The Pagan Fallen Catholic at the Passover Seder

I have a quip I like to make – 12 years of Catholic school will make an atheist out of anyone.   Depending on the audience, it either gets knowing chuckles or resentful glares. 

Still, for much of my early adulthood, this was the truth of my life.   My reaction to a strict and lifeless irrationally-imposed dogma left me with a profound sense of nothingness, a sense that we were in a cruel place without design or mercy.  A favorite poem of the time:

Design - Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Did design govern in a thing so small as the life of a Catholic high school girl, heart crushed, cast in a world so seemingly hostile and vast?  For many years it seemed not to.

And then I took a step.  It’s hard to remember which, so seemingly innocent and meaningless at the time.  Perhaps it was that first coaching book I bought that mentioned Feng Shui and the intriguing idea of energy living in a space.  Perhaps it was a relaxation tape that mentioned connecting to source.  Whatever it was it led me on a path – the shaman’s path, the journey of exploration of just what mysteries lie in the deep divine, the song in stillness.  And suddenly I believed everything, was open to all possibility, gingerly picking my way through the vast expanse of faiths and stories and legends, to understand that there is one simple truth – that we are one and all are god.  I explored all manner of religion and ritual (a dear friend terms it my “chicken head biting ways” although I assure you no chickens were harmed in the writing of this essay).  I found truth and beauty in each.

And so it was that yesterday I found myself at a Passover seder at the home of my great friend Donna Steinhorn.  It was my first.  And still, the story was familiar, told it me often by the black-clad nuns as a backdrop to Jesus’ importance.  There at the table were people of many faiths – a young Indian man discussing his parents’ desire for him to have an arranged marriage with a woman from the “old country” in northeastern India, a chatty and warm mystery writer, also not Jewish, the former nanny from the Midwest who quietly participated with reverence and understanding.  There was also the older generation who brought their Passover traditions from deep in Eastern European Judaism.  And then there was me.  The pagan fallen Catholic.

At first I wasn’t sure what to do.  Should I concentrate?  Pray?  Eat everything?  Rooted deeply in the desire to please and be right, I watched somewhat timidly, trying to make no missteps.  Yet as the evening progressed and I heard the jokes and the lightness, I slowly unwound.  Here was living ritual, not stilted or dogmatic.  It was the simplest of traditions – getting together to tell a fond story and reflecting on what it means to us today. By the time I encouraged the group to do a rousing rendition of Hava Nagilah (the spelling of which I’m sure I’m butchering, but after so many tv commercials featuring it even I knew half the words, although I never did find out last night what any of them meant) I was feeling completely at ease.

And so it was that the pagan fallen Catholic girl enjoyed a Passover seder.  No, I won’t be converting to Judaism any time soon, and I don’t even feel a desire to jump on the Kabbalah bandwagon, my Catholic sister Madonna’s example notwithstanding.  I simply feel this – that in a shared meal with good friends and friends-to-be there is much truth about why religion continues to prevail, whether it always makes sense or not.  And in this meal there were other truths – that we can love each other despite differences, that we can love our traditions without thinking anyone else’s are wrong, that we can find god in an oft-repeated story, in the eyes of a very old woman, in a luscious rain in the dark and in the hug of a beloved friend.

So, remember your dinners and your todays and godspeed until we meet again.

M