Portland Magazine
May 1, 2023
Sometimes the struggle to attend Sunday Mass is real. And yet the peace he finds there still draws him in.
Story by Kirk Boys
Photo by Keith Cole/@buildings_of_seattle
IT’S EARLY SUNDAY evening and rain is beating down on our roof like a drum. Fir trees are dancing mad with the brawny south wind. Inside, the Seahawks postgame show is background noise. I am exhausted from another week of the this-and-thats and what-ifs. That is how my negotiation with myself begins about going to church. It’s a forty-five-minute drive to St. Joe’s, fighting the freeway and tight Seattle city streets. How will I convince my wife, never mind myself, that I have the energy? I’ve been up since 6 a.m., played several sets of doubles, raked piles of orange and yellow leaves, and gone to the grocery store, and I have become an immovable log on the sofa.
Oh, the struggles of a lifetime of Catholic guilt. When I was growing up, my father insisted we go to Mass every Sunday, even on vacation in the middle of nowhere. I attended Catholic grade school, played CYO sports, carted my daughters to Mass when they were infants, and ushered them through the sacraments. My wife worked a second job to help pay their tuition to attend a Catholic high school and then University of Portland and Santa Clara. Times changed. Abuse scandals, politics, and Indigenous residential schools all shattered my faith, not in God, but in the Church as an institution.
And as often as not, fatigue and weather and my own state of discernment anchor me in my living room and away from my holy place, the place that provides peace. Often, I find myself feeling embarrassed by the Church edicts, the hypocrisy, the cruelty of the past sins of the institution. Yet, through all of it, I feel the strong pull to take that one hour where I am free from the assault and chaos of everyday life.
It is at that quiet, hushed service that God speaks to me the loudest. With lights down low and music echoing off the walls, an inner voice lays claim. I listen to the readings and the Gospel and the homily, but the message that most often resonates is one that emanates from my heart. Through the contemplative Mass my wife and I have found opportunity to usher, to comfort, and listen to the most downtrodden of our city’s homeless, to bring books to those on hospice.
These experiences renew me, give me courage and hope. They provide the lucidity to see myself in a whole new way. To believe that I have some small amount of goodness buried under layers of ego and superficiality. That kindness and compassion still exist out there regardless of the sadness and fear we bear witness to in the news and out our car windows as we speed past.
It is not easy, but on Sunday evenings at 5:30, I most often find myself sitting below the stained glass windows of courageous saints. I am able to find the presence to see myself and the world with a renewed clarity. It is hard to be that person when life constantly challenges us. But in the span of an hour I find peace and a reason to attempt to be a better husband, father, grandfather, citizen, Christian. A better me.
University of Portland has been part of Kirk Boys's family history for more than 60 years.
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