Religion, love it or leave it
Mar. 6th, 2003 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleidoplexI started writing this in response to a post that the Leezard made in her lj, but then I realized that there were some familial lurkers that might enjoy it, so I'm putting it here for their edification.
The Leezard was talking about ash wednesday, and how seeing people with smudged black crosses on their foreheads reminded her of how envious she was as a kid of what seemed like cool catholic ritual. Pretty communion dresses, et. al. As usual, this brought a flurry of organized religion = blech responses. It made me think of my own fairly rigorous catholic upbringing, and what it meant to me.
I'm not bitter about it. In fact, looking back I have remarkably fond memories of it. Granted, those memories are probably *not* the memories that the Church wanted to instill in me, but they were fun nonetheless. I often say that as a child I found "god" in a soap bubble. I think that finding (or being able to see?) joy and beauty and possibility (the glamour) in any experience is possible. Nothing is banal or glamourful but thinking makes it so. This is what I remember and treasure about being raised Catholic --
I loved the ashes...and the palm fronds we would get at easter, the pink and purple candles during advent, the pretty dresses and veils, singing during mass, marble statues of pretty ladies in long dresses and veils, donuts in the hall after church while we all plunked on the out of tune piano and played hide-and-seek in the corridors. I loved walking to CCD with my brother when we would talk about how we were going to invent a car (or a boat or a jet or a tank or whatever) that could be compacted into the size of a pill, and then we could release it and drive or fly or whatever to church and back (we had similar conversations whenever we walked anywhere. We were lazy). I loved the huge tile mural on the front of St. Lawrence Martyr church, and the big fair they had every year in the field in back. I loved me and Devon telling our mom that we had to go to the bathroom during the homily, then going to the bathroom and making giant soap bubbles with our hands -- I have never found a better soap than church soap for this endeavor. I loved the smells. I loved going to my grandfather's funeral and noticing all the ritual aspects that I hadn't realized as a child -- the incense and ash, the holy water and word. Fire, earth, water and air by other traditions. I had my first crush on a priest -- Father Duncan of the blue eyes (Nothing weird. I was, like, seven. My crush consisted of him shaking my hand and giving me a donut!) I loved being able to mystify the whole experience for my jealous non-catholic friends. I loved sometimes going to have brunch at the Plush Horse after church. They had yummy sausage, which I loved, and the decor was all medieval english. I think that the Plush Horse might have been my first anglophilic experience.
Of course, I hated waking up early, and not being able to watch sunday morning cartoons, and not being able to eat until after communion, and having to go to CCD classes every other day. But looking back, I think the appreciation I have for the imagined bond with other Catholics -- oh how terrible and guilt-imposing the religion is...oh, how much we suffer -- more than makes up for what I realize, upon fair reflection, really wasn't all that much suffering. I didn't *get* most of what they were trying to teach me, and what I did get I unknowingly subverted into something good and fun for me.
Glamour.
I challenge everyone who reads this to find it in a place they didn't think it would be, and to share that finding with the rest of us
Hey look! I'm giving livejournal homework!
Kitsune Zen: Often the most important messages in life are right in front of you. The messages in front of me are "Pull Down in Case of Fire", "Need Help? Use the Information Phone", and "These Computers are Reserved for Research". Hmmm...
The Leezard was talking about ash wednesday, and how seeing people with smudged black crosses on their foreheads reminded her of how envious she was as a kid of what seemed like cool catholic ritual. Pretty communion dresses, et. al. As usual, this brought a flurry of organized religion = blech responses. It made me think of my own fairly rigorous catholic upbringing, and what it meant to me.
