Listening: The AC hissing away

I'm supposed to be at a company meeting. The fact that I don't have a full workload represents that.

I wanted to write yesterday and not quit writing until...I dunno...ever. Not that I felt like I had a lot burning in me to say, just stuff that had been in my brain so long they had taken root. So I thought picking some fruit and putting it on display here would be nice. But I didn't get the chance. However the thought of writing stayed with me for a while. It's still with me. It stayed with me so much I pestered My Molasses into promising to check out this journal.

I hadn't meant to bug him. He knows where it is. He's fully capable of finding this thing himself. *sighs* every so often my mouth goes on automatic while my brain tries sluggishly to catch up and figure out how to fix all the damage my mouth is causing.

anyway, hi baby!

so to pick a slightly random place to start I figured "God" is good ground. I believe in God. Well sort-of. I believe in something running/creating/destroying/weaving together the world but I've learned to be wary of any sort of dogma. Every established religion at one point or another comes damned close to being a cult (as in fake, extreme and based on little more than the charisma and might of a few leaders). Having been born to strict Catholics, baptized at about three months and having gone through all the requisite sacraments for being an adult (the others are matrimony (getting married), holy orders (getting ordained - prolly as a nun) and the last rites), I know something about being a Catholic in the modern day and age. But what I've learned from more secular teaching is that the Catholic church has changed fairly radically, and a lot of that change has been rather recent.

Also there's a lot to the Catholic dogma that just was never really preached in church. It was primarily devloped by theologians during the middle ages cause if you devote yourself to an institution and swear to never have sex and a lot of your livelihood is already taken care of then you have to think of something to pass the time between prayers. Since at the time the smartest people around in Europe either went into some kind of military service or went into the holy orders (where they *gasp* learned to read!) a lot of the men who were locked away in monastaries had nothing to do but write about...whatever.... So you have angels dancing on the head of a pin, you have the development of saints, you essentially have comparative works of monks trying to line up their religion with schools of thought of other civilizations as they knew them which is to say, they made a lot of shit up.

They had a close connection with the (original) Roman Empire, but a lot of the works the writers went up in flames when Rome was sacked. Through Rome, though, they knew of other places that were far away and long ago like Greece and Egypt and through that they tried to make a comprehensive history of the Time of Christ. Seems reasonable enough except that a lot of their information was faulty, lacking or filtered so many times through the eyes of other cultures so as to render their conclusions useless. But the point is not to go backwards but forward. They wanted to state that the old religions were versions of this Catholic religion, only the old guys were a little bit wrong.

What's important though, is how they set up a precedent for the future. When Islam developed Europe was a big fat mess (the term is Dark Ages), but so was Arabia which was why Islam took root, it unified people behind the thought that they actually could, if they tried really, really hard, eventually attain a level where their creator would treat them like a darling child, rather than as a plaything to be used/abused/ignored. It had many tenets the Christian church had and in fact claimed to be a sort of evolution from the church. The people of Abraham were the first people, then Jesus reset the people on the path and now Mohammed had seen a great vision and brought many people to God's path. The Church in Europe heard about this and while they were fairly skittish about Mohammed they figured it wouldn't be a big deal if the guy brought people to believe in a one God. What they didn't figure was that his followers would one day take Jerusalem from them.

This is important to my point (yes i do have a point) only because the Crusades more or less brought about the Renaissance which *totally* confused the theologians who were still trying to analyze everything to see God's hand in it. In those days the governments didn't make sure that things were fit for human consumption, the church did. Or at least the things that were meant for cultural consumption. But all kinds of stuff suddenly flooded the continent from far away places - Africa, India and of course China - and it blew everyone's mind. The Church couldn't keep up so rather than saying "All people are of God, and this is how God works/worked through them" they found themselves saying, "This is not of God, therefore this is of the devil!" Dichotomous thought like this never really made its way fully into every aspect of life. But it was applied just randomly enough to make for tragic cicumstances when the Church (an immovable object) ever met with New Things (an irrisistible force).

All of this is to say that I know there are a *lot* of random theories out there (though they're not called theories, usually treatises because nothing was taken as theoretical or hypothetical back then, as soon as ink hit the paper it was as good as reality), and I don't know most of them. The simple fact of the matter is without making a concrete effort at studying Catholicism, say by taking classes at a religious college, no one stands a chance of fully understanding the Catholic church. History, sociology and happenstance formed her over the years as did, and I have no doubt about this, God.

One unspoken tenet of a lot of modern spiritual thought (regardless of orientation) is to separate the works of Man from the works of God, and to learn to take in and live by the works of God as sublimely as one takes in air. But with so much history and cosmopolitan noise getting in the way, how can we possibly do such a thing?

I always wondered how science and God are separate. My father used to say scientists were to be pitied because they were always out to prove that God didn't exist. My dad's faith is one of the few things that alienates me from him, even at the same time as he is the one person who has taught me the most about having faith. I think it says a lot when he can believe so completely in a higher power but constantly be so distrustful of his fellow man.

