As I’ve grown older, I am very aware of my spiritual self. It may be my grounding in Catholic school and parents whose lives were steeped in that faith, or maybe it’s due to age and experience giving me a view of things that repeatedly defy explanation.
Whatever.
I have always believed in a higher power and a new life after this one. My faith is not in step with my parents or their generation, however, for decisions made by the Catholic Church have become more and more to difficult to accept.
***There is the continuing pedophile scandal that has been so grossly mishandled by educated men (even to this day here in Kansas City) that it sickens and enrages me.
***The obsession with women’s reproductive organs as if we are no more or less than a uterus.
***The political bent of this church with admonishments from the pulpit every election year to vote in the interest of the Catholic church.
***The ridiculous public lecture the church hierarchy gave to the nuns last year to stop focusing on the poor and to fall in line.
Sigh.
For a free will kind of girl seeking a deeper meaning to life, it’s all I can do sometimes to show up.
******
On Saturday night Mark and the kids and I all went to Five Guys to grab something to eat. While we were sitting at our table I noticed a man in traditional Muslim clothing going up to get his food. Then I noticed the woman he was with.
She sat at a table twenty feet from us completely clothed in black, including her gloved hands. Only her eyes and nose were visible. When her partner brought their burgers to the table she took her gloves off and tried to eat. Every bite and drink was consumed under her veil, slowly and carefully brought towards her covered mouth while he chomped away unencumbered.
As I watched this I felt like crying for the indignity of this stranger trying to eat her dinner under a veiled mouth that was nothing more than a roadblock to satisfying her hunger………….or maybe I felt like crying for myself and many other women of faith who have long tried to dine at a spiritual table that seems to only be reserved for men.