13 April 2001 ~ God is not a Hallmark card...

It's "Holy Week," and thus perhaps a good time to reflect on religion...

I'm told once a week or so -- never directly, but subtly and pointedly -- that I'm a pretty lame excuse for a Christian. Not surprising, as I don't identify with the Christian religion, but upsetting nonetheless...

I'm griping about an old lady who yelled at me for not giving her free coffee. I'm angry and a little frustrated. I don't yell back at the old lady; I'm polite to her and I walk away quietly. When she leaves, I complain that she's got a really rough attitude. The nearest devout Christian accuses me softly of "seeing her only with your eyes," a nice way of saying, "you unholy wretch who hasn't accepted the love of Jesus Christ Our Savior into your heart!"

I'm NOT unholy. I do not go to church, and I do not practice any particular sacred ceremonies with any regularity. But this does NOT mean I am not spiritual.

In my so-called spiritual journey so far in this life, I have experienced a great deal more than many people ever will. I have gone to Catholic church every Sunday. I have dropped out of confirmation classes because I was deemed an unreachable sinner. I have been on the inside of a vampire cult. I have performed Wiccan spells. I have seen those spells work. I have used ouija boards and runes, tarot cards and palmistry. I have a mother who swears she's had divine revelations and who exhibits a certain psychic sense of what's going on. I have had dreams of places I could never have seen. I have spent long days and nights in libraries reading about ancient mythologies. I have experienced divinity -- heaven, clarity, near-perfection -- in singing with girl friends, in finishing a love letter, in reading Robbins and Rilke, in making love, in walking over the Susquehanna River at night... I have read the Bible, I have copied texts from the Bible and carried them with me for months. I once thought I saw a rather ghastly spiritual entity walk across my backyard in a cape. I have remembered my past life in bits and pieces. I AM a spiritual person, dammit.

"The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!"
--Allen Ginsberg

(Allen Ginsberg says stuff better than I can sometimes...)

I know my spirit is lacking sometimes. I know I could use my life to better purposes. But I fucking DON'T believe that my life's work is to praise and worship a man in the sky whilst ignoring everything around me. I don't believe my spirirt could ever survive in a church. I don't believe I am a sinner for having loved, for having smoked too much weed once and hallucinated something beautiful. I don't believe I am unspiritual simply because I refuse to participate in organizing a collective soul. I WILL NOT believe that I am ANY less of a moral or decent person SIMPLY because I don't go to church, SIMPLY because I happen to think lost silverware in the streets is JUST as fucken sacred as any "Easter Candle."

If there is a God, I'm very happy about that. If there is a Goddess (and if there's a God, there MUST be a Goddess!), I'm happy about that, too. I do believe in Forces I cannot see, and Energies that are inexplicable. I also believe in taking responsibility for my life, rather than placing it in the hands of a Higher Power: I do not believe I should beg for a happy life from a Being I cannot see, but that I should work my damned hardest to get it for myself. Not that I disbelieve in the power of the Higher Powers to give me a happy life, but I don't fucken deserve it if I don't try to do it myself. I believe too, that if my life goes to hell and I'm miserable and all that, I have only myself to blame, not the Higher Powers.

(I also believe that the Higher Forces don't care if I curse like common kitchen-help, and that they'd be quite pleased with my choices regarding extramarital love-making...)

I'm really very tolerant of various religious beliefs, so long as they're beliefs, and not dogma. Dogma, to me, is unacceptable.

I've never killed anybody. Not because of any Commandment. But because I'm a fucken decent human being.

I did grow up in a Catholic household. I don't think we bothered praying before dinner. Maybe sometimes, but not as a habit. Still, we went to church, and we were solemnly "holy," in church, and then we went back to our house and were QUITE unholy. We yelled at each other, and sometimes my brothers complained that their dinner tasted yucky, and sometimes my parents spanked us in anger and we never really talked much about God. Oh yes, and I grew up and started hanging out with fags, and my mom grew up and became a dyke, and my littlest brother wants to grow up to be a firefighter by day and an arsonist by night. But we went to church, so I guess we were considered good people.

I used to pray quite frequently. And I usually got the things I prayed for. I prayed for health, and I got generally good health. I prayed for a boyfriend, and I got a boyfriend. I prayed for Peter not to die of AIDS, and he didn't die of AIDS.

But I'm mostly stopped that. I've mostly given up the idea that to get what you want, you must appeal to Higher Powers. You do what YOU can do to make your life better and to make things work out. I do not underestimate my own power to make things the way I want them to be.

The problem is that I don't know where to turn anymore in situations that seem hopeless. I've been thinking about this for several days now.

A close relative of a dear friend recently was diagnosed with a pretty shitty thing called cancer. I've never met this relative; I don't think I've ever even seen a picture. Still, I'm taking the news rather badly. The loved one of a loved one is ill, and there's absolutely NOTHING I can do to ease it for either of them. I say, "I'm so sorry." But what the hell does that mean? I say, "if there's anything I can do..." But there's nothing I can do, and even if my friend is taking it well, there's nothing easy about cancer. I AM sorry, and I AM willing to do whatever I could do. This is my friend, whom I love very dearly, and who fucking DOESN'T deserve the fear of this kind of thing. This is somebody with a beautiful heart who shouldn't have to hurt. But I can't change this.

I would like to kneel beside my bed, like I used to do when I was younger, and I want to say, "God, please take care of my friend who has something very unfortunate happening in his life right now." I want to clasp my hands together and bow my head and say, "God, take all the love I have for my friend and extend it to him in more useful ways than I can." But I don't know how anymore. I don't know if I believe in God, as such. I've come to believe that maybe desperate wishing isn't the right thing to do; that it's a sort of admission that I'm NOT capable. But I've been given a LOT of tools and talents, and asking God and Goddess and Higher Energies to do things for me is a lot like saying, "you didn't do a very good job in creating me, did you? I need you to give me more."

I'm very afraid. I'm afraid that I have nothing to give. I'm afraid that my friend, who has always been close at hand in my unhappy times, will undergo some darkness of his own, and I won't have anything to offer except dime-a-dozen Hallmark-esque condolences.

I'm going to my own family get-together this evening: a little Easter dinner, complete with candy and stuffed rabbits. Maybe I'll ask them if we could all say a prayer for my friend, even if it seems ridiculous and selfish.

[My friend, tebe mám ráda... It's maybe all I have to offer you... I hope it's enough.]

~H.T.*