Constant Reminders
I’ve been talking about God a lot lately. I’ve learned to pray, on a packed trotro belting down the highway it’s the only sane thing to do. I’ve started to articulate some of my beliefs. I’m learning what’s been culturally drilled into me, what I’ve accepted, haven’t even thought about. Things that are not only foreign to people here, but might actually be foreign to me as well. My assumptions about religion are being called into question and it seems like it’s coming from every direction.
I’ll start with Bailey. She’s the new intern at CENSUDI (yes, there are now five Canadians). She goes to Guelph, does women’s studies and international development and believes in Christ. She’s a waking me up to my own biases about Christianity. I’ve always been an opponent of Christianity, mostly because it’s been such a damaging cultural force in many ways, and the institutions are such a pillar of what I don’t agree with in our culture, but I’m being forced to examine my complete rejection of these institutions. Yes, the evangelical right is vocal and I have serious problems not only with their politics, but the belief structure that underlies their politics. But they’ve appropriated something not entirely theirs to appropriate: they’ve become the voice for Christianity. Like the violent Catholic institutions that have dominated Christianity for the last 1700 years or so, the Christian right is attempting to voice Christianity as the only way. The one path to salvation. And Bailey is reminding me that there’s more to Christianity than the angry Bible thumpers in the south. That, funnily enough, institutions have appropriated a philosophy that is the opposite of what they’re trying to institute. And they have twisted it. I think I knew that once, but it’s an easy thing, most days, to forget.
Then last night I was talking to my neighbour Alex about Pentacostalism. Alex told me about speaking in tongues. It was 1996 and he was a strong part of his church. He was at a Pentecostal gathering where the minister told that those who couldn’t speak in tongues they should come up to the front. He did. He was told to pray in his first language, and as he did so he lost track. Of words. He lost track of language. He spoke in tongues, and he explained it to me this way: it was like English was coming out, only it was too fast, and held more meaning. He felt like he was going to vomit, and when he held his head over to do so his ‘words’ only came out faster. And he knew he was saying something. Nobody had to understand it, noone had to know his words, but he knew meant something. And he reminded me that religion is more than just a sermon and hellfire. Religion is about magic. It’s about believing in something that moves beyond the eye, in the realm of the heart and the earth. It’s about placing ourselves, in whatever way best works, in a vast, sometimes indifferent, universe.
Today, at the office, Happy (the receptionist) asked me if I was Christian. I said I was baptized, but that I don’t go to church. She was completely dismayed, and asked me why. I told her that I worship in my own way, that I find community outside church. I don’t think my explanation held a lot of water for her. But every time I talk to a Catholic, every time I say I was baptized there is this look of relief in their eyes, and they say something like “Well your faith is still there.”
And maybe they’re right, though not in the way they think. But Happy reminded me that religion’s about community, too. It’s about coming together with people, to tell stories together. To bond over faith and love and pain. The formulate a cultural narrative that helps not only the individual make sense of the world, but society at large. For all its divisiveness, religion is ultimately supposed to bring us together. It’s an easy thing, most days, to forget.
Many of us are trained, in my part of the world, not to believe in things that can’t be explained. We are trained from childhood to abhor ritual, superstition, belief. We are taught not to believe. I mean, I’m conditioned into not believing in Christianity, Islam, anything that could be construed as dogmatic. Buddhism and Hinduism are okay, cause they’re hip. Or at least polytheistic, but only from a distance. Only casually. But sometimes life just doesn’t make sense, no matter how much you apply your powers of reasoning to it. And sometimes you need to worship to feel like you’re making sense of it.
I’m starting to remember how people, individuals and cultures function (how’s that for a generalization?): if something doesn’t make sense, an explanation is created with the best available information and some imagination. Telling stories makes sense to me, explaining things with the mind, if not always with empirical evidence. Stories become belief, and sometimes belief becomes reality, a worldview. Traditions are born, and traditions change, and traditions die. And yes, the Catholic Church is still implicated in huge historical bloodsheds. But there’s also a history of Catholic social justice workers. And yes, fundamentalists don’t believe in abortion, but that’s a matter of ignorance veiled in religion, not necessarily the core of the religion itself. As Brother Fowles says in the Poisonwood Bible: “There are Christians and then there are Christians.” And I’m not going to be a regular church attendee ever in my life (though I will probably go to a couple of services while I’m here), but I remember why people do attend church. And most importantly, I am starting to give voice to the personal framework I’ve been developing for most of my life. A framework that draws on many spiritual traditions, but conforms to none. A personal mythos.
I have experienced change. I know that its constancy is real. I have felt, at times in my life, the path I am walking on spiritually more surely than the ground beneath my feet. And from what I have seen and felt I have come to understand what I believe. I believe we all walk a path, across many lives, and as we walk, we learn many lessons. I believe that we stand in a universe that looks chaotic and place our sense of order upon it. And we do it through bifurcation. I believe that our first act of consciousness was, like Genesis tells us, the recognition of good and evil. I believe in the constant, dynamic play of two sometimes complementary, sometimes oppositional forces. Sometimes that’s called heaven and hell, sometimes male and female, sometimes black and white, sometimes self, sometimes other. I like to think of it as heaven and earth, deified through a god and goddess. Principles that infuse everything. These are things that make sense to me, intellectually. I see them, when blessed, in the world around me. Sometimes I forget. And I know that this is story I tell myself, intellectually, to make sense of things beyond the intellect. It is the believing that makes it real. I think that, like many people I know, part of me believes and part of me struggles with faith. And it’s that struggle that lets me accept the beliefs of others, that keeps me from the rigid certainty of zealotry, and it’s that struggle that keeps my own framework changing. So this much lets me know that all I know is wrong. Or at least up for criticism.