* My apologies for submitting other people's thoughts here...I am sure I will get back to my own, soon. In the meantime, the contents of the following email I received meant a lot to me:
Don't avoid the void
"When we feel stuck, going nowhere -- even starting to slip backward -- we may actually be backing up to get a running start."
-- Dan Millman
To change, we must go through a transition zone. It's not easy being in transition. Thoughts, beliefs and habits are all in flux. It can create a sense of groundlessness, of being in a void that can be quite uncomfortable.
When we’re in the void, our first impulse will be to revert to old habits because they feel comfortable. Our goal is to hang in there until the change is complete. Knowing that TRANSITIONS ARE PART OF THE CHANGE PROCESS helps us muster the courage to put up with the discomfort, the uneasiness, the void.
Change requires a letting go of what we’ve always known and done to allow in something new. We need to trust ourselves and higher forces to unfold a new reality for us.
"Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception."
-- Dan Millman
Friday, April 4, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
In my inbox today...
Live your own life
"We don't always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail...We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people's expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart."
-- Julie Cameron
We are each unique beings with a unique path in life. If we wish to be fulfilled, we need to go to our own hearts for direction. We might regularly ask ourselves:
- "What do I really want to do?"
- "What brings me greatest happiness?"
- "How can I bring more of these into my life?"
Life wants us to go for what brings us most joy and meaning.
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."
-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer
"Let me listen to me and not to them."
-- Gertrude Stein
"What you must dare is to be yourself."
-- Dag Hammarskjold
"We don't always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail...We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people's expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart."
-- Julie Cameron
We are each unique beings with a unique path in life. If we wish to be fulfilled, we need to go to our own hearts for direction. We might regularly ask ourselves:
- "What do I really want to do?"
- "What brings me greatest happiness?"
- "How can I bring more of these into my life?"
Life wants us to go for what brings us most joy and meaning.
"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."
-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer
"Let me listen to me and not to them."
-- Gertrude Stein
"What you must dare is to be yourself."
-- Dag Hammarskjold
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Time travel...
I was telling somebody I love that sometimes when I travel it is not the country of today I want to see. I realized I really just want to time travel.
I would really like to take one of those trips today. I want to check my Baggage at the door, get into the time machine and get out at my parent's house in the 1960's, go get my allowance of 50 cents and walk over to the Corner Store. I want to blow it all on a brown paper bag filled with sweet delights that will make me sick to my stomach.
I then want to time travel to my family's cabin at the lake, where the water was but a hop, skip and a jump from the door. I want to go out on the dock, untie the boat, jump into it, head it out into deep waters and hit the accelerator. I want to feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face and I want to go exploring with the unchallenged joy of the child I was then.
I want to watch the seagulls drop from 25 feet in the air, free-falling into the lake with an eye to dinner.
I want to wade through the water looking for beautiful stones for my rock collection. I want to watch schools of minnows swim inches from my feet.
I want to sit on the beach in the evening, pushing my bare feet into the sand and try to keep the fire going while the wind crashes waves into the shore.
I want to go there now...to a place where life still held so much promise, still made sense and didn't hurt so damn much.
I would really like to take one of those trips today. I want to check my Baggage at the door, get into the time machine and get out at my parent's house in the 1960's, go get my allowance of 50 cents and walk over to the Corner Store. I want to blow it all on a brown paper bag filled with sweet delights that will make me sick to my stomach.
I then want to time travel to my family's cabin at the lake, where the water was but a hop, skip and a jump from the door. I want to go out on the dock, untie the boat, jump into it, head it out into deep waters and hit the accelerator. I want to feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face and I want to go exploring with the unchallenged joy of the child I was then.
I want to watch the seagulls drop from 25 feet in the air, free-falling into the lake with an eye to dinner.
I want to wade through the water looking for beautiful stones for my rock collection. I want to watch schools of minnows swim inches from my feet.
