It's sort of spiritual but not necessarily religious
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- April 5, 2025
- 113
In Exodus 20:15, we are explicitly told, “Thou shalt not steal.”
The Eighth Commandment couldn’t be more clearly written.
Those four little words leave little wiggle room for prevarication, mendacity or any other human attempt to avoid their implication.
When old Moses came down from Mount Sinai after having heard from God, carrying two carved stone tablets, he probably had to deal with folks who were looking for loopholes, for ways to skirt the law, perhaps a fortuitous footnote or a convenient codicil.
I imagine he got awfully tired of hearing stuff like, “That goat was in my pasture,” or “I just found those sandals,” or “How was I to know Eli left that loaf of bread for his son to pick up later?”
George Carlin, America’s preeminent comedian of the 20th century, once riffed on the teachings of the church, talking about a child asking a priest, “Could Jesus make a rock so heavy that he himself couldn’t lift it?” I think that kid sat next to me in sixth grade.
But faith is, as we were taught, the belief in things unseen; consequently, it’s vital not to question what we don’t understand.
I can’t remember the last time I was in church, aside from weddings or funerals, and that’s a problem. Being back home after 24 years living on the Carolina coast, where I had no history, no sense of belonging, it’s been tempting to return to my beginnings.
Despite the fact the old church I knew so well was razed less than a month after I went south, there’s a new structure in its place.
So far it’s been a bridge too far, a chasm too wide, a world not my own. I think of how I’d begin my confession. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been an eternity since I’ve been around.”
Ah, yes.
It always gets back to that for me, the unfathomable notion of time without cessation, the idea that even the longest period of eons is dwarfed by the sheer immensity of eternity, and I just can’t grasp it.
I remember being taught the “Glory Be” prayer when I was a second-grader learning to say the Rosary and being struck by those frightful final four words; to wit, “World without end, Amen.”
Everything I knew — books, movies, songs, TV shows, summer vacations — had an ending, so the concept of forever freaked me out.
But like most kids memorizing anything, it became an unspoken article of faith, a truth too big to comprehend, so I just moved on, content with the knowledge that some things can’t be explained.
Later in life, however, as I began my studies at one of the most respected Catholic colleges in the country, I felt encouraged to question what I’d learned back in elementary school, to examine everything in the light of a new sense of discovery, to probe the granular details of what I believed, knowing change was inevitable.
Kind of reminds me of a line from “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“The funny thing is, on the outside, I was straight as an arrow,” says Andy Dufresne. “I had to come to prison to become a crook.”
Not that Notre Dame was anything other than a bastion of belief, a landmark institution of higher education, the home of Touchdown Jesus and Masses held in the chapel of Dillon Hall, a place of refuge and comfort when grades fell or a girlfriend was unfaithful.
After four years in South Bend, it was time for me to fly and test my wings in the real world, and church, by and by, faded away.
At this juncture I think it’s important to point out straying from the flock, as it were, wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. My parents remained rock-ribbed members of the parish until their deaths, and both my sister and my brother were active in the faith even as they moved away, married and began their own families.
When my time to leave home arrived, as the 21st century dawned and the Carolina coast called, I listened and, for the next 24 years, lived a life of writing, traveling and having fun in the sun.
I remember being asked to speak at a gathering of the local Knights of Columbus — a legendary Catholic society, filled with Fighting Irish fans — and how I decided not to prepare anything in advance, figuring, “What the heck? I’ll just wing it and hope for the best.”
Somewhere between saying hello and goodbye, I got off on a tangent similar to the one I wandered down earlier in this essay and found myself reflecting on the impossibility of understanding forever. I can still see myself standing there, in front of that crowd of strangers, sharing stories and telling more truths than I intended.
Some of you might recall a British band called Uriah Heep. They were big back in the '70s, and I always liked them, especially a song titled “Stealin’,” which included this important passage:
“Stood on a ridge and shunned religion,
Thinking the world was mine.
I made my break and a big mistake,
Stealin’ when I should have been buying.”
Under the guitars and drums, you’ll find a tasty organ riff, like something you’d hear in an old church, perhaps a bit spiritual.
That’ll serve nicely as our recessional. Go forth and sin no more.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to find him on Facebook, where everyone is welcome, even those still searching.