Month: July 2013

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Side Trip, Kateri Shrine

So last week I did something a little different and took a small road trip to Fonda and Auriesville. There are several shrines out there honoring Saint Kateri Tekakwitha I’ve been wondering about for some time.

First some background on Kateri Tekakwitha:
She was a Native American woman of part Mohawk and part Algonquin decent. She lived from 1656-1680. Her mother was baptized Catholic but died of smallpox when Tekakwitha was only four. Smallpox also took her father, and wrecked her eyesight. (Tekakwitha means, ‘reaches out with hands’ and was given to describe her way of walking tentatively with hands out.) After her parents died, Tekakwitha went to live with her aunt and uncle. They were opposed to Catholics, but put up with priests living in the village because of a treaty at the time which ordered them to do so. Tekakwitha eventually went to the priests to ask for baptism against the wishes of her aunt and uncle. She was given the saint name Catherine- Kateri in her tongue. After her public acceptance of Catholicism, Kateri found her village a difficult place to stay, so she moved to a more Catholic-friendly settlement in Canada. She was apparently very pious, often fasting and hurting herself as means of penance. At one point she kept thorns in her sleeping mat. She devoted her life to Jesus and remained a virgin until her death, refusing marriage.
She died rather young and seems to have simply wasted away. I guess it’s not that surprising with all the painful things she did to herself. Even the priests note that her frequent penances seemed to be harming her health. After her death, it’s said her skin miraculously transformed and her smallpox scars faded away. Kateri Tekakwitha has recently been officially upgraded from ‘blessed’ to ‘saint’.

Kateri is honored by the Auriesville shrine and has her own shrine in Fonda. We visited both on a ridiculously hot day in which our car had no air conditioning. Both shrines had a museum with some Native American historical stuff. Because Natives lived here so long and were so diverse, it’s hard to get an idea what they were like from a quick walk-through of several rooms. I am bad with European history, but America before Europeans is all one big mish-mash to me. Because I live in NY I remember hearing about the groups that make up the Iroquois and the fact that their enemies were called the Algonquins. Kateri was part Mohawk (Iroquois) and part Algonquin. Her mother was an Iroquois captive of the Algonquins and may have had very little choice about the marriage. It’s really interesting to imagine all the elements at work in Kateri’s world. Cultures are mixed together in her and different traditions. How did she make sense of it all? Why did she come to choose Catholicism? How do Native Americans feel about her sainthood? I got very few answers from my actual visit to the two shrines. Most of the stories about Kateri were very ‘fairy tale’ sounding, similar to the legends we have of Saint Valentine or Saint Patrick. Some of them were probably whitewashed for general consumption. And speaking of whitewashing, one version of the events after Kateri died explains that her skin turned “so beautiful and so white”. I realize the color white is symbolic in religious literature, but idolizing whiteness especially as a direct reference to skin color becomes really problematic. I’m really not sure how I feel about Kateri. This one definitely deserves more research and maybe a return trip to the shrines/museums.

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Gluten Free Worship

In my travels and reading about religion I have yet to come across someone describing the difficulties of being gluten-free in church. I recently went gluten-free for a short time, as recommended by my doctor, and I found it really difficult to avoid all the gluteny pitfalls. One of these pitfalls that really caught me by surprise was taking holy communion. Drinking either juice or wine and eating bread are a huge part of the experience for most Christians. It’s a way of connecting to Christ- often described in terms that sound mystical. If you believe the bread becomes the body of Christ, either literally or symbolically, taking that into your body is very special. Christ enters Christians during communion. Because Christ and God are one and the same, that’s a pretty big deal. Some people (I’m thinking of devout Catholic saints and such) get an ecstatic high from taking communion. Because of my background, I place emphasis on the importance of communion. Going gluten-free means avoiding anything that might be made with wheat. That means not taking communion, unless you know for sure what ingredients were used for the bread/cracker/wafer. And because I was raised Catholic, avoiding communion has other implications: 1) It could mean I’m non-Catholic or 2) It could mean I’ve committed some grave sin and haven’t yet confessed it to a priest. It’s hard to skip communion at any church without thinking of these two things. I do think alot about first impressions and assumptions. On some level it definitely bugs me that those around me may think I’m sinful or not a Christian (which in many cases also equals sinful).

