LISTEN to the audio version — or keep reading . . .
It being a day on which I needed to hear a different take on things, on which the week prior had been somewhat challenging, and I was in want of something to break through my thinking that surely I’m doing something wrong in life . . . I ended up at a Catholic mass at a church in my village.
I still need to do a follow-up on my reconnaissance mission from last time — specifically the solar-panel throwdown going on in my neck of the woods — although that’ll probably happen in my next post.
But yeah, I have good friends of all faiths. Me, I’m a bit of heathen, without the bat blood or astrological consultants or whatever heathens partake in. Actually, I’m more of a science girl. I nerd out on Charles Darwin and plate tectonics. I never have been a “God” person — although Darwin was, despite his impious discoveries and Bible-breaking ideas, which upset quite a few people back in the 1800s.
See, back in the way early days, humans didn’t know how a lot of things worked. They were confused about most everything — like where the sun went every night, and how fossils of seashells could be found on mountains. Also, where did we come from? And what happens after we die? They wanted answers. So they made them up.
Thunder? That’s Zeus; he lives on a mountain and has a temper. Volcanos? That’s Pele, the goddess of fire. Shell fossils on top of a hill? Noah’s flood. Israeli hippie preacher whose body went missing after being crucified? Well, the Bible claims that a dude found sitting in the dead preacher’s re-opened tomb said (awkwardly, I imagine), “Jesus? Um, he’s not here. He has risen. Yeah, that’s it.” And the preacher’s mother and common-law wife were like, “Oh, we like that SO much better than His being dead.” And before Jesus’s body went MIA, He himself supposedly said, “The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” OMG, was that idea comforting to people, or what? And the Big Bad Wolf swallowed Grandma whole, and then regurgitated her alive. And if there is a God, I’m going straight to Hell.
Another interesting thing Jesus purportedly said at the time was, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus prob’ly be like, “That is not what I said! I said Caesar’s not God. Geez!”
Why? Well, in the 1st century — Jesus’ time — Imperial Rome was taking over like a teenager’s hormones. Julius Caesar was conquering the crap out of anything within a 1,500-mile radius of Rome that could be gotten to by boat. Basically ALL beachfront property along the Mediterranean Sea. Literally all of it.
Meanwhile, Jesus had been racking up a lot of followers (social media influencers, beware), and Caesar needed to put the kibosh on that. So the Romans charged him with treason and blasphemy and did their signature thing with the cross, as they did with all first-century political activists, and then some.
I doubt I’m the only one who wonders who Yeshua of Nazareth really was, if he wasn’t the literal son of the Big Guy Upstairs. Some people say he was a Christ (Latin for “anointed one”), crucified for our sins; others think he was a Messiah (Hebrew for “anointed one”) who wanted to free Judea from the Roman Empire. I like the theory that the real Jesus was probably a Jewish Cynic — in the original, archaic, capital “C” sense of the word.
The first Cynics were Ancient Greeks, a few hundred years earlier. At that time, after their country’s independence was snatched by Alexander the Great, the Greeks needed a philosophy to go with their new underdog status. So they embraced the idea of living in virtue, in agreement with nature; and declared that they were choosing to lead a simple life, free from all possessions, and they didn’t want wealth, power, and fame anyways. They were like the original Gandhis. The O.G. O.G.s.
Cynicism came back into vogue as Caesar and his cronies started being all “You all work for us now,” and building temples all over the place to Jupiter and Venus (the gods, not the planets, which were named later). When they got to Judea, out east, they found the Jews playing around with this “one god” idea, which the Romans weren’t ruling out — consolidation of power kinda worked with their brand. But just like all the invasive Japanese knotwood growing in my backyard, new Cynics started popping up, begging and preaching throughout the cities of the Empire about self-sufficiency = good; wealth & power = bad. The Romans did NOT like this negative press. So they publicly did away with those who were flapping their mouths about it all over the place. Whereas modern politicians use Twitter to cancel people who speak out against them, the Romans liked a more permanent — and grueling — punishment.