I'm not bitter about it. In fact, looking back I have remarkably fond memories of it. Granted, those memories are probably *not* the memories that the Church wanted to instill in me, but they were fun nonetheless. I often say that as a child I found "god" in a soap bubble. I think that finding (or being able to see?) joy and beauty and possibility (the glamour) in any experience is possible. Nothing is banal or glamourful but thinking makes it so. This is what I remember and treasure about being raised Catholic --
I loved the ashes...and the palm fronds we would get at easter, the pink and purple candles during advent, the pretty dresses and veils, singing during mass, marble statues of pretty ladies in long dresses and veils, donuts in the hall after church while we all plunked on the out of tune piano and played hide-and-seek in the corridors. I loved walking to CCD with my brother when we would talk about how we were going to invent a car (or a boat or a jet or a tank or whatever) that could be compacted into the size of a pill, and then we could release it and drive or fly or whatever to church and back (we had similar conversations whenever we walked anywhere. We were lazy). I loved the huge tile mural on the front of St. Lawrence Martyr church, and the big fair they had every year in the field in back. I loved me and Devon telling our mom that we had to go to the bathroom during the homily, then going to the bathroom and making giant soap bubbles with our hands -- I have never found a better soap than church soap for this endeavor. I loved the smells. I loved going to my grandfather's funeral and noticing all the ritual aspects that I hadn't realized as a child -- the incense and ash, the holy water and word. Fire, earth, water and air by other traditions. I had my first crush on a priest -- Father Duncan of the blue eyes (Nothing weird. I was, like, seven. My crush consisted of him shaking my hand and giving me a donut!) I loved being able to mystify the whole experience for my jealous non-catholic friends. I loved sometimes going to have brunch at the Plush Horse after church. They had yummy sausage, which I loved, and the decor was all medieval english. I think that the Plush Horse might have been my first anglophilic experience.
Of course, I hated waking up early, and not being able to watch sunday morning cartoons, and not being able to eat until after communion, and having to go to CCD classes every other day. But looking back, I think the appreciation I have for the imagined bond with other Catholics -- oh how terrible and guilt-imposing the religion is...oh, how much we suffer -- more than makes up for what I realize, upon fair reflection, really wasn't all that much suffering. I didn't *get* most of what they were trying to teach me, and what I did get I unknowingly subverted into something good and fun for me.
Glamour.
I challenge everyone who reads this to find it in a place they didn't think it would be, and to share that finding with the rest of us
Hey look! I'm giving livejournal homework!
Kitsune Zen: Often the most important messages in life are right in front of you. The messages in front of me are "Pull Down in Case of Fire", "Need Help? Use the Information Phone", and "These Computers are Reserved for Research". Hmmm...
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Cuando los Angeles Lloran...llovera
Date: 2003-03-06 12:16 pm (UTC)So to answer your assignment, I found god in water. Water is the most important resource on the earth, and it sparkles, and its blue and green or clear, and its cool or hot, steamy or solid, above us in the sky or below us underground, water is everywhere. And its dying. Water is being poisoned by industry, farming, waste, its being poisoned by men (and women). We can't get it anywhere else, its what makes our planet special, its what makes our planet blue, we have water we can drink, but for how much longer? When I say I found god in water, it is because in thinking about water I could finally imagine the existence of god, I thought about all that water made up, the air, our bodies, the plants and animals, and I thought to myself that for me this was proof of the existence of God. I cant explain the how and why of that thought, because for me it just is, the existence of water is proof of the existence of God, I could no more reason it than I could reason out how I know I exist. I just do. But when I think about it, I am happy, so I like it and I love water in all its multifaceted, sparkley, goodness.
Re: Cuando los Angeles Lloran...llovera
Date: 2003-03-06 04:25 pm (UTC)Re: Cuando los Angeles Lloran...llovera
Date: 2003-03-06 06:51 pm (UTC)hello God/Glamoure
Date: 2003-03-06 04:42 pm (UTC)And then I rediscovered a spring afternoon (and I generally don't dig spring the most) but in a clear blue sky, budding tree branches singing birds and a feeling of unity with the world as I looked out a 2nd floor hallway in my Catholic high school
no subject
Date: 2003-03-07 03:59 am (UTC)I like playing with numbers. I get a certain joy out of little tiny scribbles that make sense of lots of languages working out, both forwards and backwards, to the same result. I was one of those super geeks who always "checked her math" by reversing the equation. And everything can be made into math. Physics, ergonomics, geometry...
Math doesn't lie. It's not subjective, and spelling does not count. It's extremely black and white (yes... even the whole square root of -1 thing) and either you've got it, or you don't. You can feel the lightbulb turn on in your brain. And absolutely, things that are black and white can be full of glamour!
Unfortunately, I didn't figure this joy out until about a month before I dropped out of college. I think things would have been different had I seen the love earlier.
As for finding God.. well.. no.. I don't see God in math. That's a whole longer post.
:)
mE
Papist trappings ;-)
Date: 2003-03-07 08:16 am (UTC)As for where I find glamour, I find it all over the place. In Gothic cathedrals and little out-of-the-way Shinto shrines, in sunlight and in starlight, in the Great Plains or a rainforest, in the touch of well-made fabric, in the sound of beautiful music or in the blessed silence of the Aran Islands -- one of the few times I can remember that the world around me has actually been *quiet*.
--Bryn