Violating Assumptions

One of the very first assignments I had to do for Katie King, one of my all-time favorite professors, was to make a list of my assumptions that I recognized as being violated as I read through our initial set of texts.

Doing this "Violated Assumptions" assignment definitely surprised me--despite the ways in which I might be more conscious of my surroundings and the way in which I exercise power and are subject to others' powers, still I had assumptions...some relatively benign, others less so.

It was a great way to start off a class because it was about challenging ourselves to think about the way in which we were seeing, interpreting, understanding, and making meaning of things. That's definitely one of the goals I try to accomplish in my introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies course.

Lately, I've been finding myself the subject of others' violated assumptions. Primarily, several people of late have found it surprising that I identify so adamantly as Catholic and that I've been regularly attending mass.

Just yesterday an old friend who I hadn't spoken to in quite some time caught me on my cell while I was en route to church. Having found the Lincoln Memorial Bridge closed, my most direct path to DC was blocked, and so I welcomed the chance to catch up with her as I was re-routed around Virginia. When she asked what I was doing and I told her that I was driving on my way to church, she didn't mask her surprise. She asked if there was a holiday that she wasn't aware of, or some other special occasion that was the cause for my sojourn. I told her there wasn't, that I've been going to mass as regularly as I've been able to lately. More surprise on her end.

It's funny, though, because you see, back in January of 2005 I finally admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and realized that my life had become unmanageable and joined the program. In the beginning I made time in my schedule to attend meetings twice a week (if not more on occasion), and even went so far as to rearrange my work schedule so that I could go to meetings on Sunday. She never found this strange (then again, she shouldn't have since my relationship to her and my participation in the program were related). Any how, I eventually got my 30-day chip, my 6-month chip, and reached my 1 year anniversary. Some things had changed, but others hadn't, and didn't look like they were any time soon. Meetings were nice (better than not going to meetings at all), but I also knew that whatever I still needed to make the changes I needed to make weren't happening in the rooms.

That's one of the things that brought me back to church. I wanted more than just a spiritual program, I wanted Church...a Catholic church. For a while I did both, meetings and mass. There were things about both that were similar--the routine, the ritual, the coming together with others, the focus on life and what's good in it.

Eventually, I found mass was more centering, more satisfying, and just overall more helpful, and eventually stopped going to meetings, and stuck with mass. It definitely helped that I felt more "home" in mass...more folks of color, wider age range, more diverse gender expression, etc. Well, and it definitely mattered that going to mass helped me feel more connected to me--particularly my racial/ethnic heritage as a Filipino Catholic, and to my biological family (well, okay, primarily to my mother, but that still counts!).

I guess I'm not really all that surprised that talking about being a queer Catholic violates others' assumptions. I don't think we hear often enough in our LGBTQ communities about religious LGBTQ people who follow/practice "traditional" religions--that is, I definitely hear about more LGBTQ people attending Unitarian Universalist and Metropolitan Community Churches than Catholic ones (and for understandable reasons).

Those churches are great (and so are others, too), but as I've always said to others, I'm Catholic, and I don't want to be otherwise--to do so would feel such a betrayal to my racial identity. One of these days I'll have a better explanation for it...but for now all I can say is that my Roman Catholicism is so enmeshed with how I understand myself as Filipino that I can't imagine being otherwise.

Besides, my Catholicism has room enough for queer, feminist me--something I've seen evidence of more and more which I didn't necessarily have access to in my youth when I'd whine and fake sleeping to try and avoid going to mass with my folks.

(Now, if I could just better see how to make room for myself as a Filipino vegetarian, I'd be set!)