P.S. Did you know Christianity was originally a sect of Judaism? I did not.
To be fair, religions and their doctrines did give people an excuse to bathe once a week and meet up for the latest gossip over badly percolated coffee, as well as providing a framework for some ground rules around things like stealing your neighbor’s cow and making time with his wife. Apparently dungeons weren’t scary enough — we had to bust out eternal damnation to keep folks in line. Especially when we needed them to march in formation straight into a well-defended village wearing only a knee-length woolen tunic and iron buckets on their heads.
People have often used God, or whatever deity is handy, as an excuse to fight one another, whether it be clubbing each other to death on a muddy field or speed-confirming Supreme Court justices. But most of what we’ve been fighting over since life began are Earth’s finite resources.
Like land. Call it territory, or call it real estate, but we’ll take it, and whatever’s on it (or in it), thank you very much. And, when we’re done taking what we want from that land, like water (I’m looking at you, Nestlé) or trees, we’ll just leave our mess behind for others to clean up, which is basically how strip mining and oil drilling and fracking work. God often has very little to do with it.
You all know the current Pope is a tree-hugger, right? He wrote a whole encyclical (aka “fancy letter”) on the environment a handful of years ago, and he’s clearly a God guy. He called this 82-page missive Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.
The phrase Laudato si’ is Latin for “Praise be to you,” and comes from a canticle (aka “song”) written by St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of nature. St. Francis wrote in his little ditty: “Praise be to you, my Lord, for our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us and who produces varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.” Dunno what kind of “herbs” he was referring to, since he was also known to preach the gospel to birds (during a walk one day, while his travel companions waited quietly, avoiding eye contact). So there’s that.
On the other hand, half of Congress today are climate deniers. Delusion runs pretty rampant in our species.
I suppose the more positive aspects of religion — along with having a few friends that ascribe to one of the more strict of Christian doctrines who are wonderful people — and that having heard that the priest giving the mass that day was a real intellectual, an art historian or something, and half-Jewish by birth, no less, I went to a goddamn church.
The first “sign” that I was in the right place happened before I even entered the building. The closest friends of mine who are parishioners there (and fun as hell — excuse the term) hadn’t replied to my texts that morning. So I decided to brave it alone. I mean, I was already dressed, which is more than I can usually say at 9am on a Sunday morning. (Or at 3pm on a Tuesday — I work from home.) I parked my red VW Beetle in the lot, and slinked toward the entrance, already feeling like an imposter.
I knew this church was very inclusive — gay, straight, left, right — but I still told myself, “I’ll sit in the back. So I can bail if it gets weird.” As I sheepishly approach the glass double doors, my eye catches sight of another good friend of mine coming from the other direction. I wave to her.
“Hi!” I say, relieved.
“You can sit with us,” she says comfortingly.
The second surprise is how beautiful it is inside. From the outside, it’s one of those dark, brooding Gothic numbers built out of brown stones with narrow slivers for windows; the old stoop and front door are out of use, in favor of the modern glass doors around back, leading us into a dark red brick add-on. But the inside. The inside of the church is filled with natural light, with a sort of circular seating set-up in the nave. Curved light wood pews, along with more comfortable chairs, are filling with local residents. It’s Mother’s Day, by chance.
My friend and I and her husband take seats. There’s a pretty easy getaway path, should I need it. I see another acquaintance glance over; I give him a nod.
After a handful of short rituals, readings, and songs (I do love to sing), the priest . . . or is he the pastor? I don’t know all the terms — I’ve been to church maybe a handful of Christmas Eves (I loved the candlelight vigil thing when I was a kid, and the be-kind-and-rewind kinda stuff, but didn’t think the magic man concept made much sense; I was very logical even as a babe); and to Sunday School briefly when I think my mom and her bestie decided they wanted an hour off from us kids; I’ve also been to church weddings (obvs), a few bar/bat mitzvahs, and a First Communion for a friend’s son, and I was even baptized (Protestant) . . . anyway, he starts his sermon. Is it a sermon? This very progressive priest begins speaking, and before I know it, he says, “I’m going to read a quote now. It’s from Tucker Carlson.”
