The next few posts are a bit of a departure for me because I
don’t usually talk about spiritual matters here (or anywhere, really). Both Tim
and I grew up in very religious families, but neither of us identify with any
particular religion today. Now that we have Daisy and Townes, I feel the
necessity to examine my own feelings about spirituality and what we might teach
our kids. This one is for my dad, actually, who I know reads my posts and who I
am afraid this one might initially disturb (I secretly think my dad is fearing
for my eternal soul. He’s Catholic. It would be weirder if he didn’t). But
dad! Bear with me! It gets better. My mom and dad are pretty much the nicest
people in the world and they raised me right. I do not quibble with their
choice to enroll me in parochial school. It made me a better person. I LIKED
Catholic school and I am (somewhat shockingly) even still friends with some of
those same kids today. I love that my mom and dad have faith and go to church
and I appreciate that they raised me with a very specific playbook on how to be
a decent human being. My dad is really the only person who has called me out
for not going to church but he has a light touch. As always, he tries to lob
lessons in my direction with humor. I do still attend Mass when I visit them,
because it is important to my mom and dad and I am not an asshole. Actually, I
am an asshole and I am constantly in a wrestling match with myself to be a
better daughter and this is one small way I can show them I am trying. So if I have
to pay the price of my dad mentioning after Mass how surprised he is that the
church is still standing and didn't fall down in a million pieces after I go in, I’m
ok with that.
Things that do trouble me about not being religious:
- Disappointing my parents (see paragraph #1)
- Daisy and Townes will not have the tradition of going to Mass or Service that Tim and I grew up with and the larger community that goes along with that experience.
- What do we teach the kids about death?
So – not a long list at all. But #3 especially is kind of a monster and pretty worrisome.
Even though I grew up Roman Catholic, attended parochial school until the 11th grade and went to mass every week until moving out of my parents’ house, (shocking fact alert) I never pray. That’s right. It is not something I do. I do not TALK TO GOD. The only time I ever have TALKED TO GOD was when my maternal grandmother was on her deathbed, and even then my prayers were for her to be at peace and not in pain. I think I panic prayed once or twice when both my mom and dad (on two separate occasions) were hospitalized with some emergency medical problems. Panic praying, for those of you uninitiated in the neuroses of agnostics, is what we do when someone close to us is in peril. It causes you to reach out to God in the following grasping and weasley, apologetic way. “Uh, hey God. I mean, I know I don’t think you even exist, but just on the off chance that you do…um, I’m wondering if you could please look out for me and make sure my mom/dad come home okay. I mean, I know that if I were you I’d probably not be all that interested in helping me out since in my day-to-day existence when people bring you up it makes me uncomfortable owing to the fact that it’s usually an entrée to being asked to participate in someone else’s idea of what is correct, but hear me out. I’m just asking for this one small favor (in the giant existential picture it’s pretty small potatoes for you to keep my little family safe from catastrophe, right?)Yep I’m shameless in that I even resorted to an attempt to emotionally manipulate God. “I mean, God? If that IS in fact your name – one of the reasons I stopped going to church and generally believing in you is that there are an awful lot of “church-going” people over here that use their belief in you to justify a lot of un-Christian behavior (or at least justify their interpretation of Christian behavior which I think is almost as disrespectful).
I was never able to understand the condescension, pity and need to justify a narrow view of religion that so many believers bring to discussions of faith (outside of the Buddhists gotta love ‘em but I’ll get to them later). And the same way religious people probably pity me/worry for my soul for my lack of Godliness, I wonder at someone’s ability to put so much stock in, well, a bunch of thrilling tales, which is ultimately how I view the Bible. I mean the Bible is some crazy, fantastical, well-written, sometimes beautiful, oftentimes gory storytelling shiz, but at the end of the day it’s the grand-daddy of all storybooks. Written and rewritten over the years by MEN and interpreted and reinterpreted through the ages. An amazing piece of history? Maybe? But that’s where it stops with me.
