When I told my mother I was going to my first Buddhist service that Sunday, she stopped what she was doing and slammed the kitchen counter with her hand.

“On Easter?” she said while turning eerily still.

This was in the late 1990s. I had stopped being Catholic a few years before, at age 18, so I no longer paid attention to the Christian calendar. The choice of the date wasn’t symbolic, but my mother’s raised voice demonstrated that she thought so.

A year or so later, I overheard her on the phone with a friend expressing concern for my eternal soul. My mother was a devout Catholic, and her youngest daughter’s abandonment of her religious upbringing was unthinkable — even though I had not rejected religious inquiry altogether.

I sat down and wrote my mother a letter and left it on her bed. My words were forceful, but I wasn’t smug or sneering, which was unusual restraint for a college-age kid. I didn’t question her faith. I just asked her to respect my need to figure out my own contemplative path.

We never discussed the letter.

When my mother followed my dad in death in 2019 and my sisters and I had to clean out the house, I found my letter in her bedroom tucked between important cards she’d saved. I pulled it out and sat on the floor holding it like it was a vital link between the two of us across vastly different planes of existence.

It mattered to me that she’d kept it. I know it wasn’t easy for her to read because it declared in clear terms my apostasy. But she took my words seriously, it seemed. The way she affirmed my decision-making over the years showed me that she ultimately trusted that a desire to be kind and a clear sense of right and wrong were guiding my actions.

It’s so tempting to glorify someone you love after they’ve gone, to the point of leaving their flaws unspoken when you tell stories about them. I firmly believe that presenting a full picture of who someone was is very important to honoring their memory and reminding ourselves that we humans are always a work in progress. I hope people do that for me after I’m gone.

But I am not overstating things by saying my gentle mother inspired me in the way a religious icon would. I like to say I have the heart I do because of her. She helped me grow that heart by hugging me, kissing me, telling me she loved me and teaching me through word and action that treating people with compassion is to be taken as seriously as earning a college degree and building a career.

She donated to the local food pantry. She contributed to coat drives. She quietly embodied the words, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” She didn’t turn away from other people’s suffering. I understood that to be a moral imperative that transcends creed and affiliation.

My mother was deeply thoughtful, too. I fed her need to be cerebral about the human condition, and she fed mine. We could talk for hours about the intricacies and vagaries of living and life. Our political views differed, sometimes greatly, but the credo driving them was usually the same: Protect dignity and stand up for others, especially the most vulnerable.

For Buddhists, right action is one of the principles of the Eightfold Path toward enlightenment. You are tasked with avoiding harm, cultivating kindness and helping others.

Values are important. But we humans prove who we are by how we put those values into action.

My mother proved who she was through her charitable acts, done without fanfare, and her repeated call to my sisters and me to be decent whenever possible. Whatever her shortcomings, she tried her best to embody her values, and her doing so did not require taking advantage of other people.

I can imagine my mother in a different life as a social reformer like Dorothy Day, who ministered to those in poverty, protested injustices and lived what she preached with remarkable dedication.

I can imagine my mother saying these words as Day did: “We cannot love God unless we love each other.”

The final word is love, Day said. That’s what my mother taught me, too.

It’s why I show up for the people I care about and why I show up for my community. And it’s why I sit and follow my breath in Buddhist meditation and confront the highs and lows of my humanity. Love compels us to look past our narrow selves. Love compels us to commit to the welfare of others.

That’s what the world needs from us. Especially now.

____

Colleen Kujawa is a content editor who works with the Tribune Editorial Board.

____

©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.