About Me
Perhaps now is the time to give away something of how I got to be the way I am - my Lamarckian evolution to a weirdly comfortable and paradoxical yet strangely satisfying spiritual place.
My family is, for the most part, Catholic. Not super Catholic, but Catholic enough that I got the Sacrements (Baptism through Confirmation) and went to CCD every Tuesday through eighth grade. CCD was pretty boring. I always wanted to confess to having broken one of the less popular Commandments (e.g. I have been worshiping Quetzalcoatl) but I never had the guts. I hated face-to-face Confession - it was extremely creepy. The priests' hands always smelled like cured meat. There was and is something about celibates that spooks me. I wasn't really friends with the other kids, either, and even if I was I certainly wasn't going to get into a metaphysical discussion with them. That happened between me and my mom. The only time CCD was remotely interesting was in eighth grade, where we sat in a small room and actually started to talk about real topics of faith and theology. The room smelled of cheap red candles, though, and plastic flowers. That depressed me - the decor was just cheap enough not to be nice, which was somehow worse than nothing at all. That would at least have been monastic and pure. It's hard to find God with the scent of cheap plastic in your nose. But I liked the stories of the saints and the long history of the Church (depsite it not all being good), and the ritual and heady symbolism of Mass. The music sucked, however; the aural homolog of the cheap plastic replacing the real lilies. Add the Church's position on birth control and women and I was disenchanted pretty early on.
Meanwhile, every day after school, from first to fifth grade, and for a month every summer I was immersed in Jewish Community Center programs. I know my Shabbos prayers, can dance to klezmer music, and to this day I have trouble eating pig products (exception: pepperoni - I love pepperoni). The decor of the JCC, while heavy on the pink and light blue and brass "donated by" plaques, was also much less depressing than that of CCD. I'm not judging religions by their decorators, but trying to give a sense of the . . . gestalt that I had in different places as a child. You also get to like having sex in Judaism and sex is even better than pepperoni.
I found Judaism beautiful and rich; I liked the community and the tradition of scholarship, although I found things like random dietary restrictions to be extraneous. All the niggling rules and regulations! But Judaism has Tevyeh, and challah, and summer camp! For a little while in early high school I wanted to be Hassidic, for the sense of security it seemed to offer (as many people join cults at vulnerable times in their lives). That wore off after a day or two for a number of reasons. In high school, most of my good friends were Jewish. I envied their belonging to this community. I could sit in and sing along, but I could never be part of it. I never really felt a deep connection to the Catholic church, either, as I disagreed with so much of it's dogma so there was still always that sense of being a nomad, of being a visitor, of belonging to nothing.
The main spiritual events of my youth happened at the First Presbyterian Chruch Camp, where I went for two weeks every summer from age 9 to age 15. This camp was much more religious than my Jewish day camp, to the point of having Bible study daily and a "no purpling" rule (boys are blue, girls are red, you see where that's going). There was rock climbing, spelunking, white water rafting, ropes courses - all with Christian themes and overtones. ("Jesus, please help me jump off this stupid platform!") It might have been stifling, but I had a great time there. The music was terrific and the counselors were genuinely nice people. Bullying and cliquishness were frowned upon (a welcome break from middle school). There was time for quiet reflection in a place of natural beauty. I had several transcendent experiences which I will not discuss here. But I also questioned and questioned during Bible studies and at other times. Are all the Jews going to Hell? Adam and Eve aren't real, are they? How could I synthesize what I learned and felt at camp with what I learned and felt at the JCC? And all the while, I'm supposed to be Catholic?
My sense of community was Jewish - my heart was touched by Presbyterians - my family was Catholic . . . I don't remember feeling confused, per se, although I felt that familiar sense of being an alien, of dropping by, of not belonging but taking an affectionate interest. When I was fifteen I wrote in my journal, "Went to church this morning. I don't think I'm religious. Well, I think I have my own religion - the God Religion, which is just me and God and the universe and everyone."
Imagine this, try. There are three people who you love, you respect, and they are each confident that their way of doing things is the proper way. To choose one means rejecting the others. If one of them is "right" that means the others aren't, they can't be. But you have clicked with each of them in different ways, have learned what they have to say, have seen both wonderful and troubling aspects in each of them, so they can't all be "wrong" either.
At church camp they warned against "sampling", i.e. picking and choosing what to believe out of the Bible. You had to swallow the whole thing, whole. I couldn't do that, but my spiritual experiences there felt no less real. I was going through the motions of Catholicism - was it spritually dishonest, then, that I edited the Testament of Faith during Mass? ("One holy Catholic and apostolic church" - well, yes, I certainly believe it exists . . . "the Resurrection of the body"? - hm, I'll be very surprised if this happens.) At the JCC I learned about the Chosen People, of whom I was not one no matter how often I ate the bread and drank the wine. I should have been having a spiritual crisis, but actually I wasn't. That was just how it was.
