I admit it - I haven't given this the focused effort I promised, but I'm counting on my spirituality being a strong enough part of myself that I'll be able to wing it. (No pun intended) (Get it - "wing it" - angels - heaven - ha ha ha) (Okay fine...no more jokes before 8am)
I was raised Episcopalian. (Godblessyou) The church we attended was a big fancy one on Park Avenue in NYC. My grandfather (Pop) wanted us to have God in our lives, turns out later my grandmother (Junie) who was an Irish immigrant was pretending to be Protestant and hiding her Irish Catholic roots. (One child for her, not half a township like the family she'd been born into.) Mom went to appease her father so he would keep supporting her. I went because I was told to, and Sunday school was okay - mostly play time. Then came time for confirmation. It was a huge waste of time. I remember the teacher taking us on a tour of the church and bragging about the "real gold leaf" adorning the top of the pillars and how often it had to be touched up. (This is what the collection plate is for???) The "retreat" was a fiasco, and it was my first exposure to drugs being everywhere - lots of kids had snuck in pot and alchohol. Not to mention, Mom forgot to pick me up at the end of the weekend and a 10 year old Tracy with a big pink paisley suitcase walked through NYC alone, looking for all the world like a runaway. I was confirmed alright - confirmed in the belief that religion was a big scam.
As my grandparents health declined, so did the stock market that had made my grandfather the man who lived in a penthouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, from the boy who held two-three jobs in Brooklyn. Seeing as how Pop was supporting my Mother, myself, and all his 9 siblings, it seemed prudent to take me out of private school and put me in a Catholic school two blocks away. Ohmygod! Two years there made me an atheist. Whatever god this was was no god I wanted anything to do with - any god that might enter my life was NOT one that allowed nuns to beat the crap out of students in the front of the classroom. It was 1976, and I'm sure Joseph Hart's home life wasn't all that wonderful or even then his parents would have done something about the bruises that must have covered his back and shoulders. I'll never forget Joseph Hart, and I hope to ... heaven? ... that he turned out okay as an adult. Atheism for me. Because as far as I could tell, religion was about money, partying, and beating children.
Money became available again. And I'd told my Mom about the nun (Sister Mary Alacoque, she must be burning in the deepest hottest pits of hell - if only for what she did to Joseph. I met someone else who attended that school, and she had other Alacoque horror stories). And so Mom set about trying to get me into private school again. All the neighborhood ones were full. I begged to go where Kathrine was going - a Quaker school in the Village. Mom was having none of it, but school after school turned her down until I ended up in my dream school, a week late, and without Katy who had moved to Chicago, but my dream school nonetheless. Here is where my faith was restored.
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7:30am Musings LONG - part 1 - History
Date: 2003-08-01 06:46 am (UTC)I was raised Episcopalian. (Godblessyou) The church we attended was a big fancy one on Park Avenue in NYC. My grandfather (Pop) wanted us to have God in our lives, turns out later my grandmother (Junie) who was an Irish immigrant was pretending to be Protestant and hiding her Irish Catholic roots. (One child for her, not half a township like the family she'd been born into.) Mom went to appease her father so he would keep supporting her. I went because I was told to, and Sunday school was okay - mostly play time. Then came time for confirmation. It was a huge waste of time. I remember the teacher taking us on a tour of the church and bragging about the "real gold leaf" adorning the top of the pillars and how often it had to be touched up. (This is what the collection plate is for???) The "retreat" was a fiasco, and it was my first exposure to drugs being everywhere - lots of kids had snuck in pot and alchohol. Not to mention, Mom forgot to pick me up at the end of the weekend and a 10 year old Tracy with a big pink paisley suitcase walked through NYC alone, looking for all the world like a runaway. I was confirmed alright - confirmed in the belief that religion was a big scam.
As my grandparents health declined, so did the stock market that had made my grandfather the man who lived in a penthouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, from the boy who held two-three jobs in Brooklyn. Seeing as how Pop was supporting my Mother, myself, and all his 9 siblings, it seemed prudent to take me out of private school and put me in a Catholic school two blocks away. Ohmygod! Two years there made me an atheist. Whatever god this was was no god I wanted anything to do with - any god that might enter my life was NOT one that allowed nuns to beat the crap out of students in the front of the classroom. It was 1976, and I'm sure Joseph Hart's home life wasn't all that wonderful or even then his parents would have done something about the bruises that must have covered his back and shoulders. I'll never forget Joseph Hart, and I hope to ... heaven? ... that he turned out okay as an adult. Atheism for me. Because as far as I could tell, religion was about money, partying, and beating children.
Money became available again. And I'd told my Mom about the nun (Sister Mary Alacoque, she must be burning in the deepest hottest pits of hell - if only for what she did to Joseph. I met someone else who attended that school, and she had other Alacoque horror stories). And so Mom set about trying to get me into private school again. All the neighborhood ones were full. I begged to go where Kathrine was going - a Quaker school in the Village. Mom was having none of it, but school after school turned her down until I ended up in my dream school, a week late, and without Katy who had moved to Chicago, but my dream school nonetheless. Here is where my faith was restored.