My dad taught me to look at the world around me with wonder and take in every experience, every sense as a bright and powerful thing. He taught me to see God in flowers and stars, he told me about magnets and how they work and taught me that God is there, too. He taught me the basics of astronomy and explained that God makes it all work. He believes in the Big Bang, he just shrugs off the fact that scientists discovered a little bit of God's working. But oddly enough, he doesn't really buy into that reality *is* God. By the grace of God comes a storm to give water, but the storm is not God.

Fortunately, my mother taught me that some people say "Mother Nature" when they mean "God."

I didn't really understand for a long time why people pull away from the Church, and subsequently from God. I still kinda don't but it's sort of on purpose. There are *very* few people who have ever tried or wanted to talk about their experiences with religion with me. A few have mentioned quickly that their experiences were bad and they just don't want to go back. But no one really explains to me why that led to deciding they didn't believe in God. Or how that leads to saying negative things about God specifically. I guess if you don't believe in God then it doesn't really matter say things like "God is an ugly bitch" or whatever. I'm not entirely convinced that it matters if you do believe.

But it always seemed to me that when I was surrounded by people who supposedly loved God and proclaimed themselves His People at the same time as they treated other folks terribly eventhough they professed the same faith, then I should only allow my faith in *them* to be lessened. God is still there and is still God. When I got to college I encountered a lot more nuttiness especially worded to supposedly be on behalf of God. Eventually my regular Church attendance petered out and honestly I kind of feel bad about that.

The main difference between faith and religion is the number of people involved. Faith is for the solitary person and their relationship with the divine while religion is for the community and its identity as followers of their belief.

My faith has mutated a bit since college mostly because I don't go to *any* lengths anymore to act the part. I know people outside of the church would call it "non-practising" but I find that term completely misses the point. I know people inside the church who would say that I'm "luke-warm" (which is actually a bad thing) but I find that designation sort of insulting especially from the perspective of walking among throngs of non-believers. Of course it also worries me because I do believe that faith is personal and so I can't say that my faith is strong merely because there are plenty of folks who don't have any faith. That's like saying my rich because there are so many people who are poor in the world, even while I can't pay my bills.

But it doesn't exactly apply.

A richness in faith is not proven by striking one's breast in church or wearing ashes and sackcloth. Though I can accept that often people are moved by their faith to do these things. My dad, I am convinced, was moved by his faith to wear a thick chain around his neck at all times to show his devotion to Mother Mary, even while my mom fought with him constantly about it (it's ugly, you're not a punk kid, you embarass me, don't come to bed wearing that thing...). Personally I think my dad has worked really hard to find some direction from the divine to prove his worth somehow. He's paranoid (and 76 years old) and wants to assure himself a place in heaven. The cost, though, is ignoring the life he has been granted. By the grace of God he has a large family, a house and a church community that he does a lot for. But when any aspect of his earthly life pulls him from his devotions to the heavenly he considers it a distraction and sees himself a martyr because he isn't permitted to show his obecience as he will.

My mom on the other hand has devloped the highly uncomftable, and somewhat embarassing habit encouraging(?) other people to come to her religion. Those who already are baptised in the Church are expected to know certain prayers and be eager to pray with her, even if they don't know her very well. (Hey, it's supposed to be all one big happy congregation, right?) Those who aren't get anywhere from subtle hints encouraging conversion to her endless attempts to do something about their faith. Her current conquest has been to get her father to marry her step-mother in a church. They were originally married by the state, so it doesn't count as far as the Church is concerned. Though her step-mother is very religious, her father is pretty well indifferent. But she still got him to agree to get married again and she's pretty proud of herself for it. My mom is pretty well convinced that anyone who believes in God should be a Catholic, and if they're not then they're either pretending or just fucking around. But this is something that she honestly believes she ought to do.

Personally, I'm at somewhat of a loss for figuring out how I should show my faith. My religion, I don't feel, has changed, but honestly I don't try to act on it at all and that's a shame. I like to keep my distance from other people, but I recognize that being part of a community is vital and a community that believes in the things I believe in can be really good for the soul, as they say. But as always, the trouble with people is that they're people. But I believe that part of my recent listlessness has come from not finding an adequate way to express myself.

In equal proportion with this topic was supposed to go my thoughts on spirituality but I'm beginning to get bored and think about the work I'm supposed to be diong.

But I want to note this before I forget it: I feel uncomfortable when I hear about the faith in the poor and neglected. I used to get that Latin Americans (with special attention to Mexico) seem to buy into the Church a lot and the general assumptions I observed were that the people were poor and had nothing more to look forward to than the relief of death so of course they believed in something that would transport them to a care-free paradise once they died. I think that completely misses the fact that a lot of Latinos, at least the ones I've known, are very spiritual, and while it would be cheap to say that we'll believe anything so long as it allows us to make giant dramatic gestures and pitch ourselves into spiritual tizzies, I would say that it is both a challenge and a comfort to believe in something greater than ourselves and everything we can percieve with our physical senses.

did any of that make sense?

more later

travel
foreign language
current events
foreign
domestic
familial
violence
some history & sociology