Holy Experiment

While sorting my way through the hundreds of posts on this blog I realized my trial run at going back to church, which began last year on Ash Wednesday, is trial no more. It's become part of my life. I'm happy to say that I do see God in the Catholic church, and that, if you ignore a lot of the stuff the big-C church throws at you, the basic message behind Catholicism is a good one: Try not to be a jerk. And try to help poor people. During Lent, try harder. Everything is going to be okay.

I see this come up over and over and over again and it makes me think the Catholic church needs a better PR team because they just aren't doing that good a job selling themselves.

Now the not being a jerk part can be surprisingly hard to pull off at times. Especially since you are supposed to not be a jerk to anyone, which includes other jerks. But it's a stretch goal, and aren't those the best kind?

The only downside of this whole thing has been my reluctance to talk about it with my nonbeliever friends. Well not so much reluctance as inability-on a base level it's just a thing we don't have in common but in other ways it's much, much deeper than that. (And by nonbeliever I don't mean Catholic; I suppose I mean atheist. Or maybe not so much atheist as devoid of any spirituality whatsoever, of any guiding star. And I do firmly believe everyone has to find their own way in life, their own specific way.)

But that's a conversation for another day. All in all, the holy experiment was a great success.