Everyone Needs a Rumspringa

Among some Amish communities the adolescents are allowed a rumspringa.  It varies from community to community, but in general it is a time that the teens are allowed to live outside the community, to date, to use technology, to experience life outside.  The Amish Elders allow this because they believe strongly in their faith and way of life.  At the end of rumspringa, kids are accepted back without question and they are baptized into the community.  Both leaving and returning are the kid's choice.

I wish all areas of my life offered me a rumspringa - a place to question and still decide to return to welcoming arms when I have decided.  When I began to question my Catholic upbringing, I was basically excluded from the group for doing that.  TRUE believers did not question.  No?  People who never question are NOT true believers to me.  Belief requires a leap of faith, a dark night of the soul, to feel the truth of it and to choose it in the face of any opposition.  My leap of faith was away from Catholicism, believing there would be a place that felt less rigid but equally mystical.  Where that mysticism is encouraged and not just history.

My mom is a devout Catholic.  I am no longer of that faith.  Recently, we were talking about my Grampa.  How she misses him.  What she would give to be able to talk to him the way that I do.  I try to explain it to her, that she can talk to him anytime.  That he hears.  That if she is quiet enough she will hear him too.  Perhaps she imagines me and Grampa sitting down and sipping coffee, blistering hot just the way we both like it.  But it doesn't work like that.  It's more of a sense that comes over me suddenly and out of the blue.  The way I felt when I was with him - safe and warm.  Sometimes there will be a sentence or two kinda shouted at me that I know are him.  Sometimes it's a smell, the smell of the lake water on my skin, the sweat stained leather of his hat, pine woods.  When I ask if it's him, it's like someone sounds a chime in my head - a deep resonant chime that somehow carries the essence of his voice within it.  I have learned if I can quiet my mind that there is a certain kind of dialogue that ensues.  It is not like here and now conversation, but it is no less real.  Sometimes it is real-er. 

I tried to explain to her how it came in, but that part she didn't want.  She wanted it the way she wanted it.  That's pretty much my mom.  And that's probably why she can't hear him.  I don't fault her for this.  Catholics, especially the old school ones, believe that any intervention requires an intermediary.  I couldn't stand that, it's like being divorced from god and all these peeps who love me and relying on an attorney to ferry crytpic messages back and forth.  I like my way better.