Things I Think About Lately.

[altarflame]

I really love the work and musings of many people who grew up steeped in rich, devout and/or orthodox religion... and then turned away from it. Anne Rice, Dan Savage, and Tori Amos are my most prominent and famous examples, but it's a LOT of people. It's sort of...my thing*. And what I see, over and over again, is that these people are often judged by their modern, secular, left wing followers for harkening back to their faithful childhoods or their old family traditions. The echoes and pangs of longing for deeper meaning and rituals that they still have, mixed in with the existentialism and the secular humanism they've embraced, just seem boring to the audiences they've attracted. Tiresome.

The audiences they've built by turning away don't want to hear about all the shit they turned away from.

But I do. I love it when they talk about it. I will never get tired of Anne Rice's never ending spiritual struggles and internal tug-o-war, because it calls to my own and does it in a deeply cathartic way. When Dan Savage talks about his seemingly pointless visits to his old church or the ache he's got, for his dead mother to be in Heaven, I am there, weeping, putting it on repeat. Tori's Christmas album made a lot of people just turn en masse and walk away, from her, for good. It gives me goosebumps, all fraught with myths and pagan origins and laced with theology like it is. I dig it back out every year. People called her a sellout for getting married, too, but I just wanted to hear what she had to say about it.

I think part of what makes each of these people (not just the three I'm actually describing but the others I'm thinking of, as well) as awesome as they are, as complex and appreciative of small things and as searching for MORE, as they are - is having been raised steeped in religion. I think there is real, quantifiable, scientifically provable value in being raised with religion and ritual. This, for what it's worth, is something I feel I lack as a person who finds consistency life's greatest challenge and routines to be the kiss of death.

I mean, we see the benefits of prayer, and faith, and habits, and church community - on happiness and on the immune system - but more than that I see that my own children have got better attention spans... They are able to sit still and be polite, and to just participate in adult situations, partially because of all those years in church. They have better, less gift-focused attitudes about Christmas and Easter than they might, because of the depth of what those days were presented as being about, and the multitude of ways we celebrated (special masses, special books and stories, special candles and decorations in our houses, all kinds of things).

Of course, being steeped in religion also makes you nuts, and drives you to art through frustration and angst, and the taboo of asking unavoidable questions vs the denial of avoiding them, and a vicious guilt/shame cycle. All that, I did manage to give myself in spades with just late adolescent and young adult devoutness.

Que sera sera, am I right?

I am eager to see the world move on from patriarchy, and from the violent and enraged reactions that variations on the gender binary get met with. I'm in love with the priorities that emerge, and the shifts in perspective that happen, for individuals and for society, when you lift the filter of Judeo-Christian values off of your eyes and look around with nothing but honesty and evidence to guide you through daily life and human interactions. I naturally gravitate towards very existential, black humor where nothing is sacred.

I'm also impossibly sad about the idea idea of a world where nothing is sacred. The jokes without the sanctity to make you gasp at them are just banal, just empty, just...not even funny anymore. I don't want to live in a world without monasteries, without altars to light candles on. It seems like too big a loss to bear, and I don't even know why.

It makes me very happy to know that a woman half a mile from my house is living in her saint-studded house with her seven children, and that they go to Mass and take communion every single morning. I don't want that life. For me or for my kids. But I'm glad she's living it, in a way that doesn't infringe on me. I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm telling the truth. I'm afraid of Anne Rice's son, and Dan Savage's son, and Tori Amos' daughter all growing up as people who don't really get what their parents were on about. All the while realizing it would be horribly wrong for any of them to impose things on their kids that tormented them, themselves, so intensely.

I'm glad there is a Buddhist temple and a Schoenstatt shrine within a few miles of me, filled 24/7 with monks and sisters respectively, despite it being 2013. I like knowing they're there, around the clock, studying old wisdom and leading chants and prayers. I like knowing they're open whenever I might want to stop by, as I ignore them completely.


*Incidentally, Anne Rice's assistant is a former monk turned heathen/heathen's assistant, because it's totally her THING, too. Becket seems really awesome.

Comments

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I don't find it a glaring flaw in general, and totally see the flexibility and pressure advantages, BUT, I definitely think it's the weakest link in my wife-and-motherhood chain. Those pros come in really handy now and then, in a relationship and with the kids - that is why people who are good at consistency but not pressure or flexibility are often acting so amazed by things that I seem to take in stride. But, day to day life can be way too hard in ways that don't even make any sense. I start to really struggle if those seemingly super hard things or out of nowhere things aren't coming often enough.