Aside from the difficulties surrounding communion there is also the coffee hour problem. Churches that do a ‘coffee hour’ generally offer both coffee and snacks. The snacks are usually cakes, breads, crackers and cookies. All made with wheat and not so good if one is avoiding gluten. As a newcomer you get offered stuff as a matter of welcome. ‘Take a pamphlet.’ ‘Have a cookie.’ ‘Did you get coffee?’ ‘Julie made that cake, try some!’ The hardest part for me was blending politeness and discretion. I don’t like coffee and couldn’t eat cake. Should I say all that? It’s none of their business really. They don’t need to get all the details of my trial and error messing with my diet saga. But I like having something to do with my hands. And I don’t want to seem rude in not accepting their hospitality. So I mostly just ate around the gluten. At one place I had nothing but juice. There was a church that had strawberries- I took a bunch of those. At a third place I ate the cheese part of a cheesecake square and tossed out the crust. This would of course be less of a problem if I became a member at any of these churches. Then I could find out whether the bread used at communion is gluten-free or not.

Currently I’m off the diet and can have wheat again. But the experiment was a good one in terms of getting another facet of certain churchgoers experiences. If I stumble across any interesting stories about communion and gluten, I’ll take note and share here.

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Church #35, Unionville Reformed Church

Date: 6/30/13

Church name/type: Unionville Reformed Church (sign out from reads: Union Dutch Reformed Church), RCA

Pastor: Tom Kendall

Style of worship: Short structured service common to reformed churches- did not seem particularly uptight regarding formalities eg: prayer time was open to congregational intentions

Overall Impression: Good and friendly

Thoughts:
Well, another week, another Reformed Church. As a whole, I’m still very much liking the denomination. This group had a very easy friendliness going on. I felt welcomed as a matter of course. People seemed genuinely happy to be there and happy that I was there.

I thought the message was remarkably cohesive, especially given what I found out later – the pastor is near 90. Because it was so near to the Fourth of July there was some amount of crossover with the sermon. The pastor cited several times how lucky we are. He mentioned all the good things we have access to and the fact that we worship whatever way we like and no one bothers us. He said we thank God that wars are past and we have come through ok on the other side. In this vein he referenced December 7th- I checked that date and it was clear he was referring to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It’s really a much different feel to hear about us victorious in war when it comes from someone of an older set. It removes from now; separates. And WWII has many more implications as compared to our most recent wars. To hear an older person talk about winning a war doesn’t have the same intimidation as the same words coming from a young person who you feel could still actually get up and go fight.

There was alot in the message about ourselves having a covenant with God. Every day, pastor said, we remake this covenant with God. Every day we say yes. That’s a good way to look at commitment. You cannot say ok once and expect matters to see to themselves. You have to remind yourself what you meant to do and them do it. It’s the same way for weight loss, relationships, keeping a secret, or whatever you commit to doing.

I suppose that with a message about committing to God, there is automatically going to be a message about the opposite. There was a quick reference to atheism being on the rise, but no follow up. I’d guess that this was supposed to be taken as an automatic negative. I kind of wanted to engage in some conversation afterwards about this, but wound up mostly describing the blog to someone who doesn’t use the Internet. It does bug me that there are Christians who seem to think atheists are a bunch of bitter, selfish jerks. That’s not my experience. I am however willing to partly forgive the atheists=negative sentiment, because of what it was followed by. The pastor said, “One wonders how so many called Christians use God’s name so indiscriminately.” This is a bit better. Christians aren’t getting automatically lumped into the ‘good’ category based on name alone. We can’t just assume God loves us best and all we do us golden. Citing God’s name doesn’t make us right. We actually have to follow the things Jesus said. Take care of your neighbor. Help the poor and hurting. I can hear all of this in the pastor’s statement. And maybe I’m projecting a bit, but hey, that’s how it speaks to me. I guess I’m starting to see sermons as one might see a more abstract piece of art or film. I’m drawn to the idea that spoken words are no longer yours after you speak them. They are the property of the listener. You can explain what you meant, but the listener hears what they hear. I liked the places this sermon took me because of the way it made me think and what I heard in it.

Go to church, get a plant!: A woman was giving away free baby tomato plants. I took only one (although I was told to take more if I liked) because plants sometimes die in my care. I got home and planted it in a bare spot, where it was promptly destroyed by a chipmunk who likes digging in lightly packed soil. Oh well.