My Grandmom Gert’s last letter to me before she died said, You gotta believe, Chris. Chris. Only my favorite people call me Chris.
I have the somewhat distressing task of writing a letter to my niece on her confirmation. I have not been a great godmother. I don’t discuss the Catholic faith with her, or the Holy Spirit, or pray at all. What I find myself wanting to say are all the wrong things.
Would I start it with, Dear Elizabeth, You gotta believe.
I don’t believe that we gotta do anything. But I understand why my Grandmom wished that for me. It certainly does quell life’s sorrows in a different way than non-believers experience. I feel selfish when I flip flop on what I believe.
Would I tell her about my own confirmation? Dressed in a red robe, with my short brown hair and soft brows. It was effortless for me to feel some kind of connection to God in the church I grew up in. I felt as though my confirmation was indeed confirming that connection. I was comforted by the loss I had already experienced at that point: that in this act of faith, I’d never be without the light that bled divinely through stained-glass windows and hit those chestnut pews so elegantly. Sometimes I wonder, had we never moved, had I never been bullied as badly as I was, had I leaned on my faith a little more? Who would I be within that church? Would I have sung like my Grandfather, or would I still have drifted?
What is faith within the context of confirmation, and a letter like this to my sixteen-year-old niece?
I don’t know. That feels important to admit first. I don’t know if faith comes from God, family, habit, or loneliness. I don’t know if some people are born with more of it, the way others are born creative and calm.
What I would want for her is not obedience in faith. Not the brittle kind of goodness that comes from fear. I’d want her to keep a relationship with wonder. To not become too impressed with cynicism, which is often just woundedness dressed up as intelligence. To understand that reverence can be a form of protection.
So much of life pressures us to harden early. Faith, whatever else it is, resists sorting, unlike almost everything else in life that demands to belong to a thing. Faith in anything asks for room. It asks for patience.
So I suppose, my Grandmom’s letter was enough. Even though through my tears I thought, In what, without you here?
Thoughts?