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

[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.

[(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.