Starving with a Full Pantry

"When I discover I’m in a lifeless place—
a party or in a church—show to me the exit!"

What if you don't have the means to leave? I never thought I'd want to live in a big city, but there are advantages to living in one if you are Catholic. If one parish is toxic for you and you have no vehicle, you can usually get a bus to another one. In smaller towns where infighting and power grabbing can become lethal to both sanity and faith, that option isn't available for those of us who are on the bottom of the economic barrel. What then?

Stay and suffer like a good Catholic? "Offer it up"? Not sure how long a person can do that. Oh yes, I've stayed, prayed, and continued to do a few things, but it has left a deep chasm in my soul between faith and religion. I'm sick of religion. All I can do now is hold on to faith, and the hold feels like it's slipping.

Fr. Hays:
I am so glad you are featured on NCR. I have flown by your Planetary Pilgrim for couple of years and now the light shines on you for another reason. I am an church architect hopeful of bringing the spirit back into the religious lives of the faithful. The Presence of God has left our churches in surprising ways, in the same way a cloud quickly overtakes a sunny day. Mostly, they are awkward recreations of the past, or assemblages of industrial components made holy with sacred images. It is no more complicated than a simple acknowledgement of and acceptance of God's splendid natural creation, so despised in the past. We are not made aware of the Presence of God by a study of doctrine, but comes simply by lifting our eyes to the unexpected and spontaneous display around us.

I have read some of Fr Ed Hayes books and found them interesting and helpful. I am looking forward to reading his reflections

This sort of funeral will never catch on with the ones who could most benefit from it: the poor. They're the ones most likely to spend way more than they can afford on funerals in the foolish belief that this is 'respect for the dead'.
There is another way of dealing with corpses in which the bodies are essentially reduced to their component amino acids in what amounts to a huge pressure cooker with some added organic chemicals. After about four hours, the average body is reduced to the husks of the larger bones. This has another advantage over cremation (and liquid Nitrogen)in that the process uses less energy and the water/people soup can be easily and safely recycled. It also doesn't require toxic embalming fluids and doesn't release mercury vapor into the atmosphere as cremation does (from tooth fillings).
Seriously, the 'traditional' catholic/working class funeral is wasteful, ugly, expensive; there's nothing to be said for it.

I'm surprised you aren't in trouble on this one Fr. Hays. I have stepped out of church for now and will stay out unless the hierarchy comes to the realization that Jesus came to serve and all people are worth something not just the hierarchy. Jesus is much more alive outside of church than in it these days. Maybe that's why he spent so much time travelling the countryside even in his day.