EARLY MESSAGES ABOUT GOD AND MY CHANGING VIEW ABOUT GOD

I grew up Catholic in a small town in southern Missouri where Catholics were a distinct minority. Only about 2% of the population was Catholic. In our county there were two Blacks and no Jews. It was Protestant Bible belt territory. Still is.

It was a confusing situation for a child. One the one hand, to be part of the one true religion was high privilege. On the other, why did so few people realize it?

God was a being—male, of course—with extremely strange habits. And he required equally strange habits of us. I learned a lot of Latin words and phrases in songs and in the Mass but had no inkling of what they meant. And I suspected no one around me understood them either, with the possible exception of the priest. There were also fasting requirements that were absolute and made absolutely no sense; but they carried the weight of a direct commandment. One Christmas three of my siblings and I forgot we were fasting and ate candy before midnight Mass. The shame I felt when we realized our sin is still palpable. [And, by the way, why midnight?]

Out of my early experience, I came to certain conclusions: (1) God was one strange character, seemingly interested in my every thought and deed but at the same time distant and uninvolved. (2) God required stiff retribution and, in spite of my very best effort, I could not escape falling into His disfavor. (3) All the iniquities of the world meant nothing in the face of the rewards of a glorious afterlife. (4) The chances of my reaping those rewards were slim to none.

As soon as I reached something approaching adulthood, I jettisoned the whole enterprise and decided to go it alone. I had no need of the capricious God of my childhood and youth who let so much death, suffering, and injustice go unnoticed. I relied totally upon my conscious understanding. That understanding served me reasonably well for a long time, although at some level of my being, I felt an emptiness, a hole of sorts. In the face of demanding jobs and a more-or-less satisfying personal life, I was able to suppress such feelings pretty well. I soldiered on without God.

An event in early mid-life, the sudden death of my beloved husband, shattered my conscious reality. I simply could not go on as before. All the things I found rewarding and satisfying turned to ashes. I simply quit caring about anything. Depression settled upon me and stayed.

Always a slow learner, I began to realize I needed help. I returned to the church of my childhood. The distortions of my early understanding of theology became glaringly apparent. I went to university to study theology and philosophy. There I discovered I knew next to nothing about God or about human beings. The realities of Life simply would not fit into the small box that was my mind. Then I discovered C.G. Jung's work and entered Jungian analysis.

Slowly I began to accept the utter and wondrous irrationality of human nature, my own included, and that of God. My poor rational self suffered terribly from the stretching required.  

So, you might ask, where are you now? I can only answer—in mystery. God is mystery to me; others are mystery to me; and I am mystery to myself.