I want to sit on the beach in the evening, pushing my bare feet into the sand and try to keep the fire going while the wind crashes waves into the shore.
I want to go there now...to a place where life still held so much promise, still made sense and didn't hurt so damn much.
Monday, February 25, 2008
On Perimenopause...
I have decided the Christian God is responsible for perimenopause. No Goddess centred culture would EVER foist such a curse on a woman. Now people have been accusing me of being bitter around the issue of Christianity so I PROMISE I will not mention anything else about it until my next blog.Well...except for this...if Christianity is INDEED responsible for perimenopause then it is also responsible for my perimenopause induced bitterness. Are you following me? No, I mean really are you actually FOLLOWING me...'cause paranoia is an issue here too!
Anyway...so two months ago I was standing at a TTC stop waiting for a bus and I saw this cloud come over me and slowly and musically ( I think it was an oboe) it descended upon me. Like a wet sweater. Like a wet sweater that smells like mildew and mothballs, 'cause you just know someone has been saving it for you for 45 years, waiting for this precise moment. There is no brass band...('cause I am sure it would drown out the oboe)...no warning announcement...well except for that increasingly painful occasion called The Birthday...it just unceremoniously slides right on over you. Oh, you may have been keeping an eye out for it, looking behind bathroom stall doors, root cellars or the underwear aisle at Wallmart, but you will never see it coming until it arrives.
So, it descends upon me and I think that if I eat I am sure I will feel much better. Okay, so it wasn't a food issue after all...is it PMS? Nope...can't be that. Did I have a bad day and just wasn't aware of it? Nope. I am just in a bad mood for no apparent reason. AND IT HASN'T LEFT FOR TWO MONTHS!!! Occurring concurrently with this moodiness is the sensation that someone is chewing on my nipples. Chewing. And not in a fun way. And the rest of them hurt...all the time...to varying degrees and not in a way I have ever experienced before.
I have decided that all women upon turning 45...or a reasonable facsimile thereof...should be allowed certain freedoms important to retaining even some small bit of sanity to carry them into their 50's. They should be able to scream, at will, at anyone they want...only for the following serious crimes:
- Rattling candy wrappers on transit
- Making that noise by sliding spit back and forth through your teeth on transit
- Coughing...for any reason
- Nose sniffling...same as above
- Talking on your cell phone like we are all interested in your break-up
- Being mentally ill...I am sorry...I support you....just not on transit during perimenopause. Especially if you are that autistic guy who sat beside me and rocked back and forth slamming yourself into me, over and over and over again.
- Eating potato chips...come on...think about it
- Being that big burly guy and sitting in a seat when I am not in a particularly feministy mood and I want you to offer me your seat. Hey Big Burly Guy! I am from the prairies where they still do that...at least where they actually have transit! I am not a feminist when I am tired, OK???!!!
- Ipods cranked so I can sing along with you, which I would if I could actually STAND THE MUSIC!!! On transit!
- People talking
- People breathing
- The last two items are by far too much to ask!
Also, please be aware and pretend to find it completely and totally acceptable if a perimenopausal woman bursts into tears. It will always be for reasons of the utmost importance like the following:
- Someone remembering to bring you a granola bar for a snack at a work seminar. Granola is a very important reason to cry.
- Remembering that Little Johnnie called you a dyke when you were 12. Don't argue with this one. In fact just don't argue, it makes us cry.
- Cute dogs. Come on, cute dogs make you cry too, it's not just us.
- "Were you teasing me or did you mean that???" Either way, we will cry, so please wait until we are 55 to resume either.
- "You looked at me with judgment! I know you did! Just stop looking!"
- "You never look at me anymore, how rude! What is with that?!"
- Your girlfriend buying you an "I Love You Sweater" even if she will just do her best to convince you of the practicality of it. You know better. Black turtlenecks are very important reasons to cry. Really! Are you questioning me? I'll cry!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Get your freak on...