What what? He starts reading it. It’s pretty generic stuff, about loving others, if you can believe it. I’m not real sure, because I’m still thinking, “Tucker Carlson? What?” I’m careful not to turn and look at my friend. She’s also very progressive, as well as being a naturalist — a volunteer at our county land conservancy — and just a very cool person, but I don’t want her to think I’m an asshole. I figure I’ll ask her about it later.
Further into the sermon, the priest . . . or pastor? (someone please help me) says something that aligns with my sense of reason. He says, regarding Jesus, “Put to death in the flesh, he was brought back to life in the spirit. The spirit of truth.” That makes sense to this literal-minded visitor. Then the congregation lines up for the communion, which he, I’m gonna say . . . performs? And then he gets out his guitar and sings a song by Jacques Brel.
Afterwards my friend and I walk out together. I ask her what she’s doing the rest of the day, and she says she’s working in the garden. I ask if she needs any help.
I meet them at their house, where she and I spend the next hour or so moving woodchips from a big pile in their backyard into a wheelbarrow and then over to a fenced garden across the lawn. It’s then that I ask her about the pastor quoting that verbal unibomber, famously fired after his hypocrisy became even too much for FOX News and its #inFOXicated viewers. She nods. “Yeaaah, I think that was an attempt to connect with the conservatives in the parish,” she says. “I figured,” I respond. I discover later that there was a bit of a kerfuffle a little while back between the conservative and the more liberal members of the parish; the quote was indeed a drawbridge being thrown to the former.
Later, I looked into the difference between Protestants and Catholics, besides the wafer & wine bit.
The difference between them, at least historically, is good deeds. Protestant reformers in the 16th century embraced the belief that getting into Heaven is attained simply through faith in Jesus (sola fide, or faith alone), while Catholicism taught that salvation comes through a combination of faith plus good works (fide and then some). There are other distinctions, but that one seems to explain a lot about the handful of observant Catholic friends I have. They all subtly, or not so subtly, spend much of their time in service of others.
Quick sidebar: It’s very hard to talk about the sweet experience I had that Sunday (“Friar Tuck” excluded) without at least mentioning the elephant in the diocesan room. But this is not that story. This one is about, I don’t know, exploration. Finding things where you don’t expect them.
Hey, remember how people kinda freaked out about Darwin’s findings not matching the origin story of the Bible?
Well, maybe Genesis should have a prequel. Maybe their God created the first spark of life, millions of years ago. Then that life multiplied and evolved all over the place, and eventually we got where we are today: part of this delicate, awe-inspiring and intertwined ecosystem.
As Charles Darwin said, in the final words of his book On the Origin of Species:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
—Charlie D.
(Of course, parts of man’s brain evolve super slowly, so man was like, “Let’s go bananas and create a bunch of stuff that makes life easier, even after we learn that we need to make our stuff a different way ’cause it’s turning our planet into a place we won’t be able to live in much longer.” And God was like, “OMG, I’ve created a monster.”)
As for me, I’ll continue seeking guidance from my own guide: the Great Pussy in the Sky, or GPS for short. When I get stuck or overwhelmed by life, I lie down, close my eyes, and get quiet. I ask her what I should do. She usually tells me something mundane, like eat lunch, or take a shower, or go to bed. Or even to a Catholic mass. And doing that thing loosens me up for the thing I’ve been resisting, and so I do that, too. Or at least start on it. (She’s really talented, that GPS.)
And I try to be of service when I can, and listen to what other people have to say. While making it all as FUN as possible. Sometimes I need to stop and watch 25 minutes of cat videos on Instagram Shorts while stuffing tortilla chips in my mouth, but hey, I’m human.
Until next time,
xo,
Deb
p.s. Subscribe below, and comment if you feel the call. 🙂
(Also, some of the above is from my book-in-progress . . .)
Dusty Wright
Rebecca
Citizen Deb 
Leave a comment