complete RCIA

I’ve officially graduated from Inquirer to Catechumen, as of this morning. I take it this is where the real work begins, which I am very much much anticipating. My sponsor gave me a one page bibliography of books she finds useful, lent me her compiled Dorothy Day writings, and kind of adopted my friend and fellow catechumen, who doesn’t fit terribly well with his sponsor. But I guess what I really want to remember about today is how unexpectedly moving and powerful it was, and how I cried, and how a friend who came to lend support sneaked a picture with her phone and said I looked very happy, and how my sponsor cried a little too as she gave me the blessing, and how just totally amazing and right it all feels. I wore Grandma’s necklace. Sigh. Happy day.

...and it’s half exactly what I’d hoped and half way in excess of hoping. Maybe that’s the same thing, though, I guess. I want to describe my fellow “inquirers,” but won’t. It suffices to say that the people drawn to Catholicism are exactly the people you’d think would avoid it like the plague, but also exactly the people I want to do this thing with. If I were questioning the process for myself (spoiler: I wasn’t), this group of women (all!) would have dashed any doubts I had.

I talked to Sr. Phyllis today and our first meeting is September 15th. Every time I talk to her or talk about RCIA I kind of burst into tears. I have no idea why. Then, because that’s weird, I start laughing, and because she can hear the laughing and not the crying, I know she thinks I’m totally mental. Anyway, I’m pretty excited.

I had an uncomfortable epiphany yesterday about not being baptized. I guess I didn’t realize how inadequate I feel about it, and how defensive that makes me. In some ways I guess it looks like I’m just going through the motions, though it’s always felt to me that I practice my faith and particpate in traditionally Catholic processes and practices because it’s important and meaningful to me.

When it comes down to it, the lack of baptism means I’m not a Catholic, even though I think of myself that way. I don’t know. This makes me so sad. I’m sad.

I have some bitterness, though I know that’s not right, that people get to call themselves Catholic because they were baptized as babies, despite the lack of applied practice in their lives. I need to mindful that this isn’t about others’ journeys or experiences. It’s about taking that final step for me and my own faith.

I am currently attending RCIA and am due to complete by Easter 2009.

I get to be interviewed by the priest and the RCIA director on Jan 30. I’m on my way!

Stange to be this excited about changing religions when in my mid-fifties (oops, did I just say that)?