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My understanding of the Catholic faith is deeper and richer now that I am not a practicing member of the Church than it was during all those years I called the faith my own. Attending a Catholic grade school (with weekly Masses, stations of the cross during Lent, regular prayer services, and an ever-present awareness of God's love for us, "his" children) gave me a comfort and confidence I am sure I never would have received in a public school setting.

During those years of the 1980's, the "Renew" movement in the Church brought guitar masses and a brand of liturgy that was more organic, dynamic, and free. I remember attending neighborhood Bible studies; families in surrounding blocks would gather in a different home every week, with the adults gathering around the Bible and discussing not its "correct" interpretation, meant to be parroted and passed on from dogma through the grapevine of the hierarchy. No -- they talked about what that text meant in their lives, how it came alive for them and had meaning in their individual, modern worlds. I remember candles and prayers, a warm feeling that all was well, God was love, and God loved me.

Later years brought dynamic teen retreats, of which I could not get enough. My first was a must-do for Confirmation. But I went back, again and again, drawn by the music, life, and dynamic faith I experienced, mostly through the expression of my fellow young people and the adults who passionately served with us.

That I ended up at a Catholic university was not something I had felt I needed to do. But, looking back, had I not ended up where I did, my journey of faith could never have deepened and progressed to the point it did during those years. Lord, did I put my heart and head and faith through the ringer during those years. Questions of justice, peace, gender, and life's inevitable and substantive purpose peppered every experience, academic and not, that I had.

In a freshman year critical theory course, I discovered my weekly essays had unwittingly zeroed in on the topic of feminism; in choosing the readings upon which to reflect in my writing, I had again and again chosen those which allowed me to peer into and explicate my role as a woman in this world. In a sophomore year spring break trip, I found myself with world-renowned peace and non-violence activists, among whom were Phil Berrigan and Liz McAllister, throwing blood upon the Pentagon, and exploring the wisdom of Dorothy Day and the radical social teachings of Catholicism. These were teachings that seemed, to me, as if they had been swept under the rug. Why had I not been taught them before? Luminaries such as Oscar Romero, first explored in a Peace Studies course, came alive for me in experiences living and traveling in Central America, witnessing the gross social injustices which the Church's liberation theology had decried with such righteous indignation. I questioned and questioned and questioned the faith. I began to get real about my feelings, including admitting (which was hard for a "good" Catholic girl, at first) my anger at being denied the opportunity to fully serve and participate as a woman in the Church.

By the time I was graduating, I had decided I was done with the Catholic Church. No more did I want to explore, delve into, burnish my faith within its confines. I wanted to see what else was out there. The Truth which I was intuitively seeking seemed to echo within its chambers -- but I was, frustratingly, not finding its substance to grasp. Almost as unwittingly as in my other steps along the faith journey, yet somehow, surely, a part of a greater plan, I stumbled upon a spiritual path of the conscious practice of Christian Mysticism.

Those echoes within Catholicism of the great tradition of mysticism were embodied most fully in the luminous lives of its many saints -- Francis, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila chief among those. These ones had always inspired me. To find that I could be like them was almost overwhelmingly too good to be true. Even harder to believe was the presence of priests who were married and, yes, female. I could be a priest. I could fully serve. And not only that, I began to discover that Truth I had heard echoing -- only now, its resonances made life-changing, reality-transforming sense. As I learned from texts containing the great spiritual wisdom teachings of all times, spiritual realities known in the depths of Eastern and Western traditions -- but largely forgotten in the West -- I began to feel that that yearning, that longing for "something more" was finally being sated. Now the sacraments were not just outer forms. I knew and experienced their inner realities -- the science behind the spiritual expressions I was witnessing.

Once I had been ordained a priest, I fully understood what I was doing -- what was physically and spiritually happening -- when, by my word, the bread of earth was being transmuted into a

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