I can walk down a wide hall and still manage to crash into a wide doorway. I can't eat a meal without wearing it. I am the person the toilet-paper-stuck-to-the-shoe joke was fashioned for. I excel at tripping while running upstairs--anywhere--but only in front of a large crowd. I am the person drifting off while others are conversing around me, only to clue back in by saying something that has nothing remotely to do with the subject-at-hand. I am the one who came out to my parents and really religious family members by accidently sending them a risque note meant for my girlfriend. Yes...I am a spaz.
I am a spaz who rarely feels at home anywhere...not in my shoes, not in my home, not in this part of the world, not in my skin.
But because the Universe has some semblance of compassion, there are two places I do. The Gay Village and Theatre. In either place I am suddenly in the now and alive to every sense. If you put me in the Gay Village in a theatre, I am someone else. Someone I can no longer ignore. I am no longer a freak. I morph into some kind of fearless, graceful air spirit. The mundane stresses of the world no longer bully my spirit to the back of the line. I am free.
You'd think that would inspire me, wouldn't you? I'm ramping up for it. Honest. It's a big ramp and I have to pause every 10 feet to catch my breath. But look...I am dancing up the ramp...see? Look Ma...no hands!
I am a spaz who rarely feels at home anywhere...not in my shoes, not in my home, not in this part of the world, not in my skin.
But because the Universe has some semblance of compassion, there are two places I do. The Gay Village and Theatre. In either place I am suddenly in the now and alive to every sense. If you put me in the Gay Village in a theatre, I am someone else. Someone I can no longer ignore. I am no longer a freak. I morph into some kind of fearless, graceful air spirit. The mundane stresses of the world no longer bully my spirit to the back of the line. I am free.
You'd think that would inspire me, wouldn't you? I'm ramping up for it. Honest. It's a big ramp and I have to pause every 10 feet to catch my breath. But look...I am dancing up the ramp...see? Look Ma...no hands!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
When will you be ready?
"2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
'Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to"
~Anna Nalick
There is something of a terrified exhibitionist in every writer. There is some twisted, fucked-up desire to purge the deepest, darkest places in ourselves and in all of us. Artists are canaries in coal mines...the most sensitive, frightened and fragile among us. What is it that causes people to want to strip themselves naked in front of people...people who can use the page or the screen as a way of emotionally distancing themselves from the artist long enough to have no conscience in tearing them to shreds? What the fuck kind of tormented life have we chosen? Or what the fuck kind of tormented life has chosen us?
If you have ever woken up in the middle of the night with the need, as close as breathing, to write something down or you'll explode, you will understand. The need to paint with words. The need to get it out or you will die, at the very least, a metaphorical death.
Somewhere, a while back, I decided to run from this part of myself. Because it always loomed large...this huge elephant in the room, staring at me with its eyes penetrating me and causing me to sweat in the heat of its truth. I ran until I could run no more and the elephant sits beside me now, staring into my soul and reminding me of the choices I made a very long time ago.
It hasn't mattered the number of disguises I have chosen to divert this elephant...it always knows me. It doesn't care that I am afraid. It doesn't care that I could fail. It doesn't care that the critics that hunt me could find me. It just stares at me. Unrelenting. I squirm under its gaze.
This beautiful woman I work with saw the elephant in the room...not everybody does. She prayed for someone to come and write her screenplay, because her voice, although eloquent, doesn't match the need in her piece. Mine does. And I know it does. She knows it does. And like in so many dreams I am frozen to the spot and I can't run.
I am big into messages from the Universe in ordinary places like transit systems. Of late, I step on a streetcar or a subway and I am assailed with one message. On a really annoying ad. It says, "When will you be ready?" Everywhere I turn, it screams at me, "WHEN WILL YOU BE READY?"
One of my clients, rather infamous for his thoughts on creativity, was going on at me the other day, once again, to pick up my bloody pen. His gaze pierced my armour and he said, "When will you be ready?"
