Like some of you, I sat in front of the TV watching the ordination of Pope Francis for so long that the afternoon went from light to twilight, until I found myself in a dark, dark, room.
I watched not knowing why I watched. After all, the only reason I ever went to church was because I had to. If one of my parents started to count to three, I just plain, old did what they said.
It’s anyone’s guess, but it felt as though I watched to be in contact with all the Roman Catholics I sprang from, grasping at a ceremony that ties me to all of my extended family I hardly see anymore and the religion they believe without question. Well, most of the time, anyway.
I’m a writer, plus a bit of a skeptic. I question everything. If I’d stayed in my parents’ church, I think I would have shriveled, like something left inside of a box for too long.
But none of this seemed to matter — I watched anyway.
It’s a different world than the one I was a Roman Catholic child in, in so many ways. My liberal Seattle tribe says the church is finished, but I think this is wishful thinking on their part.
Sure, I said to my most ex-Catholic friend, “That’s because you didn’t watch the ordination.”
If she had watched, I believe it would have been the kind of internal RAM that makes her brow (or her perfectly waxed eyebrows) furrow before she says something like, “One swing of that incense burner and, I swear, I could smell Sundays when I was kid!”
Because most memories begin in our eyes, spread to our noses (or the other way around) and scatter from there.
Well, that’s sure what happened to me: Suddenly, I was sitting in a pew in my old church back east, a stage set of a holy place in every way. Marble statues of saints, stained-glass windows, bittersweet incense permeating the air. Where, if an altar boy swung the incense too close to us, my father would tell him to “knock it off” in the same voice he used when I annoyed him.
The best of religion
I remember this one Ash Wednesday when my mother had to convince me that the ashes I would receive weren’t anything like the one on the end of my father’s cigar.
“They’re nothing like that,” she said. “You won’t smell a thing.”
After dabbing his thumb in the ash, the priest marked my mother’s forehead while saying the words: “Remember, man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”
Such fearful words! Yet, my mother accepted the ash with a bow of her head.
What could I do? I knelt to accept my fate.
There, I thought, it’s done. Ash was fixed to the center of my forehead. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there.
And, impossible as it seemed, and just as my mother promised, my fear sort of dissipated, as if whatever I was afraid of before, I was fairly certain couldn’t hurt me now.
Of course, now that I have some perspective on it, I realize the ashes are placed on the forehead to remind how fleeting life is, right? And it is dust to which we will return.
I can’t think of anyone — whatever he or she believes — who couldn’t use a little dab of ash placed just so on the forehead.
It’s the best of religion in a nutshell — or, you know, a thumbprint.
MARY LOU SANELLI’s latest book is “Among Friends.” Visit her website: www.marylousanelli.com. To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.