#asherwritings

There are too many inconsistencies in this world for that God to be the One.  So I’ve told myself again and again over the years, since the first time I saw my father work magic and felt something inside myself stir in response.  Zduhac blood, father told me, and my mother stole me away to envelop me with the holiness of the Church, to see me sanctified and baptised, to make me a child of her God.  I believe there is one God.  I believe He is both loving and wrathful.  I do not believe He is described in the Bible.  I do not believe Catholicism holds all the truths of spirituality -- only some.

My skin is reddened, aching, sensitive to the water beating hot upon it.  He asked to join me.  I told him no.  I told him to leave.  I told him to wait for me.  He said he has waited for me, and he always will, and when the door closed I pressed my forehead to the tiles, praying for strength.  

If the God I know is the true God, then there is no salvation for me.  There is no Heaven.  I do not have time for the sacrament of confession before I must leave, and even if I did, I’m not repentant.  I am greedy.  I wish this weekend were one of hundreds.  I hunger for more time so that we might fall into each other once again.

In steam so thick it holds my body like a lover, I dress.  Fabric clings to me.  I can’t step out there before him nude, not again, not when my body will betray me.  And when I emerge, he does an admirable job of hiding how his expression falls.  I pray I do the same.  “I have to leave,” I tell him.  Our mother tongue suits me well, and when I step out of here I’m certain I’ll forget to speak English again, that clunky language I still stumble over speaking.  “You can stay here as long as you like.”

He doesn’t want to ask me to stay.  I see him struggle with holding back the words.  He doesn’t want to hear me say no again.  But he asks, and I answer, and the earth between us cracks.

There is one more demand I have to make of him.  “When I die, you must leave my spirit in peace.  Don’t try to contact me.  Don’t disturb my rest.  Swear it.”

“You won’t die,” he says.

“Some day, I will.”  For all the strength I have, I can’t tell him I know my end is coming.  I know what waits for me in Spain, and what business I have left undone.  I told him only that I had a mess to clean up, and that is the truth -- a fraction of it, at least.

And he says, “I will swear to leave your spirit in peace if you swear you will return to me.”

I swear it. 

I’m lying.

He swears it.

I pray he speaks truth.

What I cannot say, what I must not say, is that I have lived through four papacies now, with Francis being the fifth, and they have all been the same.  They all preach old, tired beliefs our Church can no longer claim to be the will of God as expressed in our Holy Book, and ones that are growing rapidly out-of-date in a world that no longer wishes to see their fellow human being as lesser than themselves for simple, stupid reasons.  If we are all children of God, and I absolutely believe we are, then none of us is any greater than the other.  None of us is more deserving of salvation and love than any other.  The Church is becoming irrelevant and electing a Pope who upholds traditional, narrow-minded interpretations of his fellow man is not going to win us any more popularity, but if the Church cannot even acknowledge the need for change within its own ranks, how can it do so in the world at large?

I am having thoughts I have not had since Romania.  Since her. I am not thinking of her -- nor others -- but rather the nature of celibacy.  Long have I questioned this most basic tenet of the priesthood, and long have I railed against it.  Having sexual thoughts and interactions has never lessened my love of God; it has only enhanced my love of the world.  I know there are those against whom intercourse is used as a weapon, and those who are ruled by it.  I know some of those victims are associated with the Church, and so too are some of those offenders.  Will Francis change this?  Can he change a man’s nature?  Is it in a man’s nature to hurt others?  I think it is in a man’s nature to seek physical fulfillment as well as spiritual, and the Church’s denial of this is part of a complex, disturbing problem.

I stood in Mihai’s washroom the night before I moved out, twelve hours before I left for India, and I looked at myself in the mirror.  He had said to Miss McKeogh of me that the man before you now is not the man he was twenty years ago.  

The man I was twenty years ago shared his body with anyone he wanted.  He wore eyeliner and lipstick when he wished.  He wore stockings, he tied his shirts up on his chest, he let others call him beautiful and felt no guilt when this pleased him.  He kissed not with chaste fear of being struck down by the hand of God for any ill thought crossing his mind, but rather with a warmth the man I am now longs for.  Do I sin in coveting that openness once more?  Do I sin in being jealous of that boy?  He made errors, but he atoned for them.  He made difficult choices and turned his back on his earthly father for his heavenly one.  Should I not revel in that?  Should I not be glad I turned my back on a lifestyle I must now preach is the path to eternal damnation?

Is it not a greater sin to preach what I do not believe in?  Miss McKeough asked me about “wanking”.  I told her it is a mortal sin and I do not indulge in it.  I lied.  I told that young woman, Bryn, I wished to be seen as “sexy and untouchable”.  She reminded me I should not say those things.  They’re half a lie, too.  I wish I did not have to be untouchable.

I have to watch my words and be less of a man to be more of a representative of God.  I have to lie, to be holy.

So when people ask me what I think of Francis, what I want to say is:

Habemus Papam.  Habemus dolor.