Fuck you, you bastard elephant! Now. Ok? Now! Now, please stop shitting in my room!
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
'Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to"
~Anna Nalick
There is something of a terrified exhibitionist in every writer. There is some twisted, fucked-up desire to purge the deepest, darkest places in ourselves and in all of us. Artists are canaries in coal mines...the most sensitive, frightened and fragile among us. What is it that causes people to want to strip themselves naked in front of people...people who can use the page or the screen as a way of emotionally distancing themselves from the artist long enough to have no conscience in tearing them to shreds? What the fuck kind of tormented life have we chosen? Or what the fuck kind of tormented life has chosen us?
If you have ever woken up in the middle of the night with the need, as close as breathing, to write something down or you'll explode, you will understand. The need to paint with words. The need to get it out or you will die, at the very least, a metaphorical death.
Somewhere, a while back, I decided to run from this part of myself. Because it always loomed large...this huge elephant in the room, staring at me with its eyes penetrating me and causing me to sweat in the heat of its truth. I ran until I could run no more and the elephant sits beside me now, staring into my soul and reminding me of the choices I made a very long time ago.
It hasn't mattered the number of disguises I have chosen to divert this elephant...it always knows me. It doesn't care that I am afraid. It doesn't care that I could fail. It doesn't care that the critics that hunt me could find me. It just stares at me. Unrelenting. I squirm under its gaze.
This beautiful woman I work with saw the elephant in the room...not everybody does. She prayed for someone to come and write her screenplay, because her voice, although eloquent, doesn't match the need in her piece. Mine does. And I know it does. She knows it does. And like in so many dreams I am frozen to the spot and I can't run.
I am big into messages from the Universe in ordinary places like transit systems. Of late, I step on a streetcar or a subway and I am assailed with one message. On a really annoying ad. It says, "When will you be ready?" Everywhere I turn, it screams at me, "WHEN WILL YOU BE READY?"
One of my clients, rather infamous for his thoughts on creativity, was going on at me the other day, once again, to pick up my bloody pen. His gaze pierced my armour and he said, "When will you be ready?"
Fuck you, you bastard elephant! Now. Ok? Now! Now, please stop shitting in my room!
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
'Cause I'm a Mennonite...it's what we do.
I am sure I probably mentioned this before but I was born Mennonite. It's sort of a quirky thing being born Mennonite as people think that means all of you travel in horse and buggies, that you wear black or navy, you don't watch television and you make great sausage. Now, some days I do wear black or navy and some days I self-righteously eschew television, too. I have even ridden in a horse and buggy, but I HAVE NEVER MADE SAUSAGE! Lousy Mennonite that I am! My dad makes sausage, though, so I think I get Mennonite points for that. Oh God! It just occurred to me that someone sincerely looking for information on Mennonites could Google this page. If this is you, TURN BACK NOW! RUN AWAY! YOU WILL NOT LIKE THE BLOG TO FOLLOW!
Anyway I digress. Mennonites digress, it's what we do when we are not making sausage. Or raising a barn. We're good at raising barns. It's what we do. Well, I am a woman, so I would be raising babies and making a charming picnic lunch for all the men folk raising the barn. Except for the fact that I look like shit in a bonnet and a long dress...not that I look good in a short dress, but I digress. It's a Mennonite thing.
So, anyway, I was born a Mennonite. Mennonites take the Bible literally. It's what we do when we are not raising barns, making sausage or digressing. I was raised with fire, brimstone and a healthy, neurotic, immense dollop of guilt. I am the Guilt Queen! If someone notices something missing and it is likely stolen, even though I am the last person on Earth who would have stolen it, I feel guilty! Yes, I do. Somehow it is my fault your wallet is missing.