Instead of a crisis or a conversion, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what, at the deepest level, these different faiths were saying. What things were the same between Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism? Each of them had aspects that felt right to me and things that felt wrong; but I could dissect them and find the commonalities, the natural laws of religion, excised of the window dressings of names and traditions. It was precocious self-tutelage in comparative religion. I felt that I had a unique vantage point from which to study the questions of God and religion; a privileged postion, and the only price was my own sense of alienation. A small price to pay for a higher truth. I was a scientist even before I became a scientist.
I came to many various conclusions, some of which I have discussed briefly elsewhere. My mom and I agreed with the Dalai Lama (more on him later) although we didn't know it at the time: there are many paths up the mountain to God. Religion binds communities together and imparts moral codes. The divine is all around, in everything, and therefore every living and non-living thing should be loved and respected; in loving and tending to each other and to nature, we are worshiping, thanking, and giving praise to God.
Later I learned more about Hinduism. I was immediately smitten with the idea of karma, although the mechanics of reincarnation make it highly suspect as more than a metaphor. I came up with a sort of meta-reincarnation concept, where every person, every creature, is an expression of a cosmic soul. I liked the Hindu duality of many gods being aspects of One God.
I also came to some conclusions about the search and the many levels of truth. One day, in college, I picked up a book of quotes from the Dalai Lama and was astounded to read my own idea about the four levels of knowledge, in a slightly more lucid form. Turns out I was a Buddhist all along! Who knew?
I am not actually a Buddhist, of course, for similar reasons as to why I am not a Jew or a Catholic. There are many paths up the mountain to Enlightenment . . . I can argue on all sides of the mountain (the atheist side, too) but to pick one path that has been marked out, one trampled, worn, and rutted path? How can I do it?
I trust that God - or whatever, since the concept of "God" is only a symbol for a transcendent idea - is cool with that. I really do.
My family is, for the most part, Catholic. Not super Catholic, but Catholic enough that I got the Sacrements (Baptism through Confirmation) and went to CCD every Tuesday through eighth grade. CCD was pretty boring. I always wanted to confess to having broken one of the less popular Commandments (e.g. I have been worshiping Quetzalcoatl) but I never had the guts. I hated face-to-face Confession - it was extremely creepy. The priests' hands always smelled like cured meat. There was and is something about celibates that spooks me. I wasn't really friends with the other kids, either, and even if I was I certainly wasn't going to get into a metaphysical discussion with them. That happened between me and my mom. The only time CCD was remotely interesting was in eighth grade, where we sat in a small room and actually started to talk about real topics of faith and theology. The room smelled of cheap red candles, though, and plastic flowers. That depressed me - the decor was just cheap enough not to be nice, which was somehow worse than nothing at all. That would at least have been monastic and pure. It's hard to find God with the scent of cheap plastic in your nose. But I liked the stories of the saints and the long history of the Church (depsite it not all being good), and the ritual and heady symbolism of Mass. The music sucked, however; the aural homolog of the cheap plastic replacing the real lilies. Add the Church's position on birth control and women and I was disenchanted pretty early on.
Meanwhile, every day after school, from first to fifth grade, and for a month every summer I was immersed in Jewish Community Center programs. I know my Shabbos prayers, can dance to klezmer music, and to this day I have trouble eating pig products (exception: pepperoni - I love pepperoni). The decor of the JCC, while heavy on the pink and light blue and brass "donated by" plaques, was also much less depressing than that of CCD. I'm not judging religions by their decorators, but trying to give a sense of the . . . gestalt that I had in different places as a child. You also get to like having sex in Judaism and sex is even better than pepperoni.
I found Judaism beautiful and rich; I liked the community and the tradition of scholarship, although I found things like random dietary restrictions to be extraneous. All the niggling rules and regulations! But Judaism has Tevyeh, and challah, and summer camp! For a little while in early high school I wanted to be Hassidic, for the sense of security it seemed to offer (as many people join cults at vulnerable times in their lives). That wore off after a day or two for a number of reasons. In high school, most of my good friends were Jewish. I envied their belonging to this community. I could sit in and sing along, but I could never be part of it. I never really felt a deep connection to the Catholic church, either, as I disagreed with so much of it's dogma so there was still always that sense of being a nomad, of being a visitor, of belonging to nothing.
