KTC interviews Peony

1) Did you have a good Catholic formation as a child?
I was taught a few bedtime prayers, taken to Mass every Sunday, and occasionally carted off by my mother (never my father) to Confession or parish devotions. Our family had a crucifix in each bedroom, and said Grace Before Meals (though only at dinner, and only at home.)
But that was it. We did no regular devotions as a family. We never discussed the Faith — prayer, spirituality, Bible stories, morality, devotions — ever. If the topic of church came up, it was only in the context of activities — getting there, coming back, do you have your CCD books, and so on. I was given a children’s Bible, but nobody ever read it to me or talked about what it said. That, my parents’ unread Bible, and a St Joseph’s Catechism were the only spiritual books in the house. I never saw my parents pray outside of Mass or Grace Before Meals. My dad constantly complained if the sermon ran “too long”; we went to 8 AM Mass to “get it over with.” My parents occasionally mentioned the “old days, when Mass was in Latin” (which, in 1981, seemed as long ago to me as the reign of Tyrannosaurus Rex — I had no idea how recently the change had taken place.) But when I actually asked to attend our parish’s Sunday evening Latin Mass, they had plenty to say to me about how “holier than thou” I was acting — what, was I too good to go to Mass with them? and why was I being such a hypocrite wanting to go to Latin Mass when I couldn’t even get along to my sister? (They did take me, but I went by myself, and got this lecture coming and going. I got the message loud and clear and never asked to go again.) They also spoke with disdain about other people who were “too religious” (“faith should be private.”)
At some point my mother did get the impression that our CCD classes were somewhat lacking in content; she bought a couple of St Joseph Catechisms but then never did anything with them. I guess she just thought we would read and understand them all on our own. I did read them (on the sly) and was drawn to the clarity of the teaching, but I felt confused. The Faith presented in the Catechisms seemed to have nothing to do with the faith being taught in CCD. So if the Catechisms were out of date and it was true that the Church Didn’t Do That Any More, then why bother with them? But if the Catechisms were true, then what did that make CCD?
When it came time to pick a saint’s name for Confirmation, I was at a loss because I didn’t know any saints. I eventually chose St Margaret Mary because I liked the name Margaret and because I thought seeing an apparition of Our Lord might be interesting.
I had no concept of prayer beyond a memorized formula, or of God being the least bit interested in me. To me, Church was like school: it was something you did because you were Supposed To. Even though my CCD teachers insisted that God thought I was special and we were a Church family and Jesus loved me, I thought those were all just platitudes, like the ones served up in school, Girl Scouts, and those public service announcements in between Saturday morning cartoons.
My siblings attend Mass occasionally, but one of them chose a civil marriage ceremony over any kind of church wedding. I don’t think any of them gives a moment’s thought to the Church’s teaching on just about anything.
2) When is the first time you experienced God?
When I was in fourth grade, we moved to Northern Virginia and started attending church at our local parish. (My father was in the military, so up to then, Mass had always been in base chapels, gyms, places like that.) One Lenten Friday, my mother announced that we were going to Stations of the Cross devotions. The solemnity, the Stabat Mater, the meditations and prayers by St Alphonsus Liguouri — this was different than boring old church.
And then came Benediction. I had never seen that before! The gold vestments, the heavy gold monstrance, the humeral veil around the priest’s hands, the Tantum Ergo, the Divine Praises, the incense…. My heart, my mind, and every one of my senses were fully engaged. This was no boring “be nice to others” commonplace. This was something totally different, totally Other, totally beyond the everyday!
If this was God, I wanted more!
3) What was your most significant adult conversion experience?
I fell away from belief in my teens — or thought I did — but part of me still wanted to believe, still felt “the twitch upon the thread.” By the time I started college, it seemed to me that the question hinged on whether God existed. If He did, the Church was for real; if he didn’t, then history was a tragedy and life was absurd. I wanted the former to be true, but I couldn’t make that final step of faith.
One October afternoon, as I was outside studying, a tiny little ant crawled across my book. Maybe it was seeing how tiny and complex and perfect the little ant was as he went about his errands, indifferent to me; maybe it was just too pretty a day for callow teenaged existential despair (October afternoons in Virginia do have that effect.) I can’t explain how or why. But it was at that moment that I made that last step of faith. Since then I have struggled (especially with the scandal of heterodox parishes and with my own tepidity and sloth.) But I have never lost sight of the Church and, through her, her Founder.
4) How did you meet your husband? Another church story! I was twenty-five, a year out of nursing school, and bored with the single life. It was nothing like the busy, glamorous life I had expected. I was all alone in a new city, I didn’t have any friends, and I wasn’t doing anything fun. I had had problems with severe depression during nursing school, and though I was recovering, for a long time I only had enough mental energy to get to work and to treatment. And that was it! Go to work, go to treatment, come home, go to bed. I also did shift work, so half the time I was at work when everyone else was going home.
Finally I found myself doing five straight weeks of the 3-11 shift. I caught a terrible case of the flu, and I had nobody I could ask to bring over a bottle of Gatorade. I felt like a ghost, invisible, just floating around in Arlington. I thought, I have GOT to get a life.
So I demanded (and got) five straight weeks of the day shift and sat down to make a plan: I wanted to get married, but in order to do that, I would need to get engaged. In order to get engaged, I needed to meet men. What kind of men did I want to meet? Nice, Catholic, intellectual men who were conservative but did not think the fullness of Faith subsisted in the Republican Party. Where would I meet men like that?
I decided to give the Diocese of Arlington’s Young Adult Ministry a whirl. (This was before the Theology on Tap and the Washington Catholic Forums got started — I had no idea of the Catholic activities that were going on in the city.) Occasionally the YA ministry took a break from volleyball and had a Bible study. That seemed like a promising fishing spot.
So off I headed for the first night of the Bible Study. (At that time it was led by one of the members, whose only qualification for leading a Bible study was being willing to do it.) I found myself sitting next to a young man wearing a green sweater and a cute smile. We were engaged ten months later.
5) How did you end up in the Washington, DC, area? (Isn’t your family from North Dakota?)
My mother is from ND, and my father is from New York. Since my father was in the military, we moved around a lot. I really liked the Northern Virginia/ DC area when we lived there, and when we moved away, I knew I wanted to go back some day. So I went to school in Virginia and then in Maryland, and took a job in a D.C. hospital.