Keepin' My Pimp Hand Strong, Catholicism, And Other Musings.

So, I've copped to J still being about. We had lunch plans today, but then he suggested a "long lunch" (which in Martini and J speak, is code for "call off for the afternoon, because you're spending it in bed with me"). As I'm on this kick to clean up my life this week, I called him out (recall earlier conversations of the whole "one woman man" crap from him, particularly that he had supposedly violated the trust of a woman he'd been seeing for more than two months. My sources have been unable to confirm the magnitude of their now defunct relationship as yet.) He's awful quiet now that I pretty much told him: put up or shut up, hotness. I think it shocked him totally that I called him out like that. Ordinarily, my conversations with J are limited to just random smatterings of chatter ... it's not often that I say "get with the program, or go away" to anyone. And he knows it. Side note: yes, I know this stuff comes in cycles ... it's seemingly two steps forward, one step back with me ... but it will happen. Eventually. Good thing that "50 is the new 30", as it should take me another 22.5 years at this rate to get my head on straight and all.

If all you want to read is raunch, then please stop here. Thank you, drive through.

Other life cleaning activities entail the perpetual quest for a higher being. As a college kid, I hit the "rebellion" phase of things. I've been Roman Catholic for my entire life, including coaching CYO softball and mentoring kids that were in CCD classes. When I was a kid, my home parish used to be VERY traditional (they used to offer Latin Mass once a week and everything). My freshman year of college, I was a fixture at Saturday night Mass. 5:00, be there or be square. But after B's dad died over the Christmas holiday, and I sat through the heart-wrenching funeral, some switch flipped in my brain ... and shortly after I turned 19, I went through a phase where I decided that I didn't want to be Catholic anymore because it was so patriarchal. The feminist in me just twitched uncontrollably as I attended wedding after wedding of my friends and family, and heard that "love, honor, and obey" line. I completed all of my confirmation classes, and then didn't actually go to the mass to confirm, I backed out a week prior. I, over the past year, went through the whole "Dogma" type of questioning my faith, as in "where was God when I needed him", "what did I do to deserve this", and "if God really loved me, would He be letting my mother go blind and then die in front of my eyes?"

My quest has led me down many paths, and I keep burning out with searching for "the right one". And in my quest, I've researched many paths (and tried a few), trust me (exception: DQ hasn't converted me her way yet). But none of them seem to fit perfectly. I guess I keep looking for this absolute fit, this "all or nothing" approach. And realistically, religion shouldn't be what's dictated to you, it's what you make of it. Most Catholics make God out to be this vengeful and mean kind of being, that will "smite you" for disobeying the rules. And in all reality, I don't think that's the case. I think that God is a forgiving being, willing to overlook minor infractions of "the rules" if you are basically a good person. I mean, I look around at some people that profess themselves to be "Christian" or even "Good Catholics", but yet they continually cheat on their spouse, hate other people, lie to the people that they supposedly love, and treat people with disrespect (T, anyone?).

No one's perfect. I'm a glaring example. But this morning I took the first step towards repairing my battered relationship with the Church. The parish close to my house starts daily Mass at 8:30, so I couldn't stay for that. But I did wander in there this morning, and spent a little time alone in the Sanctuary before I came to work. I just sat there for fifteen minutes, took it in, lit a candle for my mom, and left. I wonder what the little old ladies thought about that, ha ha.

I realize that I really miss that part of my life. I guess it's true ... "just because you just don't feel like comin' home, don't mean that you'll never arrive".