Day 52: St. David's Episcopal Church

The Mission at sunset, circa 2008. Love playing tourist with the bestie.

On this day 12 years ago, I got married in St. David's Episcopal Church. It was at this church that I got my first deep look into Protestantism, or as someone told me, Catholicism-light. 

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Bronx, New York. My maternal grandparents were married here.

Marco showing me around Dublin.

Having been raised Catholic, and being an active member of my chosen parish for most of my life, it should have been a challenging choice to be married in another tradition. However, the local diocese was especially conservative and my best friend was not considered worthy of the church. Personally, I feel confident that sleeping with a consenting adult of the same gender is way less of an issue than, say, being a murderer, but apparently the Catholic God of that region was all about forgiving unless you made the indecent choice to acknowledge your predetermined sexual preferences or be female with an opinion on how your body was going to function. 

One of the priests I hoped might marry us, Father Tim, couldn't make it because we were married on Palm Sunday weekend and the start of HolyWeek is just too busy a time to travel. This is us together a few years later in Conway, South Carolina. Still the only priest I've danced on a pool table with. :)

Our local Episcopal Church had no such qualms, actively preaching that all who came to the table of the Lord were welcome. It also was a huge win for me that Reverend MaryKay was a genuinely compassionate and understanding preacher and human. Aside from sequencing, she allowed us to basically design a musical and traditions-based ceremony that we believed would serve as the foundation of our marriage. She even allowed a priest from OLQP in Arlington to co-preside.

A manger made with my 4th grade kiddos for advent in 2014. My mother-in-law helped me build the folding frame, my students made all the clothespin people and helped glue on the walls. All of the sticks and bark were fallen from trees on church grounds. We used coconut straw to avoid allergy issues.

The kids painted this map while we learned the story.

Whether it was coming up to the hospital in Baltimore to pray with us before my husband's brain surgery, allowing me to explore devotions through cinematic metaphors, encouraging my outlandish ideas for Sunday school, or giving me space to lift my voice in song, the St. David's community was a spiritually enriching source of comfort for the better part of a decade.

When I was feeling desperate, guilty, and unfaithful for considering a permanent spearation from my spouse, I was counseled that vows taken in good faith did not require me to stop being a whole person and that it was disrespectful to God to stay put in a situation where I could no longer even spot my inner light.

Easter bread, made using a recipe from Ginny, the music director at Little Flower Catholic Church in Bethesda, Maryland while I was in grad school, who became a wonderful friend.

I'm grateful that I learned about the world from a different religious lens because it helped me recognize that my spiritual life is elastic and can contain multitudes of ways of praying, serving others, and receiving love from my higher power. Today, I rarely go into an actual church building - and truly miss the connections forged through common beliefs. Except, I'm not entirely sure what I believe anymore; just that I know I do believe. More than that, though, I miss the music. Choral songs in the Catholic and contemporary Christian traditions make my heart swell and sing. So I stop on KLove when there is a song playing and am grateful to fill my ears with joy; but that's a post for another day.

Keep coming back!