It is something people find offensive, or irrelevant. And, I spend time wondering how many of those benefits to seek elsewhere, and how. I have a circular loop of thought about how whatever quiet, beauty and repetition I might reproduce in my own way for the sake of itself will not connect me to a thousands-year-old tradition or a chain of millions of believers that encircles the globe, and that those distinctions really do matter. That's followed by a conclusion about how I am inherently connected to people from long ago and people far away by being a human being on this planet searching for meaning and love. EXCEPT, blah blah blah. *shrug* I mean, you know, *I* cannot do the actual religious part for the sake of it's motions, if I'm not believing the truth of it. That was always my big source of stress with churches and with sin as a concept, and...all of it. I've thought about that a lot lately because of the Christmas/Advent season, and how much I just aesthetically enjoy the Christmas story and Christmas Eve mass and all that.

[mama-blogess.livejournal.com]

There is no science that says being raised in a religion and with ritual is better for a person than not. Any study indicating this is just showing us that being raised with community is better for a person than not, which is kind of obvious. It has nothing to do with what that community does or believes.

And sure, when you compare people who pray to people who do nothing, then people who pray are likely getting benefits from that practice. But lets compare people who pray to people who meditate, or do yoga, or exercise regularly and take time for themselves to recharge. Then I don't see prayer coming out ahead, I actually have friends who do mediation and yoga who are the most peaceful and happy people I know. And I know that regular exercise and therapy do worlds more for me than the emptiness of prayer and the confusions of faith ever did.

My kids can interact with adults and have really long attention spans, and we don't regularly attend church. When I was a kid being forced to sit still during a two hour church service (and no we didn't have a nursery or any youth classes) I just remember it as being miserable. All I learned form it was how to dissociate, which isn't exactly healthy and wasn't a very useful skill in my life.

And it's funny to read that you think your kids are less materialistic about holidays because of religion. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, so we didn't celebrate holidays at all. All growing up, I thought people who celebrated Christmas at all were so materialistic. That is all the kids in school talked about was the gifts, that was all you heard about during this time of year, and what all the adults stressed about. So when we started celebrating Christmas we were very careful to take the focus off the gifts and put it on the tradition and togetherness, etc. We do give gifts, but we don't do Santa, and my kids make gifts for everyone every year so they can experience the joy of giving instead of just receiving. We tell them about the solstice and Yule and why people started celebrating this time of year so long ago - and none of that has to do with Jesus by the way ;-)

I'm not trying to be argumentative, though I realize this is probably coming off that way. I am just seeing that you seem to have a lot of black and white thinking about religion. And in my life your perceptions are not reality. There are churches you can join as a non-believer like the UU if you want community and ritual. Or get involved in any community group, and you have just replaced all of the good things about religion.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I was not trying to imply that there is science that says being raised in a religion and with ritual is better. I've talked at length about reasons why I think it can be damaging (http://altarflame.livejournal.com/478837.html) to be raised with religion and ritual. I think that some of the parts of the people I mentioned, that I like, are related to them being raised religious. I sometimes feel like very specific things I like about my own kids' behavior or outlook are related to ways they were exposed to specific bits of religion.

I've talked before about how meditation totally gives me a lot of the same peace and centeredness that prayer does, too. That doesn't really have anything to do with craving heavy theology and strict rules and rich traditions, though.

UU and such do not and have never appealed to me. That doesn't mean they aren't very valuable to other people. I cannot grasp the meaning or the point of community and ritual devoted to a central focus that isn't capital-t Truth; religion as a metaphor does nothing for me. I don't know how to feel reverence for things, and act as though they're sacred, without really Believing in them whole-heartedly.

This entry is designed to express feelings I have, most of them grief related, many of them romanticizing, all of them personal and based on my own life. None of it is logical, which I tried to make clear. I'm really not here to convince anyone of anything. For instance: I am drawn to the idea of struggling to resist forbidden temptations. I think the concepts of sin and a battle between good and evil make "bad" things hotter and more luscious. I really eat up how that whole dichotomy heightens feelings and sensations and makes all things sexual so much more weighty and dramatic.

