Thoughts on faith, prayer, and the holidays by a fallen priest who has no answers but found peace in the questioning of it all

Prayer has always held a complicated place in my life. As a child, bowing my head and holding my hands like a high-five emoji just didn’t seem to cut it. Like most children growing up in church, we were told the stories of the Old Testament *queue Norville Barnes*, you know, for kids. I remember hearing the story of God creating Eden and how They would walk with Adam in the garden, just talking together. That was the type of relationship I wanted with the Divine. I would go through the motions in church, the protestant liturgical movements of my misguided youth, but when I was home, I would walk the hills and waterways of my Tennessee home with Jesus. In my mind's eye, I imagined that my big brother Jesus would walk with me, holding my hand, and we would talk for hours together in nature, just communing about all my problems and worries. I would speak with him about girls I liked or my struggles with also liking boys. I would tell him about the things I heard at church and ponder if they were what he really thought now. This was how I prayed in earnest.

Then, as a teenager, we got kicked out of Eden.

Our family became homeless, and so, it seems, did my faith. I began to wander outside of the gates, asking a lot of difficult questions that the grownups didn’t appreciate me asking. I spent a lot of time in the Sunday School principal's office. Eventually, as these struggles of faith followed me into adulthood, I chose to join the ministry in hopes of being the type of person who would answer those difficult questions. Yet, I found on the other side of this journey into pastoral ministry that my own questions of faith were not being quelled.

It seems that I had miscalculated that my questions were only a problem due to my youth and inexperience. I believed that by entering the ministry, by way of the priesthood, my fears would be assuaged, but they only grew. During a particularly confusing moment in my life, it was time to take my annual spiritual retreat, a requirement for priests of all ranks. This particular year, I went to a monastery hidden away in the hills of Alabama. The place is confusing to the senses. As you exit the modernity of the interstate system, you embark on a windy set of country roads before finding yourself transported into antiquity. Alabama disappears behind you, and you are suddenly in Rome somewhere around the 14th century. Knights are riding on horses to protect the nuns who are cloistered inside the massive cathedral.

One afternoon, I made my way into the naive of the cathedral. The place was open to tourists and typically riddled with the faithful in contemplative prayer, but at this particular moment, the space was entirely mine. A morning mass had just been served and the space was filled with incense and the sound of the nuns singing behind the screen that separated them from the world. In this angelic half-silence, I sat down in the pews to watch the smoke of the incense rise up to our understanding of God. The sound of silence was suddenly disrupted by the large wooden doors closing behind me. Moments later, a woman sat beside me as I stared at the ceiling. This was the spiritual equivalent of a man entering the restroom and walking past all the empty urinals to stand right next to you. She observed me for a few moments and then spoke.

“You should pray,” she said kindly.

“I don’t think He’s listening to me anymore.”

This, of course, is not something a normal priest would say to a member of the laity, but normal is not an accusation often levied against me. I felt a panic well up inside me that I had made a mistake; my struggles should not be transposed to the faithful. I looked over to the woman, and she smiled back at me while I grimaced. She handed me a well-worn rosary, placing it into my hand, “then ask his mother. He always listens to his mother.”

In this moment, a devotion was formed in my heart towards the Theotokos, the god-bearer, the woman who became divine by way of supplying humanity to divinity.

I think one of the great mistakes the church has made was to teach us that doubt and fear are somehow the enemy of faith. All of this is scary and full of confusion. When I think of the first Christmas story, as the shepherds were out in their field only to find themselves suddenly surrounded by light and the voice of angels, they are told, “Be not afraid.” So we were taught that fear is the problem, something to be admonished, but is it? I read a story, and I chose not to fact-check it because I like it too much, and it’s probably not true, that when the angel told the shepherds not to be afraid, it more accurately translates into “stop screaming.” I like that idea better because it feels more real. Then again, what is real when we are talking about thousands of years old mythology based on an even more ancient mythology, and why are so many of us still struggling with the guilt passed down from ancestors and patriarchs who have yet to look at the sky long enough to wonder if it’s possible we all got here a different way than they had always been told. If you aren’t allowed to be afraid when surrounded by a bright light as angelic voices boom around you like the bass at an EDM show, when are you? Then again, maybe that’s the punchline; perhaps we aren’t supposed to. Is that the ultimate point of this all, trusting a deity so much that nothing is scary while living in the world they created that is full of chaos and calamity?

Toward the end of my time in pastoral ministry, a kid at our congregation got his girlfriend pregnant. They were both teenagers but made the choice to continue forward with the pregnancy. One afternoon, I got a call from this young man as he sat in the hospital with his girlfriend’s family while his own was absent. Something wasn’t going well, and he asked me if I could pray for her. I hopped in the car with my wife, and we made our way to the hospital. By the time I arrived, a few congregants had already arrived. This young girl, who was only about fifteen, had given birth but was losing blood quickly. I had sat at enough hospital beds that turned into deathbeds to know when the doctor's faces were foretelling an unpleasant future. As I stood up, someone asked, “Father, where are you going?”

“To the chapel,” I said.

As I made my way toward the hospital chapel, a small group of the faithful followed me like fishermen. When I arrived at these much smaller doors than the cathedral where I found my faith again, I walked inside this tiny space and made a pirouette, now facing those who followed me. I closed the doors in their faces and locked it. I turned toward the altar and pointed at the tabernacle, where I believed the Body and Blood of Jesus lay. My beef was not with my big brother Jesus; no, it was with our mutual nemesis: The Father.