As a child I would look on with wonder at all my Catholic friends. I remember a song or two talking about Catholic guilt and I could never understand it. Still can't. Seems to me that if you are Catholic, you can sin all the hell you want all week as long as you remember to hit confession on Sunday...and if your sin is really bad, you can offer to pay for a new pad for the priests to live in and you're in good shape. And then there's absolution...no protestant ever gets the luxury of absolution. Mennonites never get cut a break in their pious suffering, so there is absolutely no absolution, there!
So, needless to say, I was raised in a home where nothing from the Bible is ever questioned. I remember, as a child, having heard that "Our God is a jealous God" and asking my Sunday School teacher for an explanation. I couldn't understand how God, the penultimate Good Guy, could harbor as negative an emotion as jealousy. My teacher, bless her meek, inherit the Earth heart, told me she couldn't remember ever reading that in the Bible. Nice try.
I remember, also as a young child, a story of how Jesus, this loving, turn-the-other cheek, guy, went into a place where there were money lenders and he angrily turned their tables upside down. I remember thinking to myself how incongruent this behaviour was with the teaching of who this man was.
I loved Jesus Christ. This beautiful, compassionate man who stood up against everyone and lovingly did what he knew was right. He was assassinated in the most horrific of ways, dying this barbaric death that haunted me in my dreams and made me the martyr I became.
I realized as a teenager I was different. Instead of being attracted to men, as I was supposed to be, as a good Mennonite...it's what we do...I was instead attracted, and that is a polite word...to women. I was well-versed in the Bible's violent exhortations against homosexuals. We are an abomination...like shrimp eaters. Shrimp eaters are also an abomination. Bad, bad shrimp eaters...it's what they do. But I am a Mennonite and I digress.
There is nothing quite like being gay to make one seriously question the veracity of the document called the Bible. I spent my teenage years and my early adulthood hating this part of myself for not being someone God could love. I tried, I really tried to like men. I dated them, I had sex with them...I'll spare you the details. I remember sitting in my car after watching the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman dressing in drag and I was overwhelmed with panic attacks. I was a fucking mess and I was begging God not to let me be gay. I was physically sick...I felt like a freak...I wanted to die.
I will never forget that night as long as I live.
Over the years I realized there were many things wrong with the Bible...like its treatment of women. Or that Christ's entire adolescence was missing. Or that the Old Testament espoused an eye for an eye, when Christ espoused turning the other cheek. Incongruencies, barbaric treatment, polygamy, incest, violence, the fact that only "Christians" can be saved ("Whosoever believeth in me, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.") or how God could let someone like Job be violated and tortured as a human being in a fight between God and the Devil... none of these things resonated with me...none of them rang true. None of them made any sense.
For brevity's sake I will skip my study of man's religions in university and my later opening up to reincarnation as the only plausible reason for some human suffering and just say that I rejected a good sized portion of the Bible as stuff that was just plain wrong. Human beings are imperfect filters for messages from God...the Universe, or Allah...whatever you happen to believe in. That's what I shrugged it off as.
I was setting off to do the Camino and did some research on the history and legend of the road. Catholic legend has it that James the Apostle came to Spain to spread the Good Word and he gained about seven followers. He returned home and was beheaded...'cause that's what happens to good folk...and his disciples put him in a stone...yes...a stone...boat, with no oarsman and no paddles and sent him out to sea.
Many, many years later, a priest, in Spain, was involved in deciding who the remains they found in some cave belonged to. He decided, likely in a convenient dream, that these bones belonged to James who became St. James. This was a very convenient way for the Catholics to take over a pilgrimage that was previously walked by the Celts, Goddess Worshippers and Druids. Bad bad pagans.
The Camino is rife with tales of visitations by the ghostly St. James. In the battles between the Christians and the Moors, apparently St. James was pivotal in helping the "Good Guys" win. In fact he gained the nickname The Moor Slayer for thoughtfully showing up...as a ghost...and winning some substantial battle for the Christians, turning the tide in the Holy Wars in Iberia.
