Going Back to Church: A Flailing Roman Catholic's Jaded Perspective

From the moment I saw the title, a shiver ran up my spine. "I have to go to Church?" After a series of difficult incidents in my life, as well as consistent disagreements with doctrine, I'd been refusing to go to mass since I was about 19. Needless to say, I was none too thrilled that I was asked to go to a show with this title. Still, as a UTR staff member, I was obligated to attend services. So, I held my breath and hoped it would be "anti-church." To my surprise, it wasn't at all.
From the moment the lights went out, and I heard the preacher in the darkness, I immediately felt the familiarity I'd been avoiding for years. Yet something was different. The preacher wasn't talking about the evils of American Idol (yes I'd actually heard that at mass) he asked us to look at our lives and realize how unhappy we are. Now, I'm a New Yorker. Unhappiness is like breathing to me. But something in the sincerity in which he offered God as a solution to that unhappiness, made my ears perk up.
I have blamed fate and God for my suffering for years then suddenly this "preacher" made me come to understand that I am this way, because I choose to be this way. Suddenly I began to feel solidarity with playwright, Young Jean Lee. It was apparent in her writing that she too, like many of us, had struggled with faith in religious establishments but also with her pursuit of happiness. Instead of wallowing in doubt and sadness, she decided to create a forceful yet joyful, celebration of faith. More than that, she is making herself and all of those around her look at their lives and admit that we are all so very much full of ourselves and full of crap. The preacher exclaims at one point: "Your spiritual bankruptcy is reflected in your endlessly repeating conversations about your struggles to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit junk food, quit caffeine, quit unsatisfying jobs and relationships—and this is what you talk about when you are trying to be deep!" People around me were laughing but I thought solemnly, "Wow, I am so that guy." Later in the show, one of the "reverends" asks for prayers and guidance as she continues in her struggles of being a whiner. That one hit pretty close to home as well.
It is the constant ingratitude we carry around that is discussed so passionately in Church. I was in tears in the moment when another "reverend" began to pray and thanked God for her limbs. I had never heard a simpler prayer and it made me think of how I look for praise for all the good I do, but am never grateful for all the good that I have. I felt like a prize idiot. Yet, for the first time in a long time, I also felt great.
Church forced me to look in the mirror and say, "Hey, it's really not so bad." It forced me to recognize that perhaps my abandoning of faith was just an excuse to abandon the poor choices I have made. It forced me say, "Get over it already."
In truth, Church hasn't really changed my mind about the church itself, but it revealed to me sides of myself I was hiding from. Sides that we all hide from. Church revived me from being a cynical non-believer to someone with hope and perhaps even faith. In what, I'm not sure. Maybe God, maybe even theater. Maybe just me. If that is the case... it is about time.

Katie Courtien
UTR Press Corps Volunteer