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Livvy. Sweet, smiley, content. Threw me out to sea for awhile. Funny, I was afraid for Jeff to leave me alone with all three of them at once. "Are you crazy?!" I would wonder. "Only a crazy person would leave me alone with all three of these children when I obviously have no idea how to care for them all at the same time."

Then I slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, got my land legs back. And here I am. Blogging again.

So. I don't talk a whole lot about religion on here. Faith, self-denial, principles - all of those topics I bring up frequently. But religion - or maybe "sectarianism" might be a better term, made-up or not - I try to let be.

I was raised Protestant. I left the church when I was 18 for various reasons and stayed out for about 15 years. During that time, I made lots of friends outside the church. Agnostic, atheist, pagan, Buddhist, Catholic, Christian, and everything in between. When I started to attend again (after my first baby, of course) I was still in my old hometown. I found myself growing and learning at a huge Protestant mega-church with an extremely engaging, intelligent and brutally frank head minister. His messages made me want to attend each Sunday. Well, the free trade organic coffee served in the atrium helped too.

The biggest problem was its size. I joined small groups and all that jazz that you're supposed to do in a mega-church to find your "church family," but really, none of that was ever family-like. In the end, we were thrown together for a short duration and glad to be free for our real friends and family when it was all done. I do still listen to the streaming messages from that minister every now and then, and certainly credit him, that particular church, and its alluring coffee for my ultimate return to Sunday mornings in a pew.

When we moved to the country, I started to attend a Catholic Church and was surprised at how at home I felt there. Not just in the building itself, and not just with the community of many other homeschooling parishioners there, but also with the faith and its practices. When I began to get comfortable at Mass - maybe 3 months in or so? - I finally felt a sigh inside. I finally felt that I had a church home.

But there are some differences and I'm certainly on a learning curve. It's odd I guess to other people that I don't see huge differences between Catholics and Protestants. I mean, there are certainly cultural differences. But ultimately, it's the same God, same Jesus, same Bible (basically). I've always thought that the division between the two sides was way overblown.

Maybe it's an older generation thing. My grandparents have advised (begged? demanded?) me to quit going to "that Catholic Church." I find that very strange. Here I was not even going to church on a regular basis for nearly 2 decades, and certainly having no church home. So when I find one, instead of feasting for the prodigal daughter that I had to them become, I'm somehow even more prodigal. Really?

I think the things Protestants don't understand about the Catholic faith are partly cultural and partly dogmatic. The cultural differences were exactly the things that drew me to the church in the first place.

First off, you can have as many children as you wish and nobody gives you the hairy eyeball. Nobody expects you to put your baby in a nursery while you go to service, and nobody expects you to "train" your babies to be without you.

Women are given recognition for choosing to stay home if it works for their family. The family unit is nurtured, supported & valued. Divorces aren't easy.

Homeschoolers are fairly common and frugality is appreciated, especially in churches with many large families.

But while it might have started out as a draw to a culture, there were parts of the faith that drew me as well. And then there were parts that seemed odd, but in a whatever kind of way.

I like the scripted prayers. Scripted prayers (Hail Mary, The Lord's Prayer, etc.) fill the void when I want to pray but can't find my own words. They also can become meditative when repeated over and over. I like this in a prayer. It's a way to get to God that works for me.

I like that sometimes, you have to get down on your knees. There's something about the stance of being down on your knees that evokes an immediate feeling of supplication. This is another route to God that wasn't available in the Protestant church, except at home or in extreme circumstances.

I like the Church, with a capital C. I know that's one of those Protestant/Catholic sticking points. You know, who is the Pope anyway and why do those Catholics allow him so many unilateral decisions? And of course, that's not to mention the corruption & the politics within the Church! Like there's not equal corruption and politics on many Protestant church boards. And on school boards and fundraising committees and non-profit foundations. I think that's more human than anything.

And for me, I like having a Church with a Pope. It means that there's strong leadership, and I like that in an organization. I've been involved in enough groups to know that the long-term health and longevity of any group often depends on someone, hopefully the best qualified, but someone to make firm, unapologetic decisions and for the other members of the group to recognize those decisions as final. This is how I see the Pope.

Then there's confession. I am excited about confession. I often wonder what turns so many people off about confession. To me, it seems like one of the best ways to alleviate your guilt about something you wish you hadn't done. It seems like it would naturally provide accountability. I wonder if I am still naive in my ignorance of the process of confession. I wonder if a year from now I'll look back on these words with the same bemused shake of the head that I do when I read anything I wrote about parenting before I had children.

So I have these cultural similarities with the Catholic Church, and have had them ever since I became a parent, perhaps before that. My parents and grandparents were extremely family-oriented. Grace and forgiveness were the status quo, not drama and fighting.

