Whatever...Love Is Love Read online

  Since she had no label to define her or her family, I said to her, “I guess you’re a whatever. And your family is a whatever, too, just like mine.” We shared a classic aha moment. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, she and I found ourselves beaming with pride, in tears about our amazing families.

  I realized that this was a conversation that needed to be shared. I wanted my 12-year-old son to be proud of his family and not think that our story was something to be ashamed of or was so unusual. I wanted anyone who read the articles I wrote, and lived in a situation that was not traditional, to know they weren’t alone.

  The label of “partner” as only your sexual partner is outdated. An updated label of partner might be anyone who is significant to you in some fundamental way. The definition of the family is changing, too, and I hope it’s working to bring people together with a new respect for different kinds of relationships.

  So I would like to consider myself a whatever, as Jackson said. Whomever I love, however I love them, whether they sleep in my bed or not, or whether I do homework with them or share a child with them, “love is love.” And I love our modern family. They are the air that keeps me in flight, and I would be lost without them. Maybe, in the end, a modern family is just a more honest family.

  So rethink that first question for a minute. Who is your partner?

  2

  AM I A CATHOLIC?

  Do you consider yourself religious? Or maybe not religious but spiritual? What do these terms actually mean to you?

  When I was 18 and in my freshman year at Villanova University, I met Father Ray Jackson, a 62-year-old Augustinian priest who taught a class I was taking called “An Introduction to Peace and Justice Education.”

  He was a former marine, six foot two, with bright blue eyes and a wicked smile. Not only did he give me my precious black rosary beads, he also introduced me to books that radically shifted the way I perceived myself and the world.

  Father Ray was my “partner” all through my years at Villanova University.

  He was the person I had lunch with every day in the school cafeteria, where my grandmother worked as a salad bar lady. He was the one I talked to every day about my pain, my love life, and my fears. He held me when it looked like my mother might die from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. And he let me scream with rage when my dad went to rehab once again. He was the one I laughed with. He was the one I felt most comfortable with during those college years when I began questioning everyone and everything.

  In his class he asked us to write about our heroes. While the other kids wrote about Lee Iacocca and Madonna, I wrote about Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Jesus Christ. You’d think the erotic themes of Millay would be off-limits to a guy dressed in black robes with a silver crucifix hanging around his neck, but not Father Ray. I got an A on that paper. (I’ll never know if it was Millay or Jesus who swayed him.)

  Although I had been raised Catholic, I never quite believed in the full Church doctrine. That would’ve been impossible given that I believed then and now that women also have a calling to the priesthood; that sex before marriage is actually a wise thing to do; that people should get divorced if they need to; and that women and men should be able to marry members of their own gender if they want to. And I didn’t lend credence to the greatest divide of all . . . that if you weren’t baptized, like my dear Jewish aunt and uncle, you would automatically go to hell. The parables and concepts contained in the teachings of Jesus Christ, about loving your neighbor as yourself, were the things I knew in my heart to be true.

  Some of these ideas Father Ray agreed with and some he did not. He didn’t believe in abortion unless it was to save the life of the woman, or in case of a child conceived by rape. I, on the other hand, marched in every pro-choice rally in the Philadelphia area. Yet our differences didn’t deter him from being my friend. He never judged me or tried to convert me to his point of view. Father Ray was focused on caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, and making the world a better place. I think he would have liked our new pope very much.

  However, not every priest I’ve met in my life was like Father Ray.

  In my sophomore year of high school, the priest who was the head of our school met with us in the chapel every week to discuss “Christian values.” In one of the more memorable sessions, he handed all the girls yellow sheets of paper containing some provocative questions and answers:

  “Have you ever thought about sex? Then you have sinned.”

  “Have you ever had sex? Then you have sinned.”

  “Have you ever let a man feel your breast? Then you have sinned.”

  By the time I finally got to one that said, “Have you ever masturbated? Then you have sinned,” I was really upset. I raised my hand, stood up, and said, “Father, my mother is a nurse and she told us that masturbation is a normal part of sexual development.” I guess the sin of speaking up might have been worse than masturbation. He turned beet red and kicked me out of the chapel. My revenge? I didn’t even feel guilty.

  That story is why meeting Father Ray was such a revelation. He showed me that I could be Catholic and have my own point of view. Early on in his service as a priest, he raised the idea of how he believed women should be able to be members of the clergy, and was immediately “exiled” to a poor parish downtown. The revolutionary bad-boy Catholics and acolytes were his heroes. I wonder how we looked, sitting in the cafeteria together, a balding gray-haired man and an 18-year-old woman with long blond hair and black army boots. I wonder if anyone at school thought we were having an affair. We never talked about sex. I had only fooled around with one guy in my life up to that point, so it wasn’t an important topic to me or him, given that he was pretty much sleeping with God.

