Sophia

by Dianne Peck, Sydney, NS

  The focus topic for this edition of the Journal asks the question: What do you do when every Sunday you leave mass feeling angry?
This is a multifaceted issue, even a thorny one. I do not have a uniform or nettle-free answer. In fact I have no answer. But I would like to share what I have experienced as a result of often feeling empty, frustrated, and angry after a Sunday liturgy.
In her book, Anatomy of the Spirit, Carolyn Myss draws a parallel between the seven chakras of the body’s energy system, and the seven Christian sacraments. She describes the seven chakras as levels of power in our biological system. Each chakra contains its own sacred truth. If we violate these truths we weaken both our spirit and our physical body. If we honor them we advance our spiritual and physical strength (Myss p.76).
Myss’ theory is that the sacrament of Baptism corresponds to the first chakra, the muladhara, which means "root support". First chakra energy connects us to our family roots, gives us our beliefs and traditions and a sense of belonging to a group of people. It is called the Tribal chakra and its energy is Tribal power. It is what grounds us. And because emotional and psychological stability begin in the early social unit, the first chakra is also the seat of our emotional grounding (Myss, p.103-104).
The sacred truth of the First chakra is "All is One.” Some of the strengths of belonging in this way, that is, to be one with your tribe, are honor, loyalty, group bonds, and groundedness (Myss, p.105). The sacred truth of the sacrament of Baptism is that we become one with the "tribe" of God. "It is a powerful feeling to be in a group of people…with whom you feel spiritually, emotionally and physically comfortable. Such a union empowers us and energetically enhances our personal power and our creative strength"(Myss, p.110). It has become easy to see why anger and frustration arise when the act of gathering in mass with that Baptismal Tribe leaves you feeling hollow and rootless.
So, what do you do? Stay away? Work for reform? Shop around? Bite the bullet and hang in? I have not solved the problem for myself. Perhaps each of us has to try various solutions until we reach a tolerable place from which to survive this part of the reformation journey. However, I am aware of a silent phenomenon that more or less has crept up on me when I wasn’t looking. I am finding much soul energy in the contemplation of my biological roots, which was spawned by a writing assignment titled "Family Heirlooms: Mothers, Daughters, Granddaughters".
It started with a reflection on the simple household task of ironing. My mother’s bedroom furniture has been stored with me since her death seven years ago, and although I had combed through the bureau drawers many times since, I had overlooked the set of round garters, seeing them now for the first time since I was a child. It seemed as if suddenly they were just there, calling up instant images of the ankle donuts her nylons formed when she converted them, by rolling them over the garters, into her own version of bobby-sox. I saw her ironing board, and the backless stool on which she sat, with its rungs where she wrapped her feet in their wedge-heeled house shoes and donut socks. I remembered that in the forties, (the decade of my childhood), women ironed everything. Blouses and dresses and skirts were ironed, after they had been washed and starched and line-dried and rolled in damp cloths and put in the refrigerator…"to keep them damp until I’m ready for them,” my mother would say. But bed sheets were ironed too, and tablecloths and bureau ‘scarves’ and handkerchiefs and nightdresses and underwear, and maybe even socks.
Her sister, my Aunt Mary, was an Olympic Ironing champion. I can still remember, at age nine, watching with rapt attention as she transformed the sleeves of my cousin’s blouse. Bagging, drooping fabric became magnificently pleated bell-shaped wonders under my Aunt’s skilled hands and the very hot point of her iron.
I don’t iron much any more but I still find comfort in it when I do. It is work for the hands that is clean, unlike the messier work of mixing ground meat into patties, for example. And there is something else I have discovered about ironing. After the kids had left home but were still in their "back for the summer break’ stages, I would occasionally iron some shirts or jeans. Smoothing and fussing over their clothes made me feel the same way as bathing them had, when they were young. It gave me the chance to extend again a tender and caring touch, to indulge again in some body caressing, now if only by osmosis.
I still get high on the smell of line-dried clothes. I get that from my mother and her mother and… In a recent woman’s spirituality session we were asked to name a mundane act that was surprisingly soul inducing for us. For one woman it was "hanging out the clothes." For my mother that was the smell of success. If she had the laundry washed, line-dried, and ironed all in the same day, nay, the same morning, she was on top of her game.
These are tribal heirlooms. These are first chakra emotions. I have wandered into them because they give me a needed sense of bonding, loyalty, oneness and groundedness. I have wandered into them at this particular time in my life because I have not found them in other settings, specifically, weekend liturgy. That these liturgies often fall short of their unspeakable potential, that they fail to incarnate the deep mysticism of our Catholic inheritance, is a source not only of anger but also of loss and grief. Our options?
Perhaps Sophia’s answer is this: to seek our truths wherever they can be found.