Basking in a life well lived

Tonight was a kind of kicker, a capstone for decades of experiences that were crazy, wild, lame, good, bad, incredible, and ugly. Inspired Service is doing what I had intended it would do. I am making myself useful to my community in ways I never thought possible- this has been a long time goal in my life, and I am just now meeting it after many many years of hard work and lessons learned.

I have always wanted to be a priest, since I was a little boy. I learned the Tridentine Latin Masses, high mass, simple services, funeral mass, and three others by heart backward and forward (literally) by the time I was 9 years old. I was an acolyte in the traditionalist branch of the Catholic Church, which for those who don't know, is actually the first of many steps toward priesthood. And the reason for this, the real secret reason I wanted to be a priest, is because my real goal was to be a saint.

Everybody has different ideas of what it means to be a priest, or a saint. My definitions varied greatly from those of others. In some cases, I confused their goals and mine, and doing so led me astray. My idea of BEING a saint, is that I have done so much work for God that I am close enough to God to be, in my own way, a PART of God. Being a priest, well, that is just a defined path that leads directly and clearly down that route, as Catholic priests are able to transubstantiate bread and wine into the flesh and blood of God, which will make you closer and part of God at least in a small and temporary way if you consume it.

The above definitions really presume that you and I have the same definitions of God, sacrament, priest, saint, divinity, and a number of concepts that could not be possibly the same between any two people. My own personal idea of God is that if God is omnipotent, and illimitable, the easiest way of perceiving God is to see that God is in all things. This means, literally, we are ALREADY the living flesh of God. So is the rock in the street. So is the air. So is the laptop I am writing on. So is the internet. The Gospel of Thomas, and fragment of the Mary Gospel both go down this route, which would be why the early church tried to burn all the copies it could find.

So, without knowing it, I had put myself at a very tender age on a direct course of conflict of faith vs dogma, ideas vs belief, and heresy vs orthodoxy. By the time I was 14, I knew I could not be a Catholic priest. I just did not know what I could be. I wanted a direct path to being part of the greater divinity around me, and the need to serve was driving me forward even if I had no goal nor direction. Basically, I felt I could not be a Catholic priest because I could not follow all of the rules necessary to be in the required state of grace to perform transubstantiation- being 14 and whacking off three times a day meant a lot of confessional visits, and it was just too much for me...and the priests.

Sainthood was out of the question at that point. I was sinning left and right. According to the Catholic Church, there was no way I would make it into heaven, or be a saint, short of dying saving someone, or the like. So, I joined the Army. Just kidding, I had a lot of other reasons for going into the Army, many of them necessary or selfish, depending on your point of view. But my attitude did not help my cause, so to speak.

Now I am fast forwarded 26 years. Almost twice the time I had been alive when I found I could not be a priest nor a saint. Now I strive every day to be both. Every motherfucking day. Yes, God can say "motherfucking"- I should know, I am part of God, whether I want to be part of God, whether I want to be cognizant of my relationship to the fact that I am one of God's little white blood cells, or cilia cells, or something of the like.

But being a priest is easy. The whole idea behind the bread and wine was to cut down the separations between people, those divisions of class, tradition, and obstinance. This is why Jesus mocked Peter by calling him his rock, his cornerstone (read the reference in Thomas, its priceless). By following a belief that we can all walk in and be a part of the light of divinity, we become transubstantiated, everything we are and we touch becomes transubstantiated, and the mass becomes the entirety of our existence. This is why I hang out with the Society of Friends, aka the Quakers. They believe as I do. So I am surrounded by priests, old and young, male and female, firm and infirm, quiet and rambunctious.

I have reasons for pursuing sainthood on a daily basis. I have to be a living example to my daughter. She needs saints she can access, without the bullshit. She needs an example in her life that says "I can make the world I live in better, I don't have to fall for the trap of the participation mystique." I cannot sit passively and wait for others who could care less about my ideals to make a world I want. I have to go out and do it. That is miracle working, right there. There is no greater miracle I could give my daughter, or anyone else, including myself, than at least TRYING to make a difference, even in a small way.

And it is working, even tonight.