Passages

60: (May 2025)

I am making a big transition this month. After being an avid churchgoer for my entire life, I’ve decided to no longer be part of a congregation. Instead, I look forward to spending more intentional time in nature, reading sacred texts from various religious traditions, and in prayer.

‘Prayer’ is a word that conjures up something unique for every person. As for me, prayer is something I do to try to reach into my soul – that ineffable part of me – and form some sort of connection to the divine. Whether it be to heal someone or something in the world, including myself; reflect and repent on my broken places; or just to express gratitude, I believe prayer has power. I don’t understand it, but I believe that prayer can be transformative.

Although there is so much good that can come from people worshiping together in church, I desperately need a break from the business-like aspects of church that can arise from employee matters and church finances, as well as the infighting that can occur between church members over these or any number of issues — essentially, church politics. I am exhausted by it and want to focus my time, at least for the foreseeable future, developing my spiritual life in the incredible sanctuary of the natural world.

Part of me feels like I’m copping out, and part of me feels guilty; I’m not sure I can ever feel otherwise after spending many years as a devout Catholic (before joining the Unitarian Universalist church some 30 years ago). At the same time, a bigger part of me feels drawn to making this transition. Maybe it’s because I’m in the latter part of my life. No matter how many years are ahead of me, there’s no denying that I’ve already lived the greatest proportion. Whenever it is that I’m on my deathbed, it’ll just be between me and God.

Writing those words reminded me of the following song, which I wrote about 20 years ago. The first line sums it up: When all is said and done, I stand alone, with You, my God. I do believe that’s the heart of the matter.

You can listen to the song here: When All Is Said and Done.

40: (May 2005)

I am divorced. It has taken more than three years to go through the divorce process. Ironically, this is about the same time it took for our courtship. At first I thought I would keep my marriage name. It had, after all, been my name for 16 years at that point. And it is the name my children bear. But as the divorce process lingered, I began to feel like my birth name was calling out to me.

When my husband initially moved out, it created an immediate physical separation, but humans are not merely physical beings. My spiritual and emotional selves separated from my spouse much more gradually, bits at a time over the past few years. We had been woven together for almost twenty years, and extracting that which was solely me took time. As my singular identity continued to emerge, holding onto my marital name did not feel right. My birth name began to pop into my head, shyly asking to be reclaimed.

We refine and redesign our identity throughout life. Jobs change, family roles shift, and relationships come, go, and evolve. As circumstances change throughout life, we get to rebirth ourselves. We are given opportunities to grow or atrophy, to embrace what is new or to resist what is before us. Going through a divorce is a life-altering process, and at the end of it, rebirth is possible, but only if one chooses rebirth. The choice must be made in order for new life to blossom. Although my choice was not to get a divorce in the first place, faced with the inevitable, I choose to be reborn.

A friend suggested that I take my mother’s maiden name at this juncture. My mother did have an awful lot to do with my birth in the first place! But “Figliozzi” is much too much of a mouthful. So I have taken back my birth name for this present incarnation. It is an old friend. I came into the world with it, and I will go out with it someday. And it is with me now, as I begin to take baby steps toward a new life.

60-40:

My spiritual life saved me 20 years ago when I was going through my divorce. I spent a lot of time praying, going to Bible study, and attending not one, but two churches. Those efforts nourished me in ways that still fill me.

Maybe the transition I am making now with respect to churchgoing will be marking a new phase of life, or maybe it will be a short-lived passage, and I’ll find that I long for all the good things that can come out of church attendance and being part of a congregation. There’s only one way to find out though, so off I go into the garden or the woods.

That said, I didn’t need to go far today to see the miracle of creation in full force. What a joy it was for my (second) husband and I to discover a newborn fawn nestled in my lily of the valley garden patch this morning. Then at dusk, we watched it venture on its spindly legs to its mother, as she emerged from the edge of the forest. After nursing and grooming, a sudden rainstorm chased them under the trees, followed by this, seconds later:

. . . and I smiled back at God!