In Santo Domingo del Calzada, on the Camino, St. James was, once again, a hero. Apparently a young man who was studying to be a priest was staying in an inn...inaninn...*grin*...all the good stories take place inaninn, don't they? And they all have innkeeper's daughters involved...although that metamorphosed, over time, to being bad ass farmer's daughter's. But I di--I am a Mennonite!
So, anyway, Poor Unsuspecting Priest Boy was being seduced by the Evil Innkeeper's Daughter and he spurned her advances. Advances apparently should never be spurned...spurning is bad. The inn in question was a Spurn Free Zone. So the spurned innkeeper's daughter decided to place a candlestick in his baggage and called him a thief. The young man was tried, convicted and hung...to die...didn't want to confuse you with the possible sentence of being hung for fun.
His inconsolable parents left the town and Dad had a dream. He dreamt that his son was still alive...that St. James...yes, that handy dead guy...was busy holding their son up so he wouldn't asphyxiate. Very thoughtful of James, don't you think? Especially because he had that whole errand list of Moors to decapitate.
Mom and Dad ran back to the judge, who was eating a chicken dinner and said "Our son is still alive! You must cut him down!" The judge said, "Why, your son is just as dead as the chickens on my plate!" At that point, the dead chicken carcasses got up and danced. The judge had the son cut down and he was indeed still alive. The whole incident was declared a miracle and sworn upon by at least one or two holy priest types, that this actually DID happen. The cathedral in Santo Domingo now houses live chickens to commemorate that amazing, miraculous deed by the ever busy ghost of St James.
I have two words for the many Catholic miracles of the Camino. 1/BULL 2/SHIT!
I had hoped, when I started on my Camino, to be able to set aside some of my cynicism...say that after a few drinks...set aside some of my cynicism (that was fun, wasn't it?)...but what happened was that it grew even stronger. I decided, while on the Camino, that I really should get around to reading the Pagan Christ...a book that raised an interested eyebrow on me when it first came out, but I never got around to it. Hey I am Mennonite...we're late bloomers, it's what we do.
So, I returned to Canada and went over to my very Catholic Camino Coach's home and looked up in her bookcase and found what else? A copy of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ. I picked up the book and devoured it.
Harpur does an incredible job of proving, at least to me, that Christianity is a farce. The beautiful stories I grew up with of the beautiful Christ the Saviour were stolen from Egyptian and Greco Roman myths. I am not going to list his arguments...he does so very eloquently in his book...pick it up. I dare you. He also goes on to prove the unlikelihood that a man bearing the handle Jesus the Messiah ever actually walked the Earth. There are no references to that guy ever making his mark in history, except in a handful of books from the Bible that were written many years after he supposedly died. In a time in history when things were avidly recorded, there is no reference to Jesus Christ. Ever. Not one.
Harpur also quotes Men of the Cloth from antiquity who admit, shrugging, that they did make stuff up...it was all for a good cause, so what was the harm?
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT THE FUCKING HARM WAS! It was thousands, probably millions of people who were murdered, including pagans who knew the truth of the cover-up, for this phony religion. It was and is centuries of Jews being put to death and discriminated against for killing Christ. It was and continues to be, a reason for people to discriminate against blacks and women. It was and is the cause of murders and suicides of gays and lesbians all over the world.
It was the cause for me, that excruciatingly painful night where I begged God not to let me be gay, to hate myself and want to die. It was the cause for me to become the martyr I emulated, effecting my relationships and the quality of my life, something I still struggle heavily with.
So, this Christmas, I have a bit of a bitter mood on about the season. For the first time in my life, I don't want to celebrate Christmas, I want to celebrate something real. I want to celebrate in the pagan tradition. I want to revel in Solstice and Yule. 'Cause I am a pagan...it's what we do.
