Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
Date: Saturday, 15 Aug 1992 23:45:49 EDT
From: <SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject:    re: Questions about religious experience

In article <1992Aug14.125146.6956@ac.dal.ca>, hartigan@ac.dal.ca writes:

>  1.
> Have you ever had an experience you choose to describe as "religious?" If so,
> how did you decide to classify it as such? For example, if you had an intense
> conversion experience, what led you to conclude that it was supernatural in
> origin, rather than regarding it as a hallucination, aberration in conscious-
> ness, etc.?
>
I think that my first "individual conversion experience" was more in
the nature of what might be termed a 'deconversion'.

I was raised in an Irish family as a Catholic, though my mother was
a convert to that religion and her side of the family though Irish
were staunch Presbyterians or members of covenant churches.  While
it may seem an odd charaterization to non-Irish people, there are
similar resonances in these traditions and conflict was very
superficial.

For reasons that I am not sure of my own religious faith and practice
was much stronger than that of either parent as I grew up.

In college I came to terms with the fact that I was homosexual and
in my sophmore year refused to profess contrition in the confessional
for what I had come to feel was a normal part of my nature.  The
priest, of course, could not give me absolution and in a subsequent
discussion it was clear that my position essentially isolated me
from what I felt was meaningful particpation in the church.  It is
probably important to note that this occured in the mid-1950s
when, contrary to nowadays, there was no discussion of homosexuality
and Christianity and certainly no gay or lesbian support groups
anywhere that I had ever heard of.  It was essentially a position
I came to by myself after much painful thought.

For several decades I felt that I believed in Christianity, and still
felt that the Roman Catholic tradition was the most historically and
religiously valid part of it.  About twenty years later I began to
attend mass on a sporadic basis early in the morning on the way to
work. In the early 1980's I began to participate fully in the life
of the church.  I considered my sexual orientation a closed issue
and attended mass several times a week and participated in the
sacraments of the church.  I did not have any great sense of conflict
over sexual issues, and this may have been helped by the fact that
I saw many gay men and women active in parish life.

I was a member of a very dynamic parish in my neighborhood and
continued to also attend a parish on weekdays which had a very
active "urban mission" posture and I had the company of very devout
friends in church.

But as I became more deeply involved on a personal basis - reading
scripture and participating in the sacraments - a peculiar shift
began to take place.  A feeling of discomfort encroached upon me,
and this gradually increased until attending church brought a
feeling of heavy despair.  While there were many forces in my life
that were bringing about an upwelling of pain and compassion
Christianity began to seem more and more like an oasis
fearfully protecting itself.  The sincerity of the
priests I came into contact with seemed unquestionable as was the deep
faith of many of those around me, and yet it seemed like a protective
encampment of travellers -- afraid to leave and afraid to stay and
constantly reckoning their provisions.  And I came to feel that I
was ever-involved with an inventory which put off some journey that
I did not even clearly understand.

In the summer of 1985 I was on an island where there were almost
no practicing Catholics (or any sort of Christians for that matter).
A priest came in by boat to say a mass early on Sunday morning
in a room next to the dispensary and it was attended by a about
ten or a few more people.

The surroundings were very rustic and the people were
shyly friendly but subdued and the priest was a self-effacing
sort of fellow.

The small room was close so all the doors and windows were left
open and the wind off the sea blew in steadily.  The sand was sifted
over the wooden walkway beside the building and although you could
not see the ocean you could hear it beyond the sandhills.  As the
building faced east the early sun streamed in full force.  In this
setting the little gathering and the mass itself seemed even
more like a band of travellers worrying over preparations on the
edge of a trackless territory.

On the second or third Sunday i got up early and walked down the lee
side of the island to where the mass was held. I waited outside
in a rather stiff wind and the people came along one and two at
a time holding their clothes tightly about them and hurried into
the room.  The sun was well up and shining strongly by the time
mass was to begin.

It came upon me with a deep sense of finality that this was no place
for me and that whatever my business had been there, it was finished.
I walked away, not with doubt but with uncertainty about why
I did not feel doubt.

Later I walked along the shore.  I passed beyond the
edge of the settlement and the place where I was staying and kept
walking until I came to a break in the dunes where people dragged
driftwood away from the waves and piled it up to retrieve later.

A short way farther beyond was a place where three trees could be
seen through a cleft in the sandhills.  I sat here.  This marked
the spot where three years earlier I had brought the ashes of
a non-Christian fellow who had come from Transvaal and whose body
could not be taken back to his family.

The only other corpse I could recall seeing was that of my own
father many years before, but he had been embalmed and his obsequies
were handled in a funeral home and church with the typically distant
and efficient ceremony of Americans.  This man had been
somewhat crudely cremated and his remains pulverized into a coarse
grit with larger chunks and splinters that had not been fragmented.
His "ashes" were in a cheap box which I had carried in a sack down
to the sea.

There had been a fierce wind that day and the seas were heavy and
the surf had cut a sharp trench where it broke against the beach.
It seemed more appropriate to pour his remains into the sea than
onto the sand, so I took off my clothes and carried the box to
the water's edge.  I pulled the lid off the box, held it overhead
and slid rather unsteadily into the surf.  A breaker came rushing
forward and covered me completely.  I began pouring the man's
remains out somewhere in the water in front of me.  The sea rushed
back out leaving me only knee-high in water and the grit blew
back on me into my eyes and mouth and covering my naked body.
A wave covered me again and while under water I clawed the rest
of him out of the box and let it go out of my hands.  In the next
wave I washed the rest of him from my hair and eyes and rinsed
him out of my mouth.

I had come back to this spot again without thinking about it.  However,
once I was back there it seemed that it pointed to what had
been missing in church for me: the experience of "faith" not as
an unquestioning belief in something, but as the resolve to go out
into the empty places to listen to the questions that are there.
Having the faith to doubt perhaps, though this is an idea that came
later rather than the feeling of that time.

I have never been to church again since leaving that island, nor have
I ever again considered that Christianity is anything more than
one of many preparations for what is a journey without maps, if it
is ever undertaken at all.

In answer to some of Mr. Hartigan's questions:  Would I consider
this a "religious" event?  Yes.  While I consider the experience
and its meaning to be "right", I don't consider that it has anything
to do with God or the Devil -- it is somehow not about either thing.
As to its being "supernatural", in the way the word is ordinarily
used - not at all.  Would I say it was an aberration in consciousness?
I would be more inclined to say that it made me realize that I had
been involved in an aberration of consciousness, or more metaphorically
that it was like a snake sloughing off an old skin.

The only "proof" I have that this experience ever took place in the
manner in which I have presented it is entirely subjective. Indeed
the experience has led me farther and farther away from certainties,
but into a territory which has proven paradoxily to be unexpectedly
rich as long as it is not exploited for certainties.

Jack Carroll