  Father Ray wore a white collar (sometimes) and said mass. In my eyes, those were the only things that made him a priest in the traditional sense. He was funny and compassionate and could see the good in everyone. Long before I went to Villanova, Father Ray had become close to my mother’s father, PopPop Urban. PopPop was the sacristan of the church on the campus. For those not familiar with the term, the sacristan is the safekeeper of many sacred things within the church, especially the vessel that holds the “blood of Christ” (a.k.a. the holy wine) used at communion. This was the ideal job for PopPop, who couldn’t resist a good draft beer, cheap whiskey, or free wine. But Father Ray loved PopPop for his good nature and sense of joy. Over beers at a local pub near Villanova while celebrating my graduation, Father Ray revealed that “After your PopPop left, our wine bills were cut in half!” Father Ray accepted my grandfather just as he was, despite his fondness for “the drink.”

  Mostly, Father Ray was my friend. He made me feel responsible for every minute of the life I led. He also helped me to feel not so lonely anymore. Because I grew up near the university, my friends from high school were still nearby so I never really connected with anyone at school. My friends—Kelly, Katie, Denise, and Carolyn—were and still are some of the funniest, wisest people I know. I was questing and questioning at the time for something “bigger” in life that I wasn’t finding in my peers at the university. Father Ray seemed to have so many answers. And when he didn’t have an answer, he always knew the right question to ask to get to the answer.

  The summer after freshman year, Father Ray asked me to do research on a book he was writing called Dignity and Solidarity. My first thought was “Why me? I’m a big-time sinner! Great people might be my heroes, but I have zero in common with them.” But I didn’t say any of that. Instead, I agreed. I was just in awe that a grown man would actually like me and trust me enough to help him with something so important. Father Ray brought me to the third floor of the massive library at Villanova, and opened a kind of secret door behind the last row of bookshelves.

  Inside was an entire room filled with books and a whole new world. Over that summer, I was introduced to the words of beautiful writers and revolutionary thinkers. For eight hours a day I sat paging throu
gh book after book on philosophy, spirituality, theology, and the random, great novel. There was Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s seminal book about the Holocaust. There was Elaine Pagels’s The Gnostic Gospels; Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet; Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex; and works by Susan Sontag, Hermann Hesse, St. Augustine, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Elie Wiesel, and countless others who had changed the world. I was supposed to find quotes and examples from these great books to back up Father Ray’s theories.

  I can’t believe he paid me for this. I think it was something like $12 an hour, which was an extraordinary sum for me at the time. I felt like I was ripping him off, because some days I didn’t do a thing but read Kate Millett’s The Basement.

  Father Ray was convinced that educating students on ideas of peace and justice would lead to a more peaceful world. He wrote that his mission was “to equip the student with the knowledge and sensitivity to live a life worthy of the highest aspirations of human kind.” That’s exactly what he did for me. He inspired me to learn more about how I could live a worthy life. I liked his ideas about teaching peace and justice through understanding other cultures and religions.

  Because of my work with Father Ray, I began reading more about man’s inhumanity to man, and the oppression of women. I couldn’t believe that women were still only making 73 cents to the dollar a man was making for the same job. I was enraged that one out of three women would be raped or abused in her lifetime. I was appalled that people really believed they had the right to tell me what to do with my body. So that next summer I started interning at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia. I firmly decided that I would pursue a career in law. I would be a women’s rights attorney after graduating.

  Then, as happens in most romantic comedies, a cute guy comes along and changes the course of a girl’s life. In my case his name was Drew. He was in an acting class and told me I should try it as an elective.

  Back then I had no idea you could become an actor. I thought you had to be born and raised in Hollywood, know how to sing and dance, and just naturally be glamorous. I was just another pretty face from the wrong side of the tracks outside of the Main Line of Philadelphia. My father was a disabled construction worker and my mom was a nurse.

  But I took that acting class, and in the first session I did a monologue based on a Bob Dylan song. For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the song. I dressed up like a homeless person with old newspapers and a bottle of fake booze and waxed on. I felt like I was that character—disenfranchised and alone. Immediately, I knew that acting was my calling.

  When I went to Father Ray with this newfound revelation I burst into tears. “Father!” I said in between sobs. “I don’t know what to do. I thought I was supposed to be of service to the world and help people. Now I want to act and it seems like such a selfish profession.” He just smiled and said, “Maria, you serve best by doing the thing you love most.”

  Father Ray had just given me the best advice of my life. He set me free. Soon after, I headed to New York to follow my new calling. I had $300 and two trash bags filled with clothes. Now, so many years later, I know I don’t have to live in a mud hut bandaging children to be of service. There are millions of ways to be of service to the world, and to show what I learned from Jesus’ teachings.

  After I moved to New York, Father Ray came to visit a few times. I would often go to find him in the Peace and Justice Center when I went home to see my parents in Philadelphia. He also wrote me letters that I wish to this day I had saved. He was the only person, besides my boyfriend, who was invited to my 21st birthday party at my family’s house. I have a photo of all of us from that night, beaming and celebrating.

  Father Ray was diagnosed with a brain tumor when I was 28 years old and living in Los Angeles. I flew to Philly to see him on my way to my dream trip to Africa. When I arrived, he was lying in a tiny bed in the rectory of the church. Other priests were gathered around him. He looked tired, but smiled when I entered.