“Listen here, asshole,” I began, “I have devoted my life to you. Even when I didn’t understand, I followed you everywhere. I’ve stood outside of abortion clinics and prayed for the innocent souls that would be lost. Yet, you are going to let this child die? How fucking pro-life of you. I swear to you, if this girl dies, that is it. Do you understand me? Are you listening? I will not serve a God that demands us not to take the life of a child but will do so freely as they choose. If you kill this girl, I swear I am walking away. I am done. And do not take this as some idol threat, you son of a bitch!”

Now, technically, this was praying. It fits all of the alleged requirements: I was in a church, my commentary was directed at God, and it even had a request.

I slowly made my way back toward the waiting room with heavy steps. To this day, I do not know if any of my parishioners heard me scolding God like I was Moses, but we never spoke of it. Once we made it to our destination, this girl’s father no longer looked like he was going to strangle the boy. Instead, our young parishioner was taken back to meet his baby and be with her mother, who did not die. Her life, and my faith, were spared another day. Yet, after this moment, a more dangerous thought entered my consciousness: was it my prayer, God’s grace, or the hands of the doctors that brought this young one through her dark night of the soul?

The struggles of faith continued until the day I finally stepped down from the priesthood in 2013, but a splinter of faith remained lodged in my heart like a terminal diagnosis. In my time away from the church, I have continued to pray. Not often to our Father, and I do not take walks with my big brother anymore. No, I run to my mother in times of great struggle and doubt. Over the years, I’ve had a lot of folks ask me why I still have a devotion to the rosary even after leaving the Institutional Church. The truth is, when I stepped down from the priesthood, I was very angry at God. I couldn’t reconcile the idea of why They would let all this happen the way it does, the wars and fear and destruction. I understood, in a small way, why Jesus asked his father, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mary didn’t, though. She was always there, a constant. She saw his potential and encouraged him. In the end, Jesus was forsaken by nearly everyone. While Judas was betraying him and Peter was denying him, Mary was at the foot of the cross. She never leaves us, even at the worst moments. So, in my darkest times, even in my greatest moments of doubt and pain, I’ve always turned to my Mother. Fathers can be confusing creatures at times and hard to relate to. In my times of hurt, I needed the Divine Feminine to help me see the beauty, wonder, and hope that still exists in the world.

The truth, whatever that means, is that the doctors saved that girl.

When I left the church behind, I had to rebuild my life in a million ways, including what elements of my faith could or should remain. Do I still read the nativity story to my children on Christmas? What about Christmas mass? Do I light candles above my icons to saints who might now judge me? Or are they just sinners like me who did their best, and maybe that understand? The first part of faith I had to find again was forgiveness, most of all for myself. I had to find grace again so that I could reconcile the man I’ve become with the one I once was. Was it a sin now to fight for choice, or is that reconciliation? Have the dollars I’ve raised, and the work I’ve done for abortion access washed away the sins of the guilt I transposed onto others as I stood outside the abortion clinic prayer? Or is it enough to know that there is never a way to undo what we have done, only to change and do better despite it all?

And then, I’ll pray, sometimes. For them, for myself, for all the life I lost in the middle, but also gratitude for the life it gave me in my future. What would my future be without my mistakes or learning from them? Yet, at the expense of what, and who.

There is a beautiful scene in one of my favorite television shows, Dawsons Creek, where the character of Grams is praying. Her granddaughter, Jen, admonishes her for this, frustrated with the calamity that has caused her grandmother to begin praying in the first place. Jen explains that it's ridiculous to pray to a God who isn’t listening, who isn’t there, and if they were there, they wouldn’t change their mind anyway. Much like that sweet woman who handed me the rosary that day, Grams smiles before she calmly states, “Child, prayer doesn’t change God. Prayer changes me.”

For nearly as long as humans have existed, we have looked up at the stars to ask questions. Some of us have done this and asked, “Is there a God up there?” While others have questioned what makes the stars burn. One has created science, while the other has made religion. Yet, asking these questions is still important, no matter whether they are directed to Cosmos or about the cosmos.

During the holiday season, issues of faith are often placed under a magnifying glass. Family divisions are often placed under that same lens. The traditions we once held dearly in our childhood might have a bitter aftertaste from the struggles we’ve endured along the journey. In many ways, I still have all of the same questions and struggles with my faith that I did before, that has not changed. I sometimes wish there was a way to turn all of that off, but if such a switch does exist, I’ve yet to find it. What has changed, if anything, is that I have found peace in the struggle and comfort in the doubt. I no longer fear having these questions residing inside me. Instead of running from that uncertainty, I lean into it deeply as the most constant part of my faith. If I have grown to accept so much about myself in spite of my upbringing, then I too must accept that I am one who doubts and that doubt, in and of itself, is not some evil as I was taught growing up but a beautiful part of what makes me who I am. Without all of these questions rattling around in my mind, I would not have become me. These questions, and searching for understanding, are what have compelled me to write books, essays, plays, and comedy specials. Without doubt, what would I be?

Yet, I still pray, sometimes. When the world especially doesn’t make sense or when I’m scared or death is knocking at the door of someone I love.

Does it help anything? Does it change anything? What is the point? Well, my dear child, prayer changes you, and if history has taught us anything, that is all we can truly change anyway. So when you see atrocities in the world, be like the faithful and pray, but then stand up to put on your medical cloves to perform surgery, pick up your protest sign to join the picket line, or package food to provide for the hungry. I am unsure if I still have faith in a God, but I do have a profound faith in each of you. We can change the world, not with thoughts and prayers, but with maybe a little bit of prayer and a lot of action to follow it; we might just have a chance at walking in a type of Eden again together.