For those of you who know (and for those of you who don’t know), I’m Catholic. I’m not the type of Catholic that goes to church every Sunday and takes communion and all of that. I go to church when I feel the need, I give things up for Lent, I prefer to attend Easter and Midnight Masses and I pray regularly. I also collect rosaries. I don’t believe that I have to go to church every week or be more religious to make me more faithful or more Catholic. As a matter of fact, I’ve attended other services – Episcopalian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. I’ve had boyfriends that were Mormon and Buddhist. People of other religions, mainly Buddhist and Hindu, have given me religious tokens. Just because I’m not the same religion or don’t believe the same thing doesn’t mean that what they’ve given to me means any less.
There were two major experiences in my life that involved other religions. In April, 2009, my ex-boyfriend and I went to Bali, Indonesia together. We saw several Hindu temples. One of the most dramatic is Tanah Lot, a temple that is surrounded by the ocean at high tide. We walked to the temple at low tide. At the bottom you can be blessed with holy water by the priests there. If you wish to pray with the high priest, you wait at the side, where he will come down and take you to the top with him. You MUST be attired in sarongs, however. We’d actually forgotten sarongs, ran back to shore to get some, then went to wait at the side again. When the priest took us to the top, we knelt in front of him. He showed us the proper way to pray with him, which involved putting our hands together with a flower between them and raising them in front of us while he chanted as the waves crashed around the temple. He then sprinkled us with holy water and placed rice on our foreheads. Both my boyfriend and I were immensely moved, though both of us were Catholic. In March, 2012, I was in Georgetown, Penang, an island off the coast of Malaysia. One street over from where I was staying were two Buddhist temples across the street from each other; one was Burmese and one was Thai. The Burmese was, by far, the larger of the two. I visited both, but went to the Burmese temple first. While in the Burmese temple, there was a Buddhist monk that was blessing people. As at Tanah Lot, I knelt in front of him while he chanted/prayed. He sprinkled me with holy water and tied a braided bracelet around my right wrist. Although it wasn’t as dramatic as the blessing at Tanah Lot, I was still extremely moved by it.
When I was in Paris this past March, I went to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal specifically to get some medals and rosaries for myself and for friends. All of the medals and rosaries were immediately blessed by a nun there. I gave one medal to my Uncle, one to my cousin and one to a friend. I also gave both a rosary and a medal to a friend whose mother had passed away in another country; she hadn’t been able to see her in more than 10 years and was taking it especially hard. In addition, I gave a medal to an acquaintance of mine whose 3-year old son had passed away of a viral infection a mere two days after Christmas. My friend whose mother had passed away was Catholic. I have no idea what religion, if any, the father of the 3-year old was.
I recently gave another of those rosaries to a friend of mine, who seemed to question its significance. We don’t all have to believe the same thing to believe in a higher being. In fact, I don’t care if you don’t believe in anything at all, as long as you don’t try to push your beliefs on me or criticize what I believe. If you’re still searching for the significance of that rosary, let me clarify. I believe that rosaries are for spiritual healing and for protection. I always travel with a rosary, sometimes two. Although you’re not Catholic, it’s what I believe. By giving you a token of what I believe is a way of saying that I want to offer you protection to keep you safe (spiritually and physically), as well as hoping that it also gives you inner peace and spirituality. It’s as simple as that. I don’t give rosaries or medals to just anyone, only to people who really mean something to me and/or to those who I worry about who are going through a difficult time.
Hopefully, this will clear things up. My intentions are not to offend anyone who’s not Catholic in any way. I’m only wishing your protection and inner peace/spirituality through what I believe.