was kind-of doing it more for the ceremony than for faith. Notice I did not say "party" but ceremony. Two very different things in my book. I am a person who believes ceremony is important.

I did it more for conclusion rather than faith. I never got confirmed and it felt...incomplete. I didn't feel like I was incomplete but I like things to be tidy, finished.

I didn't start this as a result of a deepening of my faith. On the contrary I came to it via a crisis of faith.

In the process, much to my surprise, I did gain something out of it.

These past few years of infertility did nothing to increase my faith. Then to go through IVF and DE, both of which are not allowed in my church, only served to raise my ire with the Church.

But in my classes and in my own reading I have come to appreciate certain things about the Catholic Church. I'm not going to get all theological on your ass but I have learned a few things that have helped me come to terms with my Church and my truth. These two things seemed very far apart recently. Now, not quite as much.

One of the key ideas that has helped me is that the Catholic Church does not interpret to Bible literally. There is a very concrete realization that both the Old and New Testaments were oral tradition written down decades (if not centuries) after the fact. Additionally, there is a realization that translations have changed meaning over time. Add to that the fact that these translations cross time and cultures and you have a lot of ambiguity there. What I like about the Catholic Church is this understanding of Scripture. It's still sacred. It's still the word of God but it was written by man and therefor our understanding of it and interpretation of it can change.

While I'm not a monotheist (I'll have to write more about my Native religion sometime) I feel like I can co-exist with a Western Religion.

I was surprised by how powerful the actual sacrament was. Not the 3 hour mass but the 15 seconds with the Bishop was really powerful.

Plus, I was pregnant. I'm not going to lie. I do get a subversive pleasure from the fact that this baby was in my belly when I got confirmed. The Catholic Church is against how this baby was conceived so I take some pleasure in the fact that I had a little hitchhiker along for the ride.