Sunday Spirituality

As I just wrote my favorite Eagle Scout, it's been a "watershed" week. The kind that leads one to thinking, "What have I done wrong? What can I do to correct it?"
I guess that's technically every week: we--or, rather, I--just don't think about it all the time. When I do, however, I delve (deeply?) into my unconscious...via my "writing folder." (Or, perhaps, they're one and the same?)

Anyway, I'm in one of those moods. I've never "cyber-published" the following two pieces I wrote at a Spiritual Autobiography Workshop on Sunday, October 16, 2005 before. I've rarely shared them with anyone, even. Sometimes, however, you've just got to put it out there, I guess...

BTW: Hurricane Wilma coursed her way through South Florida exactly one week later. I daresay its aftermath led to one of the major watersheds in my life: the one I'm living out, right now.

I told you from the beginning this La Loquita del Zig-Zag blog was going to be (at least somewhat) different from the original, now, didn't I?

When Dan (Wakefield, of writing for "All My Children" fame) asked us to write about our spiritual growth when we were children, this is what came out of me:

My Fear, My Fear, My Maximum Fear

When I was eight, I was put into a Catechism class at Saints Peter and Paul Church. It was especially weird for me, since I had been baptized at age four, just so that Castro wouldn’t send me—and “unwashed child”—to Russia. All I remember was the Chinese priest, my mother peering out over her darkened bifocals, and the big party afterward.

So here I was, four years later, in a different country, getting ready to undergo—endure, perhaps? —The Second Sacrament. I knew by then that my parents weren’t terribly big on religion: I’d been baptized “just because,” and now, again, I’d be receiving my First Communion, “just because.”

At least this time I was the “right” age.

I think the priests were Jesuits.

The class was…ok. I was much more of a follower, then, always trying to fit in. The Catechism books were cute—I think they were in Spanish. We recited a lot.

Two things, however, were of paramount importance: the dress; and the confession of my sins before I took Holy Communion for the first time.

Already chubby, we managed to find me a dress. I still have it. It has a cute raised design on the front.

The confession, however, terrified me more than finding that dress. I still remember shaking before I approached the priest. What would I say?

I don’t remember, but I got through it.

The wafer, however: to swallow that wafer whole. Could I chew it, I wondered. Was it a mortal sin to chew it?

I think I swallowed it whole, thinking, worrying about it the whole time.
Once, and only once: for that was my fear, my fear, my maximum fear.

And I daresay it still is. (288 words)

And this is what I wrote when he asked us to describe a spiritual experience from our adolescence:

Stinky

My mother and I had a car accident in the North Georgia Mountains because I thought he was stinky.

Always the overprotected child, I even had a chauffeur to take me to school. He was a cabbie, a big hulking guy. I don’t think he was terribly smart. But my mother trusted him to take me to school.

All I knew was that he was stinky. And when it was time for me to go to Camp Dixie the summer of 68, I balked. No: I probably threw a tantrum.

No way was Stinky going to drive me.

So I forced my Mami to take me.

We set out in the beige Valiant. Everything seemed to be going ok. I don’t think we were that far away from Clayton, when it happened.

The car went off the road.

I remember the plummeting feeling, going through the undergrowth, down, down, down the side of one of those North Georgia Mountains.

All of a sudden, everything came to a dead stop. We’d hit a tree. I must have lurched forward.

Some people had seen the accident, and helped us. Soon we were at a hospital.

I may have had a few bumps and bruises, but my mother had cracked a vertebra.

Ana Marrero, Dr. Ana Marrero, had a broken back. She had to wear a brace for a long time.

Papi came up from Miami ASAP. “Why’d you drive, Ana?”

“Because La Nina didn’t want Stinky to drive.”

I only recently remembered the above. I guess I had to wait til Mami was gone.

Oh, if only Stinky had done the driving that day, Mami and I might have made our peace with each other much, much sooner. (286 words)

Precisely one week later, we were awaiting Wilma.