The Harshness of Belief: Growing up with a Loose Faith

By Oscar Barajas

I really wish I was a better Catholic. I know that it is more than just going to church. I know that it is more than clasping my hands together and petitioning a higher power. I have been away from the church for a while now. I really wish that I could walk into a church without wondering if I am doing it right, or if a statue is going to come to life to strike me down with a bolt of lightning. But that was not always the case. There was a time when I was close to the church. Although I was not an altar boy, I would often be the star pupil of Saturday Bible Study and that would afford me the opportunity to be an usher.

I guess it all started when I was a young child, and adults left heavy impact on my intellect and an even heavier set of footprints on my soul. Father Thomas was my favorite priest and was the first person to speak to that part of me that teachers and my parents could not reach. He was different because he would often have an open dialogue at the end of his sermons with the parishioners. He would lean in and put his index and middle fingers up to his left ear in order to pay extra attention. He dubbed himself the “rock and roll” priest. He was charismatic as and talked about the Grateful Dead and the time he spent in San Francisco.

Father Thomas was the recipient of my first confession before my first communion. I still remember sitting in the confessional as I felt it getting smaller and smaller with every disgusting detail I divulged. I must have been eleven or twelve years old at the time, but I remember telling him that I was having “impure” thoughts about a young lady that came to the same service I attended with my parents. He recommended that I take her out of my mind with hobbies, but baseball cards were no match against her. He suggested that I try to joining a sports league, but my problem was something that shagging fly balls was not going to fix.

Her name was Erika. She was just as old as I was, but she went to a different elementary school. In fact, the only time I got to see her was at church. She had these brown eyes that were unlike any shade brown I had encountered. She called them earthworm brown. I went along with it even though I knew that earthworms were not brown. She smelled like Skittles and dirt which was a major reason why I was attracted to her. She was one of those kids whose parents trusted them to go to church on their own. I was not, but I pretended that I was. So while my parents tried to find a nice seat in the middle, I would race up the stairs and catch the service from the balcony with her, holding her hand all the while. After a while that became leaving mass during the community announcements so we could have a conversation. Much like an imbalanced equation, the longer the conversations we shared, the more impure the thoughts got.

This romance ended how all great romances end, not through the hand of God or through some Greek tragedy. My mom found her picture in my pants and demanded to know who this “fast girl” was. When I did not have an answer, I found myself sitting next to her and my father in church. With the amount of times I kept looking up to that balcony, Father Thomas probably thought I was looking for Jesus. My mother knew otherwise. At first Erika was there, waiting, but not for long. I saw her again in junior high school, but by that time she already had a boyfriend who did not like her going to church. Father Thomas went into the third world with a Walk-Man filled with John Fogerty, and I was left alone, feeling betrayed by faith and by malformed teenaged love.

I still believe, but I cannot get past the point of believing. What I mean to say that is that there is no foundation to my faith. There are a few religions that want to recruit me, but I still hold out, because I feel they are out for quantity rather than quality. Perhaps one day I will find that sense of quality I am looking for if I keep staring into that balcony.