In the late 1940s and early 50s, downtown Brooklyn, New York was a diverse place. Puerto Ricans, African Americans, Portuguese and Irish Americans called our neighbourhood, now known as Cobble Hill, home. All the families interacted like the proverbial village, looking out for one another. These families were my first introduction into the importance of self healing.
My Baptist grandmother from North Carolina and my Muslim step-grandfather from Borneo in Indonesia raised me. It wasn’t until I began school that the violence of racism and religious intolerance entered my world.
Today, I spent the day in silence wrestling with old wounds. In doing so, I found a way to write them to you by honoring my self healing path and also cleanse my heart of some of the anger that I’ve been holding in for so many years. Here’s my story:
When I was little, before they could tell me things, they told my mother. They told my grandmother. I remember when grandma went to register me in Catholic school, a promise she made to my mother. Grandma was Baptist, “Free Will Baptist”. On the day we completed registration at the local Catholic Parochial School, the nun in charge seemed quite annoyed and said, “You people always come late.” However, the nun’s whole demeanor and attitude changed when my diminutive five-foot Grandma gained about two more feet somehow, like cats do, and said, “What do you mean You People?”
Grandma’s displeasure and her inference that our people are not always late had the desired effect. I was registered without further incident. Later on at home I wondered how the sister knew anything about us “people” because there weren’t any of us but me in the school and among the parishioners. They said we were always late but how many of us did they know?
During vocation week, the school was peppered with posters reminiscent of those outside military recruiting offices. Uncle Sam replaced Jesus with the caption, “Jesus Wants You.” The message was also communicated throughout the year with tactics vacillating between soft and hard sales. Like the other children in my class, perhaps the whole school, I began to wonder if I might have a religious vocation. I was too young to actually think in those terms but I used to go to Mass every morning before school, once I was old enough to go to school by myself.
I did quite well in school which made Grandma and mother proud. The diocesan high school took only five girls from each parochial school in our county and the next. The five were those with the highest scores on the High School Entrance Exams. The five from our Catholic Parochial School, included me. Although high school proved more difficult it was not insurmountable. It also had an extra bonus. There were more of my people there. Not many, only about 20 out of 400 girls, but at least I wasn’t alone anymore.
In the second year, I felt that I had a vocation. This time the feeling was fully articulated in my mind, so I proceeded to seek advice. I went to my religion teacher, a nun, whose name I cannot remember, this sixty years later. What surprise and disappointment overtook me when I heard her reply, “Make sure you choose an Order that accepts You(r) People.” For ten years I had been told Jesus wants you, Jesus loves my people, that the church wants everybody to belong. How could it be that only one order in the whole United States would accept My People?
It would get worse. In my last year of high school in a course called, “Preparation for Marriage and Child Care”, they called all of the girls who were one of my people to attend this special session. What I remember most about it is that we were advised that it was better to marry a Black Protestant than to marry a white Catholic. Now, this is before Vatican II, before Catholics admitted that anyone besides a Roman Catholic could get to Heaven. All my life they told me my faith, my religion, was the most important thing. Then they told me more important than religion, more important than faith, was that my people don’t get married to their people.
I graduated and went away from their religion for a long time but on this continent, you can’t escape whiteness. I met some of their people who were nice and once I left my country, I met even more who were like normal, feeling human beings. But I didn’t go back to the Catholic Church for a long, long time. You see, I had to figure out and choose between what Jesus said and what they told me.
I came to Canada in 1965 and finally settled in Vancouver on the west coast in 1979. Vancouver is where the long road to healing began. In 1998, two friends and I began the Vancouver Catholic Worker. There we opened our home to two or three people, who had no place to live; people who had fallen through the cracks of the social safety net. Since then, we have shared our home with over 200 people, 2 or 3 at a time.
Through this experience of opening our homes, I learned the importance of self healing. Along with the social, spiritual and financial support of a small group of people, we continue to this day. The call to ministry became more intense through this work and I gained many long lasting friendships. After a year of soul-searching, self healing and discernment with friends and spiritual confidants, I was ordained a priest in 2012, serving the Our Lady of Guadalupe Tonantzin Community. This community grew out of the Vancouver Catholic Worker.
The ‘official’ Catholic Church does not ordain women but there is a worldwide movement called Roman Catholic Women Priests (RCWP), who do not accept this prohibition. The RCWP movement is inclusive and all are welcome in our churches, no matter their race or where they fall on the gender or affectional spectrum. We believe that everyone and everything in creation is loved by God and therefore, so must we. We believe that everyone is deserving of self healing.
Vancouver has less than one percent of people of African descent, so unfortunately our congregation reflects that statistic. Our congregation appears to be the flip side of the usual in the Catholic tradition where African American parishes are led by a white priest. Our congregation is small compared to most church communities. However, it allows us to get to know each other and bond on a deeper level.
I’ve found that when others open their hearts to you, it has a healing effect. It motivates you to open your own heart and pay it forward. It helps you arrive at a time like today, as I have, to reflect and continue the work of self healing. I wrote the poem below to illustrate my path and the ways I’ve seen and helped others welcome their growth.
To Know and Grow
Bruised, abused
living in unloving soil
hold tight, take flight
escape from this crippling coil
wild youth, forsooth,
kept finding myself in hostile places
despairing, heart tearing,
will I ever find welcoming spaces
Black skin is sin,
is what they want me to feel
Yet I know as I grow,
such thinking cannot be real
As I age, channel my rage
into fighting fallacious surety
To fight for what’s right,
travelling the road to maturity
To preach hate speech
against those you think defenceless
is the sin, not our skin,
showing your words false and senseless
Begin to see a glimmer in me
of all that I have for giving
Black skin, not sin
but an ebony love-filled living
I’m one plot, on one spot
on soil fed by gladness and woe
Part in a field in which I’m sealed
surrounded by others who know
I’ve learned, discerned
love cannot thrive alone
When dismayed I prayed
for hearts made of flesh, not stone
Black skin, like within
black souls precious wisdom pearls
Look, you’ll see Black folks’ mystery
is to show how true love unfurls
in spite of our plight
We manage to live, to survive
Love, resistance, persistence
tools people of colour use to thrive
Let us cure the deep sore
dealt by those that demean us as other
As we grow to know
compassionate for all and each other
Yes, let us grow to know
compassionate for all and each other.
The Reverend Dr. Victoria Marie was born (1945) and raised in Brooklyn, NY and has resided in Canada since 1965. She is currently pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Tonantzin Community in Vancouver, BC Canada. Victoria is author of Transforming Addiction: the role of spirituality in learning recovery from addictions, Saarbrücken: Scholar’s Press (2014)
