Palm Sunday

Running up the steps on 5th Avenue, you leave the bustle of Midtown as soon as you set foot inside Saint Patrick's Cathedral--the oldest Gothic church in the United States.

Sitting in a pew near the back, I picked up two fresh stalks of palm and bent them--as I'd seen a thousand times at St. Theresa's and St. Mary's in Bombay--to make a cross in reverence to folks 2000 years ago welcoming Jesus to their town. The same folks who stood around and watched him get nailed to a cross five days later.

I said a prayer for Chiara...who never went to church or cared about organized religion--more for me than her--what did I have to offer her wherever she was. I could only hope her beliefs had led to a place where the wine never stopped flowing and the men were all foreign or at least had foreign accents. I knew she had been as close to happy as anyone could be who was taken prematurely and/or without warning.

I said a prayer for my Mom and the new family she had formed with her new husband. A family I tried desperately to keep myself separate from but realized with every passing day, despite my best intentions, I was alienating loved ones and gently damaging my mother. I vowed to do a better job of embracing that family--a family that included me with open arms and supported my most inane decisions.

I thought fondly of being in that churh with D'Souza and the family we hoped to be some day. I wondered if that fantasy was a reality I was truly ready for and I wished with all my heart that God would prepare me for what I hoped was the long road ahead. I prayed for his safe journey back to me, knowing he was on a plane somewhere over Europe where churches like St. Patrick's abounded--towering steeples and stained glass windows built by devout men hoping for heaven.

I made a mental note to cook an extravagant feast for Easter despite my culinary shortcomings and general disdain for all times spent alone in a kitchen.

I value tradition. I've come to accept that much of my faith is rooted in the customs I was raised with adherence to as well as the do-it-because-the-Bible-says-so-ness impressed upon me as a child. Perhaps that is how organized religion continues to weild power over the masses. Perhaps as I age, my inclination to cling closely to where I come from strengthens. I'm not much of a Catholic, in truth. What I am is a lover of the ritual and tradition of Catholicism planted in me as a child that despite infrequent watering has blossomed into a flower that frequents church.

I'm a pro-life/pro-birth control, pro-gay marriage Christian and I have no trouble reconciling my faith in Jesus with my value for freedom and free will.