she was ahead of her time.

today, i read that the pope has revised the catholic church's stance on "limbo."

when we were small children, the nuns told us that unbaptized babies could not go to heaven. instead, they would spend all of eternity in an "in-between" place called "limbo."

my mother was a very faithful person. and she was a good, catholic woman. she was also a critical thinker and she believed in god's unconditional love and his infinite capacity for forgiveness. she infused our minds with these beliefs.

so, the institution of the catholic church is finally starting to catch up with her.

and they have come out and said that you don't have to be baptized to go to heaven.

now, if they would just be able to wrap their heads around the idea that god made all of us in his/her own image, and we all deserve to be able to live in freedom without judgement by other humans ... gay or straight, black or white, male or female ... they might catch up to her even more.

she used to say "when i'm god ..." (because she used to pretend that perhaps we all got to take a turn at the god thing) and then she would go on to say what she would do: little things like making sure that the people who came to church every sunday were guaranteed a seat at mass on the crowded holidays of easter or christmas, or big things like making sure that people could live and love and believe freely.

she was ahead of her time in so many ways. and perhaps now she is in heaven with a bunch of unbaptized babies.

say a prayer for her, babies scare her out of her mind.