Having grown up in one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse cities in southern California (Long Beach), and having already spent many hours with families who celebrated many different kinds of spirituality, I felt unsettled by a lot of what I was hearing in religion class fairly early (i.e. the WE’RE on the right path, ya’ll. Everyone else is goin’ to hell dogma). As a Roman Catholic kid attending school in the 1980’s, we had religion class every day and attended Mass once a week whether we needed it or not (I’m sure the Sisters and Fathers thought we were getting off easy). This is where I need to acknowledge that this post may come off as an argument to keep your kids around “their own kind” but bear with me. I feel like I was enriched by my experiences with kids from lots of cultures. I even had a Hmong friend (look it up).
I had broken bread at any number of diverse tables before I was even out of middle school. I mean, having international friends was not without its pitfalls. At ten I was not so excited to try Injera (Ethiopian flat bread) or any number of international desserts. Truly, I could deal with most dinners but the dessert course would almost always cause my heart to race and give me the signs of what I now recognize as an anxiety attack. If there was one rule that my mom had pounded into my head about the very activity of going to dinner at another family’s house it was that you tried everything and were POLITE no matter how much you did not like the dinner. In my world, most families were of modest means and you did not waste food. Shut up and eat. Having said that, my personal United Nations had given me specifically an overwhelming aversion to Greek, Cuban and Indian pastries for YEARS. Desserts are not supposed to taste like FLOWERS, Ritesh! But I digress. The point is that I had a multicultural smorgasbord of friends and they and their parents all seemed like good people. Kind people. People that would give the coat off their back. Turn the other cheek. Etc., etc. The lessons that parents were teaching in my friend Claudia’s African-American house, or Amiris Fraga’s Cuban family compound or the Nguyen’s Vietnamese-immigrant apartment seemed more or less about the same as the lessons I was getting in my house. There were a lot of over-worked and underpaid parents in these homes, but they all seemed on par with my mom and dad in terms of being good, moral people with a lot of BIG love for their families. Of course the Nguyen’s place had a tiny altar with fascinating tchotchkes and a pillow to kneel on in one corner of the living room and Claudia’s mom went to a church on Sunday that was just way more fun than our church. The preacher was always screaming at everyone (and sweating!), but the choir really did seem to be sent from above and you didn’t just want to tap your toes, there was full on clapping and shimmying going on in THAT house of worship. Plus, all the ladies and men dressed up for God. That seemed appropriate to me. In sum, notwithstanding the weird and often disgusting gelatinous sweets these folks ingested on a daily basis, they all seemed an awful lot like the Catholic compatriots we knew from church and school. Go figure.
My mom and dad moved us to the mostly homogeneous climes of Orange County at the beginning of my 5th grade year, but we lived in Anaheim which is kind of the seedy underbelly of the OC (Disneyland aside). In other words, the Pho and Daal was still in great supply. In our daily religion class one morning at the beginning of fifth grade we had a special guest star. He was one of the parish Priests, let’s call him Father Mike (in my head they all sort of seem like they were named Father Mike. In the 80’s priests and the Catholic Church in general were trying to be more cool. A lot of the priests were young-ish and played the guitar). We had been told that we could ask him anything and I was ready. When it came time for me to have the floor, I asked where Father thought the Buddhists and the Jews and the Hindus and the Muslims and the Baptists were all going if only the Catholics got to go to heaven. I don’t remember the exact answer he gave me, but I can recall being completely unsatisfied and disappointed in the response. It threw him off his game. He beat around the bush. He hemmed and hawed. He refused to say that they were going to hell, but he did some hearts and flowers number about how we, as good Catholic kids, were responsible for making these “lost souls” come around to our way of thinking. I pressed on. “But father? Isn’t it true that the Hindus and the Jews and the Muslims all think that THEY have it right and that WE are WRONG? Meaning, aren’t they trying to get us to see their point of view? Don’t they think we are lost?” More throat clearing and tap-dancing and soft-pedaling. Even at ten-years-old, I could sense the snake oil in his uninspiring response. I mean, he was a young guy. He probably didn’t have his “tough questions” script finalized. But it created a rift in me that I never recovered from to this day. All politics aside, I don’t feel I could ever attend a church that didn’t preach ACCEPTANCE above all else. I think that’s why I dig on the Buddhists, in my superficial Western way. More tomorrow.(No, I am not converting to Buddhism, dad). Relax.
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