And I also see parts of the Catholic faith that align very well with my own spiritual truths. In other words, the way I have interpreted the Bible is quite similar to the way the Church has interpreted the Bible. I like the focus on charity, giving up our materialistic tendencies (or greed), loving one another, peace, and grace. And there are several traditions that help facilitate a closer relationship to our Creator and that help strengthen my principles.

But what about the practices & beliefs that I don't understand? What about the ones that seem, well...weird?

Why can't priests marry? Many saints had families. Why can't priests have a family?

Why are babies baptized at birth instead of later, past the age of reason, by choice? Should people not decide to follow Jesus (as the song goes)?

And then there's the Eucharist. In the Protestant Church, you take an unleavened cracker and a little tiny cup of grape juice as instructed at the last supper to remember the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.

"This do in remembrance of me."

At my childhood church, this was written in fancy gold lettering across the podium where our preacher gave his sermons. It was very clear that this was a representation only - it was in memory. of the last supper. Our deacons passed trays of communion from the ends of each row. You took a little cracker out of the bowl then passed it on. Next came the juice. You took your tiny little cup of grape juice from the inside of the tray, where it sat with the other little cups in individual cup holders. You drank it in one quick gulp, then put the empty cup in a tiny cup holder on the outside ring of the tray. You were supposed to be thinking about the last supper or the death of Christ on the cross or the rising on Easter morning during communion. You were supposed to be reverent.

To tell the truth, I was never quite sure what I was supposed to be thinking about during communion. I knew I was supposed to feel closer to Jesus or God during that time but I never did. I knew I was supposed to be more quiet, and I was, but people still talked during communion. People talked a lot during the service at my childhood church. They would whisper, but in the same way that people whisper over the loud thumping speakers in a movie theater.

I was never quite sure why I had to be more reverent, but I knew everyone else acted that way so I did too. In reality, I mostly liked communion because the crackers and grape juice tasted good. I was usually fairly hungry by this point in the service, and communion was a nice little treat that broke up the service. I liked the trays that were passed, especially the juice one. I thought the little tiny cups were cool.

I guess we were all sort of supposed to imagine communion as if we too were at the last supper, and then we were to feel sadness for what was coming next. Why not joy though? Why solemn reverence instead of shining joy? I don't know.

This morning at Mass I came to see the Eucharist (the Catholic communion counterpart) as a whole 'nother thing altogether.

So in the Catholic church, the Eucharist is not simply a remembrance of Christ, but it is Christ. I learned early on that apparently, this distinction held a great deal of significance. I didn't understand why. Actually, I inwardly rolled my eyes every time it came up and thought, "Whatever. Sure, yeah, ok. I'll keep my real thoughts to myself but....whatever."

But this morning, I came to see that the difference is truly that significant. And it's not as silly (crazy?) as it first sounds.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the crackers and wine, the Eucharist, really does become the body and blood of Christ. This means that when the priest blesses the crackers and wine, they now become Christ. I know, I know. Let's just say.

Well then, let's put them up in front of the church and offer them to each person who comes to receive them.

In other words, Jesus Christ himself has now entered the building.

You are allowed to get up off your seat and stand in line with everybody else to get the opportunity to commune (in communion, see?) with him. When you approach him, you kneel. You kneel because you are in supplication to him.

This becomes an enormous privilege. Rather than simply passing a tray, passively, trying to commune spiritually in your heart, you have a tangible object at the front of the church. You don't have to try so hard. He's right there!

You don't have to think (as surely I'm not the only one who thinks such things.), "I wish I could be closer to God but I can't find the words to pray. Is he even listening anyway? Is he even there? Where is this airy, ethereal, wispy God hanging out anyhow?"

Well he's right there, at the table at the front of the church. Better yet, you get to go up there. You get to kneel down there, without looking silly. Without feeling weird, wondering why you're kneeling when God might not even be paying attention. He's right there! Of course he's paying attention.

Do you see how that works? Do you see how taking an intangible somewhere-out-there albeit loving being and bringing them to a tangible right-in-front-of-you object has enormous power to connect and bring communion?

Now add to that the fact that you can actually consume this tangible object. Well, now you get to leave with Christ inside you. Inside! You get to take him with you.

I feel silly to admit this, out loud, in a published sorta way, but when I got this concept this morning, finally, when it clicked, I was speechless. I felt shaky. I got up, of course, and went to the front of the church. I'm not baptized Catholic so I'm not allowed to take communion there. But I'm allowed to go up and receive a blessing from the Priest. I usually don't go up at all, but how could I not go up today, after realizing that I had an opportunity to be so near to Jesus himself?

So I went. I stood in line. I was actually excited. I did not feel crazy. I was still speechless. I stood right next to the Eucharist, next to Jesus. I liked being near. I went back and sat down in my seat. I was reverent. And it wasn't on purpose.