  I felt honored to be there, but I was also afraid. I was feeling so much, but mostly regret at what I didn’t do for him or how I failed to become the person I thought he wanted me to be. But that was all in my head. I realize now that even if I had become someone most people would judge harshly, like a prostitute or a drug addict, it wouldn’t have mattered to him. Father loved me and accepted me.

  By the time I had arrived, Father was so weak he couldn’t even lift his hand. He asked me to feed him soup. I held the teaspoon to his lips and gently wiped the excess around his mouth.

  I tried to stay positive, tell jokes, and philosophize like we always had. I asked him if he was afraid to die; he said, “No.”

  I asked him if he was excited to die, to have a new adventure and finally meet Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and all the other cool people he had always admired. “No,” he said. And from the look in his eye I could see he was saying, “It is what it is.” To see Father Ray in all of his humanity, humility, and graciousness, his uncertainty and fear of death, changed me tremendously. I thought he was a super human in many ways. I thought that since he had dedicated himself to God, he wouldn’t be afraid to die. I saw that perhaps, no matter how much we believe, that journey into the unknown of death is a pretty scary thing.

  I was planning on taking my first trip to Africa a few days after I visited him and asked him if I should stay at home for a while longer. I was afraid he would die and I wouldn’t be there. He was adamant, though he could barely speak. “This is your dream. You have to go. I’m going to be here, don’t worry.”

  A week into my monthlong trip, I called my folks from a gigantic satellite phone from the Serengeti. The only place I could get any reception was under a baobab tree, about a mile away from where I was staying. As soon as I heard my mom’s voice, I knew. Father Ray had died the day before and I wouldn’t be able to get home in time for the funeral. Instead, I started to say a prayer under the baobab tree that rapidly became a crying rant.

  “Why did you like me?! Why did I get so lucky that you chose me of all people? Why did you have to die when I was twelve million miles away in the middle of nowhere?” I could hear him laughing all the way from heaven.

  So am I a Catholic? Let’s see. My best friend was a priest and is my son’s namesake. I do believe in the principles of Christ. But I also believe in some of the words of Buddha, Muhammad, and Yahweh. I believe in spiritual beings and angels and Sufis and any belief that is based in love. If you look beneath the surface of most religions, you will find a common thread. That thread is kindness and compassion.

  Every time I travel, I go into a church and pray to Mary, and then I light a candle for my loved ones, especially my mother. My mother was a “good” Catholic. She went to church every Sunday and prayed the rosary every day. She taught us about prayer and our angels and heaven. One of the most moving experiences of her faith was when I was 13 years old. Her father, my PopPop, had just died. My mother, father, grandmother, and the four of us kids sat by his hospital bed holding his hand and saying, “We love you, PopPop,” while he passed. We weren’t afraid. My mom always explained to us that God had a plan and that my PopPop would now be looking after us all from heaven. Even now, my siblings and I pray to PopPop when we are going through difficult times. My mother showed all of us, in her actions, the power faith has in our lives.

  My father still says he is Catholic, though my brother Chris tells another story. Chris was seven years old when our father took him out fishing on a Sunday morning. As they sat quietly in his tiny boat in the Sea Isle inlet, holding their lines in the water, my brother asked if it was okay that they were missing mass. Dad replied, “Son, this is my church.” Today, Chris says that being out on the open water is his church, too. The silence of waiting for a fish to bite is his prayer.

  As my son’s father, Dan, who was also raised Catholic, and I try to get our son into the Catholic high school that he wants to go to, I wonder if my version
of Catholicism will be acceptable. To apply, we need a letter from a pastor. But we don’t have a pastor. Still, we pray every evening and give thanks at the dinner table. My son believes God is within him and present, and that there are angels like my Aunt Maria and my PopPop, who look out for him. And yet, here we are, struggling to find a church and pastor to sign a letter saying we are Catholic. I worry that our untraditional family is going to weigh against Jack. And I feel that would be a travesty. Because Jack labels himself Catholic. And if going to this school would give Jack a sense of belonging and comfort, I believe he should be able to go there.

  I hope Jack will be admitted without question. I hope that it counts that Jack believes in everyone’s right to have their own gods and goddesses. He is open and accepting. He has Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu friends and mentors. He has many friends who are gay. I wonder if that would be a help or a hindrance. If Father Ray were alive and in charge of that school, he would surely understand and appreciate that my son is surrounded with love, ideas, and inspiration.

  My friend Camryn considers herself “Jew-ish.” She doesn’t follow the strict practices of Orthodox Judaism, but sees the beauty of the religion and culture and of passing that down to her son. On the other hand, my friends Al and Paola and their families are more traditional Jews. They read from the Torah, observe Shabbat, and celebrate in Hebrew. Both families include some of the most generous, accepting, soulful people I know.

  My Muslim friend, Karim, is appalled at fundamentalist terrorists who say that they are following the word of Muhammad. People don’t realize, he says, that most Muslims are not terrorists or jihadists and are as outraged as non-Muslims are about those who use the name of the Prophet to promote injustice and war. Does he still call himself Muslim in today’s world? Yes, because he identifies with his family’s history and culture. Karim believes in a God who is just and kind, just like I do.