The Clam Rampant

Kasia March 5th, 2007

I think I just had a divine tickle on the tack to take in telling my family about my impending conversion. The title of the post is a quote attributed to St. Francis de Sales, which I came across at Casting Out Into the Deep. (Curtsy to Brittany, who is planning to enter a Salesian convent in August.)

The full quote (or perhaps they were two separate quotes that say the same thing) is: Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly. I don’t think I could have said it better myself.

One of the chief complaints I have heard about Catholicism, and Christianity in general, is that there’s undue stress on conformity, that one can’t be an individual. (Mind you, I mostly heard that complaint from atheists and Unitarians, but I did hear it quite a bit.) I think that’s a gross oversimplification.

We are called to conform ourselves and our lives to Christ. So there is a strong element of conformity in the Christian life. However, the paradox of the Christian life – or at least one of the paradoxes – is that by submitting ourselves to God and His will for us, we are free to become more fully ourselves as He intended us to be. At least that’s what I get out of it.

I had an interesting childhood. I grew up Unitarian-Universalist, which basically meant that at six and seven years of age I was running around telling everyone that I was a free thinker. How did I know I was a free thinker? Why, my parents and Sunday School teachers told me so, of course!   

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t fit in well at school. It wasn’t just that I was nerdier than the whole Head of the Class cast combined (in fact, the only celebrity I’ve ever been told I bear a resemblance to was the ten-or-eleven-year-old Janice from that show – not much of a compliment, let me tell you), though that didn’t help. It wasn’t just that I was a crybaby either, though that also didn’t help. It had more to do with:

a) No one had ever heard of my religion. By the time I got to high school people were asking me if it was like Unity. It isn’t, at least not much. They’ve both got the über-hippie shiny-happy-people-holding-hands kind of theme going, but Unity is much closer to being Christian than any American UU congregation I’ve heard of or visited. But for simplicity’s sake, I finally started saying “Yeah, it’s a little like that.”

b) My mother made Gloria Steinem look like Phyllis Schlafly, and if I believed in reincarnation I’d say my father was the new incarnation of John Stuart Mill. Particularly once we moved to Oakland County, which is not noted for its liberalism, the influences of my Bay-Area-progressive mother and my die-hard-union father made for some interesting discussions with peers and teachers.

Don’t get me wrong – I love both of my parents, and I love my step-parents too. I love them all dearly. And not everything they taught me was bad, not by a long shot. But more on that later.

c) Growing up in the family and the church that I did, I developed a really skewed perception of the world and of people. It blew my mind the first time I heard someone defending Ronald Reagan. I kid you not. In fact, many days that still blows my mind. I just try not to get into those conversations, because I don’t think I have sufficiently objective information even now to intelligently assess the Reagan presidency. One day when I have time, I’ll dig in and do some research; for now, I just change the subject.

Again, there are some benefits to having had the experiences I did. For one thing, I learned to love Jesus in His distressing disguise before I even heard of Jesus.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that my upbringing ensured that I was, at best, on the fringes of my peers’ society. So starting at age 12, when I had the opportunity to attend UU youth conferences, I leapt at the chance.

The first one was disappointing. Honestly, so were the ones that followed. I still yearned for them, because I was so determined to fit in SOMEwhere. And the people were fine. But I never had the experience of being able to say, as did my stepsister after her first conference, “I found my people.” Much like in school, my social networks at conferences were more about least-worst fits than anything else; it wasn’t so much that we had a lot in common, it was more that we had the one crucial thing in common, that we were all misfits in some way or another.

Again, there were people both at conferences and at school whom I loved dearly, and whom I still love. But I never had that feeling of the piece clicking into the puzzle.

I was determined to fit in, because I knew that I didn’t fit right elsewhere. And ever since then, my life has been spent searching for where I fit. I’ve made some great friends along the way, and met some marvelous people. But even when I clicked with a particular person, I didn’t click with the larger corporate entity, whatever it was. And I think the reason for that is simple: I wasn’t being who I was.

So I’m going to stick with letters/cards to people, telling them of my conversion, and I am going to highlight St. Francis de Sales’ commentary.

I finally found ‘my people.’ I finally found where I belong. And I found it by trying over the past four years or so to conform myself to Christ, and in so doing, by becoming more fully myself.

Blessed be Jesus Christ! May He help me to ever be faithful to Him, and may He guide me as I strive to be who I am and be that well.

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