Well, it’s October again, which means Halloween is almost here. I have always loved Halloween, which I realize is perhaps an odd confession for a man of the cloth, at least in certain circles. I have never understood the panic. I think Halloween is tremendous fun. For one night, everybody gets permission to be somebody else, and apparently whenever I am handed that permission I become a superhero.
Over the years I have been Batman, Doctor Strange, Wolverine, Moon Knight, and at least one Power Ranger. I have honestly lost count. There is a storage bin downstairs containing enough pleather and molded plastic to reveal the many questionable financial decisions I’ve made in the name of October the 31st.
Still, I love it.
For a few hours, I get to look in the mirror and say, “Tonight, I can be anything I want.”
Lately I have been wondering why we leave that idea behind when the costume comes off. What would happen if we carried a little of that permission into the rest of the year?
Now, obviously, there are limits in life. At 42 years old, I am probably not beginning a new career as the everyday first baseman for the New York Mets. Actually, given some of the roster decisions the Mets have made over the past year, I may be a contender. This does not make the idea good for anybody involved.
But I digress.
Some limits are painfully real. Poverty changes what choices are available to us. Health can change what our bodies allow. Discrimination can shut doors before we ever get near them. Life can be unfair in ways no amount of positive thinking can repair.
But there is another kind of limit I have become much more interested in as I have gotten older: the one I accept before anybody else has the chance to impose it on me.
Queer people know something about being handed instructions for the kind of life we are allowed to have. You can belong in this church, but only if you hide the fact that you are gay. You can belong in another church, but everything has to be gay, gay, gay all the time.
Maybe I do not want either one.
Maybe I would like to be gay and Catholic, a priest and a writer, a businessman, a Mets fan, and an enormous nerd with too many superhero costumes. I have spent enough of my life being reduced to one part of myself. I would rather be a whole person.
The trouble is that eventually the people who tell us who we are allowed to be do not have to keep doing it.
We learn the lines.
We repeat them ourselves.
I do not particularly enjoy admitting that. There are plenty of things outside me that have made life harder, and some of them deserved every ounce of anger I gave them. Still, I have had to reckon with how often I have rejected myself before anybody else had the opportunity.
The voice of my inner critic is rarely dramatic. He does not announce doom from a mountaintop. He whispers one very reasonable-sounding sentence:
“That just isn’t for you.”
That opportunity is for somebody more qualified. That encounter is for someone better looking or younger. You started too late. You would look foolish. Better not to try.
The truly irritating thing is that sometimes I listen. More than I care to admit.
Do you know the last words the Gospels record the Virgin Mary speaking?
They come at the wedding feast at Cana. The wine has run out, from the perspective of this New York Italian, it is less a catering problem and more an unfolding socially cataclysmic incident. Mary turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever He tells you.”
A few verses later, water has become wine and the party continues.
I have always loved that.
Mary does not tell the servants to believe in themselves. She does not ask them to manifest a better wine list or repeat affirmations over the water jars. She points them toward Christ and tells them to listen.
For me, that is the reminder I need.
The little voice in my head saying, “That isn’t for you,” does not get the definitive word. There are powers in this world greater than the fears I have accumulated, the judgments other people have handed me, and the conclusions I have reached prematurely.
Christians have an old word for God entering into all of that and doing what we could never quite manage on our own.
Grace.
Grace does not guarantee that every dream works out. I am still not expecting a call from the Mets. It does, however, make me suspicious whenever fear starts masquerading as certainty.
God has surprised me too many times for me to assume I already know the full dimensions of the life He has given me.
So maybe we should keep one little piece of Halloween when October ends.
Keep the permission to imagine.
Keep wondering whether all those things you decided long ago were “not for you” are actually true.
And when that familiar voice whispers, “That isn’t for you,” perhaps before you believe it, ask one more question.
Says who?
Father Rich Vitale is an Old Catholic priest, bestselling writer, podcast host, and television contributor. Through his publication and media ministry, Message from the Margins, he explores faith, resilience, culture, and spiritual life with a mix of theology, psychology, humor, and lived experience. Read more from Father Rich at FatherRichV.Substack.com.
