her lips parted in wonder. Whenever I turned to share her view, I only saw the white edges of clouds drifting through. And still, I started going to Mass every Sunday.
I began to feel the pull of my classmates who so comfortably came to the table of Mass each Sunday to feed their beliefs, check in with God, and affirm that He still loved them. They offered the sign of peace so earnestly, that it seemed that God extended from their fingertips. I pressed my palms against theirs, hoping to feel a little of the glow that lived behind their eyes. I hoped those warm sticky palms held some of their certainty for me. I ached for it, the certainty of belief and belonging. I yearned for a pause from stitching together an identity, of being rootless and lost in Texas. I needed a place to rest and, sometimes, the soft padding on the kneeler, the silken tassels in the hymnal between my fingers, and the quiet rhythm of prayer created a tiny space to breathe.
I began to understand the draw to a belief system that supplies answers to the difficult questions so readily. The erasure of complication and the adherence to someone else’ s navigation of the narrow, curvy lines of ethics enlightened the confusion of turning these issues around in my mind and eased the burden of making decisions about them for myself. The temptation of Catholicism dwelt in the glass-stained beauty of vaulted churches, breathed in the thick marble veins of the Pieta, and grew strong in the psalms set to music so bittersweet, I often tucked tissues into my pocket before Mass.
By my second year in Dallas, while I was studying in Rome, and Bush’ s presidential push gathered force, I still hungered for someone or something to tell me who I was. This need to belong, to be successful among the people around me, drove me to consider, briefly and dramatically, joining the sisterhood. The great caverns of cathedrals and the frescoed walls of chapels were so beautiful that it hurt to leave them. The damp stones that held up the walls of those thousand-year-old houses of God twisted my heart with longing to remain still and unhurried by life. An existence based on holy contemplation, pulling oneself inward, living outside the world of everyday conflict and disappointing loved ones lured me. The draw to a life whose daily schedule was set, whose companions were determined, and whose set of principles to live by were literally written in a book offered salve to pieces of me that questioned my ability to make tough decisions for myself and stand my ground. Jesus, who accepts any and all without question, seemed like an easy source of validation. I so wanted to believe in a life propelled by God’ s law and carried out by God’ s will. All decisions on
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