The Portugi in me

If I ever write a book, this will be it's title.

Speaking with my mother (my boldly Norwegian/Scot-Irish mother) last week, I admitted that if I ever discovered that she had lied to me, that I was not my father's daughter, not in fact Portuguese, I would be strangely stripped of everything I had ever allowed myself to be.

A few years ago, for a Cross Cultural Comm. course at Simpson, I wrote a paper on Iberian Catholicism as different from Scottish Presbyterianism. Basically I wrote a paper on the differences between my father and my mother, respectively.

Today I am worried that the only reason I want to bring peace between the Protestant and Catholic churches, the only reason I wish to teach Protestants that Catholics are not idol-worshippers, and Catholics that Protestants are capable of intellectual faith, is that I want to bring peace to my own soul. Born in me is this fight, this separation, this unnatural state of religion.

I dreamt once that by bringing peace this way, I was bringing a great offering to God, and that for it He would grant me absolution for being born as something unnatural. I wish I had someone to model this journey after... someone who committed to two churches, two lives, two backgrounds, and yet one Faith... so that I would have an example of how to bring people together, to love, and even just to answer the question, "How can you be a Catholic Protestant? or a Protestant Catholic?"... I'm tired of saying, "I'm sorry, I don't know yet. I just know that this is what Jesus has asked of me."