Kim Burkhardt’s faith story was told in August, 2021 as an interview elsewhere. That 2021 interview is reprinted here:
Describe what it was like for you being raised Catholic.
I grew up Catholic. My parents weren’t active church goers when I was born. When my parents again became church goers, I was just turning four. Thus, I remember being baptized in vivid detail – an unfamiliar setting, a scary event for an introverted four-year-old!
Within a few months, I settled into being Catholic. I “took to Catholicism” more than my three younger siblings. Four years in Catholic school, being an altar kid. As the child of introverts (one of whom is blind and therefore physically forced into an inward experience), I seemed naturally drawn to an inward experience of Catholicism as well being attracted to the ritual of the Mass. My mother commented years later that I was the only one of her four children who didn’t complain about getting out of bed on Sunday morning and didn’t complain about going to church. I responded, “We were going to go to Mass anyway, what was the point in complaining?”
I remain drawn to a contemplative perspective and continue to have an interest in mysticism. (I have a secret wish to live as a hermit in my own mountaintop monastery with a Wi-Fi connection to keep in touch with folks and a garden to grow my food.)
When I was growing up, our family’s home life was challenging. Having the community of both a parish and parish school – six days a week – gave me a community to belong to, making up somewhat for the challenges at home (even with the social discomfort of knowing that our parish community knew that my family lived on society’s margins).
When I was graduating from high school, I briefly considered religious life. I was genuinely attracted to religious life, but also recognized that there was an element of being afraid to go out into the world as an adult. I recognized that it was appropriate to walk through that fear and go out into the world.
What happened when you drifted away from the Church?
My mother quit going to Mass when I was a junior or senior in high school. Thus, my siblings were no longer required to go to Mass, and they quit going. I stayed…for a while. I wanted to be there. I then drifted in and out of regular Mass attendance in my early twenties.
In my mid-twenties, I was faced with a self-imposed choice. I had never accepted what I might have called the “biological implausibilities” of the Nicene Creed – a virgin birth, the ascension in to heaven. It never occurred to me that it would be okay to discuss this with someone (a perception of “You’ll be in trouble if you admit that you don’t accept these matters”). I finally felt that I either needed to accept these things or leave the church. I couldn’t accept anything that didn’t make scientific sense and, at the same time, I was dating (and then married) a non-Catholic who felt antagonism toward Catholicism. I left the church, not planning to return.
I was gone for twenty years.
What/who brought you back?
I moved to Seattle in my early forties. I got active in the Seattle Irish Club. I found out that the Seattle Irish Club was having their annual Mass in the Irish language on a Friday evening in the fall of 2016. I showed up, telling myself, “I’m coming to listen to Irish for an hour. I am NOT coming back to Catholicism.”
During that Mass, I remembered that the priest – Fr. Madigan – had been our parish priest in Bellingham when I was a teenager. In the early 80’s, he had, at my mother’s request – spent the day at a nursing home in Bellingham with my Irish great-grandfather for what turned out to be his last St. Patrick’s Day. I was twelve at the time.
Now, fast-forward to that Friday night in 2016…myself and a cousin in Ireland were publishing my great-grandfather’s mother’s biography THAT VERY WEEKEND, and here’s Father John speaking Irish! The waterworks started….. Then, Fr. John switched to English for the homily “so that the non-Irish speakers would know what he was saying.”
During the few minutes of that homily, the depth of his faith filled an empty hole I’d been walking around with – a hole that I hadn’t been able to figure out how to fill! Then, I fell off a curb on my way home from Mass and broke my right ankle. Having a broken ankle meant that I was stuck on the couch at home all weekend. Being stuck on the couch meant that I couldn’t escape from thinking about that homily! By Monday, I decided, “Maybe I need to talk to Father Madigan about coming back to the church!” In the time that followed, God graced me with a life-transforming period of contemplative prayer. As a result, I am “all in.”
What does your faith mean to you today?
I have come HOME to the Catholic church. I discovered in the period following the Irish Mass in 2016 that God loves me. Life has become better than it’s been since I started Kindergarten. My faith has broadened and deepened in transformative ways. When we let God transform us, transformation occurs.
GOD LOVES US!
