In my early years, I was not raised with religion. I couldn’t even tell you what church my parents’ families raised them in, beyond some flavor of Protestant. When I asked my dad what religion we were, after kids in kindergarten asked me, he smirkingly told me we were “hedonists,” which I fully believed was a legitimate, recognized Christian denomination and claimed as my faith until one of my teachers quietly told me to stop telling everyone that.
Although my father’s description of himself as a hedonist was definitely accurate, I, surrounded by Catholicism in New Orleans, yearned desperately to go to Mass and wear a plaid uniform skirt and saddle oxfords. My friends at the public elementary school I attended would go down the street to St. Dominic’s every Wednesday for what they called “CCD” and although they grumbled about it and told tales of nuns making kids kneel on rice until their knees bled, I was still jealous – of their shared experience, of their sense of community, and then – when they made their first communions – of their pretty white dresses and flower crowns.
I never did get my wish to be a Catholic schoolgirl, but several years after my parents divorced, my mom decided she missed going to church and so we joined some friends one Sunday morning at the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, an Episcopal church across from The Mushroom on Broadway, and it became our spiritual home for the rest of my childhood. I was even baptized there at the ripe old age of 11.
I didn’t get a school uniform or a flower crown, but the Chapel, as we called it, did have a lot of what I’d been seeking: rituals, camaraderie, a Sunday school teacher whom we made fun even though we secretly loved her, Lessons and Carols every Christmas, field trips with the Episcopal Young Churchpeople to play mini-golf. I even dated the priest’s son for a year in high school, and to this day, I am still friends with many of the No Longer Young Churchpeople. My mom’s funeral was held at the Chapel years after we’d both stopped attending with any regularity, and they welcomed me back without question. It felt comfortably familiar at a terribly uncomfortable time – the same smell of incense and wood polish, the same slant of light through the same stained-glass windows, the same ceiling boards I’d counted as a child when I was supposed to be paying attention to the sermon.
Now, in my 40s, I’m not a regular church-goer. There is a lot about organized religion that I don’t love, even though I still consider myself Episcopalian and even though my children were baptized Episcopalian and have attended or still attend Episcopalian schools (one even gets to wear the plaid skirt I so coveted as a child). We go to church for Ash Wednesday and Easter and Christmas, but we are not in the pews every weekend as a family.
But despite all of that, I do still observe Lent every year – making a sacrifice for all 40 days and avoiding meat on Friday … except during 2020 when the whole world had gone crazy and a friend dropped some boudin balls off on our porch and I eagerly ate three because I had no idea that it was Friday as days of the week had lost all meaning.
Besides that, though, which I’m sure God would forgive, I actually take Lent pretty seriously. Even though I’m not sure precisely what I believe, I do know that sacrifice makes us more grateful. (I also know it’s a bit of a stretch to call eating seafood in New Orleans a sacrifice.) I know that it’s good to test our limits on occasion. I know that shared rituals build community.
And if nothing else, I know that after Carnival season, a period in which I and everyone else in the city join my father as “practicing hedonist,” my liver and my waistline can both use all the help they can get.
A blessed Lent to everyone who observes this time – and to everyone else, please enjoy the fish plates!
For more Eve, check out her blog “Joie d’Eve” on Tuesday mornings at myneworleans.com