It's also crazily destructive, and not good for anyone, or what we should be teaching kids. I don't ADVOCATE that kind of idea. I certainly wouldn't argue other people should feel that way. But I do, whether I want to or not. *shrug* There's no point to the feeling, or objective in telling you, except that I like understanding how I feel, and I like expressing my feelings, and I like it when I can connect with other people who feel like I do.

I'm not trying to argue, either, BUT (haha)...I think it's funny that you say that I have black and white views on religion, and yet you think you can sum up "all of the good things about religion" as replaceable by joining a community group. It goes much deeper than a community group can, for many people. What I miss is not volunteerism or hanging out at specified times; it's feeling I can tap into the creator of the universe directly whenever I want, and like I know at least some of the central answers to life's (and deaths) mysteries. I miss feeling that I can study the same book all my life and still not even begin to unravel it's wisdom, and like I am a better person each time I try. I miss seeing signs intended just for me in every day events, and then thanking somebody specific for them.

"In my life your perceptions are not reality" is something anyone could say to any other person.

[mama-blogess.livejournal.com]

You said, "I think there is real, quantifiable, scientifically provable value in being raised with religion and ritual." I was trying to point out that those studies that religious people often refer to to prove these things are often very flawed. There are also studies that show benefits in being secular as well.

I do get what you are saying, and I too have trouble getting into the UU church. I mean, what's the point, you know? I'm trying to do it for my kids, to give them some kind of community, but it doesn't do much for me. I think your post just got me in defensive mode because it sounded like a lot of the Christian apologetics, like "our kids are more well behaved" and "our kids know the true meaning of Christmas" etc. I was also raised from birth in a religion that was not touchy feely, but works based. Faith = works, not a good feeling about god and the universe, so my relationship with religion was very different. Community is the hardest thing to replace when you leave religion. There is community opportunities available though, which is what I was trying point out, but you are right that you aren't going to get the same feeling from joining them. I don't miss religion at all, it was not a good thing for me or my life and I didn't experience it at all the way you did. But I do see your point and I didn't mean to get so argumentative sounding.

[altarflame.livejournal.com]

I am probably not being clear; I have some vicious brain fog lately. But I meant for that sentence you quoted. and the one after it in the entry, to mean something together like, "I believe there are good things about being raised this way that we don't even understand yet, but will one day be able to prove, because they are quantifiable. Even now, we can see that there are benefits that have already been proven, such as ____."

I do agree that many of those studies (that have been done) are flawed. I also believe placebos are amazing things sometimes, and that there may be something more than placebo.

I know a family who is extremely active in the UU church and they do seem to get a lot out of it. They are a lesbian family and are homeschooling, so I think they need all the supportive community they can get. One of the moms runs their whole Sunday School program.

I didn't mean to make you (or anyone) defensive, and am sorry it came off that way. I think there are lots of really weighty pros and cons to being raised with and without religion, and you're gonna miss out on something and benefit in some ways no matter what. I mean, I wasn't raised with religion myself. And I'm not really raising my kids with religion anymore, because I feel like it could potentially do too much harm to do so. But I get these pangs, still, for the good parts we used to enjoy (especially during Advent). And the beautiful, rich parts that I just miss on my own. For me, it was much more about the poetry of it, and the personal emotions, and the constant material to delve deeper into in study, than the other people - these past few years at least. When I was a teenager it was all about community. *shrug*

[(Anonymous)]

Rebecca/boxcarbecca here. Have you read anything by Gail Godwin? I think you may like her. She has a collection of short stories called Dream Children. http://www.gailgodwin.com/book-page.php?ISBN_PB=0345389921 I think the majority of her novels have religious themes, like Father Melancholy's Daughter. "Godwin comes to her singular treatment of religiosity through childhood inheritance. Her mother, Kathleen Cole, often consulted St. Teresa of Avila’s testimony of faith, The Interior Castle. This source book emerges at times in Godwin’s fiction; and it has captured the attention of Godwin scholars."

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not quite sure how I've landed on your journal - I was looking up a fancy quote the last I checked - but I'm sure glad I did. These thoughts I've shared with you for many years. Religion drove me mad as a child, but it has allowed me to think with the clarity that I do now, because there is a lifestyle to compare with, one that I fully understand from having lived it for so long.