The main spiritual events of my youth happened at the First Presbyterian Chruch Camp, where I went for two weeks every summer from age 9 to age 15. This camp was much more religious than my Jewish day camp, to the point of having Bible study daily and a "no purpling" rule (boys are blue, girls are red, you see where that's going). There was rock climbing, spelunking, white water rafting, ropes courses - all with Christian themes and overtones. ("Jesus, please help me jump off this stupid platform!") It might have been stifling, but I had a great time there. The music was terrific and the counselors were genuinely nice people. Bullying and cliquishness were frowned upon (a welcome break from middle school). There was time for quiet reflection in a place of natural beauty. I had several transcendent experiences which I will not discuss here. But I also questioned and questioned during Bible studies and at other times. Are all the Jews going to Hell? Adam and Eve aren't real, are they? How could I synthesize what I learned and felt at camp with what I learned and felt at the JCC? And all the while, I'm supposed to be Catholic?
My sense of community was Jewish - my heart was touched by Presbyterians - my family was Catholic . . . I don't remember feeling confused, per se, although I felt that familiar sense of being an alien, of dropping by, of not belonging but taking an affectionate interest. When I was fifteen I wrote in my journal, "Went to church this morning. I don't think I'm religious. Well, I think I have my own religion - the God Religion, which is just me and God and the universe and everyone."
Imagine this, try. There are three people who you love, you respect, and they are each confident that their way of doing things is the proper way. To choose one means rejecting the others. If one of them is "right" that means the others aren't, they can't be. But you have clicked with each of them in different ways, have learned what they have to say, have seen both wonderful and troubling aspects in each of them, so they can't all be "wrong" either.
At church camp they warned against "sampling", i.e. picking and choosing what to believe out of the Bible. You had to swallow the whole thing, whole. I couldn't do that, but my spiritual experiences there felt no less real. I was going through the motions of Catholicism - was it spritually dishonest, then, that I edited the Testament of Faith during Mass? ("One holy Catholic and apostolic church" - well, yes, I certainly believe it exists . . . "the Resurrection of the body"? - hm, I'll be very surprised if this happens.) At the JCC I learned about the Chosen People, of whom I was not one no matter how often I ate the bread and drank the wine. I should have been having a spiritual crisis, but actually I wasn't. That was just how it was.
Instead of a crisis or a conversion, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what, at the deepest level, these different faiths were saying. What things were the same between Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism? Each of them had aspects that felt right to me and things that felt wrong; but I could dissect them and find the commonalities, the natural laws of religion, excised of the window dressings of names and traditions. It was precocious self-tutelage in comparative religion. I felt that I had a unique vantage point from which to study the questions of God and religion; a privileged postion, and the only price was my own sense of alienation. A small price to pay for a higher truth. I was a scientist even before I became a scientist.
I came to many various conclusions, some of which I have discussed briefly elsewhere. My mom and I agreed with the Dalai Lama (more on him later) although we didn't know it at the time: there are many paths up the mountain to God. Religion binds communities together and imparts moral codes. The divine is all around, in everything, and therefore every living and non-living thing should be loved and respected; in loving and tending to each other and to nature, we are worshiping, thanking, and giving praise to God.
Later I learned more about Hinduism. I was immediately smitten with the idea of karma, although the mechanics of reincarnation make it highly suspect as more than a metaphor. I came up with a sort of meta-reincarnation concept, where every person, every creature, is an expression of a cosmic soul. I liked the Hindu duality of many gods being aspects of One God.
I also came to some conclusions about the search and the many levels of truth. One day, in college, I picked up a book of quotes from the Dalai Lama and was astounded to read my own idea about the four levels of knowledge, in a slightly more lucid form. Turns out I was a Buddhist all along! Who knew?
I am not actually a Buddhist, of course, for similar reasons as to why I am not a Jew or a Catholic. There are many paths up the mountain to Enlightenment . . . I can argue on all sides of the mountain (the atheist side, too) but to pick one path that has been marked out, one trampled, worn, and rutted path? How can I do it?
I trust that God - or whatever, since the concept of "God" is only a symbol for a transcendent idea - is cool with that. I really do.
posted by Joolya at
1:26 PM
4 Comments:
Joolya--this is totally fascinating. I admit I thought you were Jewish for a while...amazing how when you are not bound and fed one religion indiscriminately, you really get to discover and think about what you want and need out of it...
Quite a story. I cannot say with certainty that had I grown up the same way, I would be the way I am now. Keep searching. Don't give up.
I hope you send this to the next Carnival of the Godless - this is the kind of stuff they LOVE there.
That was fascinating. Thank you for sharing all that.
My mother was strongly Methodist, but came from a strong Southern Baptist background (most of my mother's family are still Southern Baptist). My father was a Jewish New York City boy. We had some fascinating times as well...just maybe not quite as open and even as what you've described. I think I know what you mean about the spirit of inquiry and analysis, gentle alienation and "well, that's just the way it was"-ness you describe, though.
(Incidentally, your line "You also get to like having sex in Judaism and sex is even better than pepperoni." is going in my favorite-quotes-of-all-time file.)
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