Waters of Grace (Podcast)

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"Welcome to the Israel Sanchez Podcast. My name is Israel Sanchez. Today I'll be reading from my autobiography, Waters of Grace.

Chapter 1 - Beginnings


"Growing up in Cuba, you either belonged to the Communist Party or the Catholic Church. The entire island seemed to be divided in those two camps. Both institutions have their saints and rituals and both have their fervent believers. Before I could even remember or form my first words, my mother decided that I was going to be part of the Roman Catholic clan. My father objected, since he didn’t believe in God, but mainly because he was part of the Union of Young Communists and a baptized son could mean trouble for him. Despite his protests and absence from the ceremony, my mother persevered and a priest sprinkled water made holy over my head.

My parents didn’t stay together long after that, due to my father’s wondering eye, and hands and body I suppose. I don’t have a single memory of them together, no strolls in the park, no holding hands, and no Hallmark or Kodak moments. Probably because of this, the idea of God as Father was foreign to me. God seemed to be someone who visited on weekends and bought you nice things whenever he could, but stayed away during the week. This was fine with me, especially since serving God had become a chore. When I was around 9-years-old, I started attending catechism every Sunday and all I remember learning was what not to do. There were rules at home, rules at school and rules at church. Of course, at this young age I had no idea that when God gave us His commandments it was meant to warn us of sin and alert us to the fact that we were all guilty in need of a Savior. Back then, however, these commandments seemed obscure and confusing. What was a graven image? If we are not supposed to bow down to them, why was everyone at church praying to statutes of saints? I would think about those things at times and ask questions, but no one ever gave me a satisfying answer. Of course, the most horrifying commandment was honoring your father and mother. I had no idea what 'honoring' meant exactly, but I knew I was guilty and it felt like the sting of a bee on my soul.

My Sunday school teacher was a handsome young priest still in seminary school and a lot of the church ladies had a crush on him. One of my mother’s friends was completely in love with the young priest. He seemed to be taken with her too and would openly flirt with her. I imagine that would have been an awkward and tense confession time between those two. Years later, I found out that the priest left seminary school because he fell in love with a woman. My mother’s friend was saddened that she had not been the one to “turn him.”

Once, I asked my aunt, "how can I talk to God? How do I ask Him for prayer?"

“You need to pray,” she said.

“Well, how do I do that?”

“Our father who art in heaven…”

And she would continue with the Apostles Creed and a prayer to the Virgin Mary. I did this every night, hoping that God would hear me, but somehow I thought he would be bored of hearing my repetitions. I don’t know if God was bored or not, but I certainly was. By the time I finished my ritual prayers and was allowed to finally speak to God using my own words, I was sleepy or had forgotten my petitions. There was a chasm between God and me and religion was the cause of it. I didn’t think of Him as Father. God was a distant being who wanted me to not lie or use cuss words and that was all. He lived up in heaven above, way up high, far away from me, far from the misery surrounding my country. He probably lived closer to the United States where kids my age had brand new toys and expensive shoes, and they could eat whatever they wanted for lunch.

Overall, I did enjoy going to church. There was a peace and an otherness that I couldn’t put into words. Perhaps it was the silence. I lived in a tiny house with over seven people, so silence was a rare thing. But there was something else drawing me to church and that was reading.

That's all the time we have today. Thank you for listening and don't forget to checkout Amazon.com for Waters of Grace. "