Whatever Happened to Catholic Guilt

On good days, the stench of arrogance of any and all types of organized religion can walk right past me.
I can respect sincere searches for truth, but never the underhanded recommendations. I already have a mother, thank you very much.

In all matters of spirituality you need only to look inside yourself to see whether you're getting it. Or even that you're getting that there's nothing to get.

Unfortunately in many ways I'm still very much a creature of faith. I blame a lot of things for that, not only the Catholic upbringing but also my very own fiction. This is why, for me, all my cries for injustice are really secret longings: to be loved, to be appreciated, to be made alright.

There is a silence I miss in the suburbs, that I can only find in hidden subdivisions down south (but even there there are random sounds of airplanes). A silence people mistake for God's presence. Maybe so, it's just that if you believe in God in the first place you should anyway act as if He can see you anywhere you go, and not just be incredibly pious when you know He's watching.

You should catch the silence, and immerse in it when it comes, because there is more to learn in that than all the doctrines you can consume in a lifetime. I've read my share and it's all the same: there is a very fuzzy line between true wisdom and blind fanaticism.

Watch out for arrogance, that one telling clue. But even then, react with love.

(Note on August 12, 2012: This was originally posted on my Tumblr.  I'm doing some online housekeeping and I figured I'd leave my Tumblr out of the drama and corral introspective shit here. I left my blog last August of 2009 but I've reemerged somewhere between that and this.)