ever abandon us - that the seeming meaninglessness of our world was the limit of our understanding, but never, never the limit of His.
Words fail. They have to fail. How can I describe this trust and this abandon, this realization that He was capable of righting every wrong? Ah, I have to say more than that.
How can I describe the realization that He was the Divine Safety Net through which nothing could accidentally fall?
This is a mystical thing that I'm trying to analyze; it is a transcendent moment when one senses with all one's faculties that the love of God is the air we breathe.
It was only as I felt this love and this trust, that I realized I believed in Him. It was only in love and trust that belief followed - and all became part of the complete surrender: go to Him, go with Him. Pass out of resistance into Him. This will not be easy; this will not bring comfort. This is not going to make you feel good. This is going to be hard! But this is where you must go.
I mean how in the world was I to live with Roman Catholicism again and all of its many rules? I wasn't even sure anymore what those rules were. How was I going to go back to a religion that my sophisticated friends despised and deni-grated, that some of the finer minds I'd known regarded with blatant contempt? How was I to become a card-carrying member of a church that condemned my gay son?
No, it was not the path of least resistance; it was not a falling into simple happiness. And no irresistible surge of emotional triumph carried me through this decision. If anything it took a draining stamina, to get up from the desk and to move towards Him. It certainly took an act of faith that He would somehow make this return possible for me, He would show me how to live once more with creeds and codes that had once driven me half out of my mind.
It didn't really matter how wretched it was going to be. I had to go! I wasn't going to deny Him any longer. I was going home.
And here is where the first "miracle" of that year comes into play. Bear with me. This I have never described before and it deserves describing.
I wanted Him! I wanted to be with Him, and talk to Him, and kneel before Him, and open my soul to Him, and the place that I sought Him was indeed that ancient Roman Catholic Church.
But, as I have said, I didn't know anything about the recent history of that church. And, as a result, I was sublimely ignorant of a multitude of things the knowledge of which just might have crippled me and confused me at this crucial moment and left me stunned and unable to proceed.
It was a beautiful ignorance. It was the true miracle of which I speak.
Had I known, for example, of the church's firm stand against the ordination of women, of the documents in which its teachings have been worked out and the degree to which these statements have been declared unchangeable, I might have been far too disheartened to proceed.
Had I known of the extent of the annulment process and how elaborate it had become, and how common, and how often Catholic marriages of ten to twenty years were being declared null and void, and never to have existed, I would probably have been too perplexed to know which way to turn.
Had I known the extent of the ever broadening pedophilia scandal in my church, I might have been too saddened and discouraged to take a step.
Had I read any of the Theology of the Body, with its strong emphasis on gender roles and gender complementarity, I might have been utterly brokenhearted and unable to move on.
Had I known of the bitter polarization between the right and left in my church after Vatican II, I might have been repelled and wounded, and unable to draw close to the church doors.
But the miracle was: I didn't know any of these things!
Not a single one of them.
And I didn't even know the name of the present pope.
All I knew - thankfully and with tears - was that the great and ancient Roman Catholic Church of my childhood was still there! And that seemed the miracle for the moment, not what I didn't know.
And so I went back to God through the