Anyway I digress. Mennonites digress, it's what we do when we are not making sausage. Or raising a barn. We're good at raising barns. It's what we do. Well, I am a woman, so I would be raising babies and making a charming picnic lunch for all the men folk raising the barn. Except for the fact that I look like shit in a bonnet and a long dress...not that I look good in a short dress, but I digress. It's a Mennonite thing.
So, anyway, I was born a Mennonite. Mennonites take the Bible literally. It's what we do when we are not raising barns, making sausage or digressing. I was raised with fire, brimstone and a healthy, neurotic, immense dollop of guilt. I am the Guilt Queen! If someone notices something missing and it is likely stolen, even though I am the last person on Earth who would have stolen it, I feel guilty! Yes, I do. Somehow it is my fault your wallet is missing.
As a child I would look on with wonder at all my Catholic friends. I remember a song or two talking about Catholic guilt and I could never understand it. Still can't. Seems to me that if you are Catholic, you can sin all the hell you want all week as long as you remember to hit confession on Sunday...and if your sin is really bad, you can offer to pay for a new pad for the priests to live in and you're in good shape. And then there's absolution...no protestant ever gets the luxury of absolution. Mennonites never get cut a break in their pious suffering, so there is absolutely no absolution, there!
So, needless to say, I was raised in a home where nothing from the Bible is ever questioned. I remember, as a child, having heard that "Our God is a jealous God" and asking my Sunday School teacher for an explanation. I couldn't understand how God, the penultimate Good Guy, could harbor as negative an emotion as jealousy. My teacher, bless her meek, inherit the Earth heart, told me she couldn't remember ever reading that in the Bible. Nice try.
I remember, also as a young child, a story of how Jesus, this loving, turn-the-other cheek, guy, went into a place where there were money lenders and he angrily turned their tables upside down. I remember thinking to myself how incongruent this behaviour was with the teaching of who this man was.
I loved Jesus Christ. This beautiful, compassionate man who stood up against everyone and lovingly did what he knew was right. He was assassinated in the most horrific of ways, dying this barbaric death that haunted me in my dreams and made me the martyr I became.
I realized as a teenager I was different. Instead of being attracted to men, as I was supposed to be, as a good Mennonite...it's what we do...I was instead attracted, and that is a polite word...to women. I was well-versed in the Bible's violent exhortations against homosexuals. We are an abomination...like shrimp eaters. Shrimp eaters are also an abomination. Bad, bad shrimp eaters...it's what they do. But I am a Mennonite and I digress.
There is nothing quite like being gay to make one seriously question the veracity of the document called the Bible. I spent my teenage years and my early adulthood hating this part of myself for not being someone God could love. I tried, I really tried to like men. I dated them, I had sex with them...I'll spare you the details. I remember sitting in my car after watching the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman dressing in drag and I was overwhelmed with panic attacks. I was a fucking mess and I was begging God not to let me be gay. I was physically sick...I felt like a freak...I wanted to die.
I will never forget that night as long as I live.
Over the years I realized there were many things wrong with the Bible...like its treatment of women. Or that Christ's entire adolescence was missing. Or that the Old Testament espoused an eye for an eye, when Christ espoused turning the other cheek. Incongruencies, barbaric treatment, polygamy, incest, violence, the fact that only "Christians" can be saved ("Whosoever believeth in me, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.") or how God could let someone like Job be violated and tortured as a human being in a fight between God and the Devil... none of these things resonated with me...none of them rang true. None of them made any sense.
For brevity's sake I will skip my study of man's religions in university and my later opening up to reincarnation as the only plausible reason for some human suffering and just say that I rejected a good sized portion of the Bible as stuff that was just plain wrong. Human beings are imperfect filters for messages from God...the Universe, or Allah...whatever you happen to believe in. That's what I shrugged it off as.
I was setting off to do the Camino and did some research on the history and legend of the road. Catholic legend has it that James the Apostle came to Spain to spread the Good Word and he gained about seven followers. He returned home and was beheaded...'cause that's what happens to good folk...and his disciples put him in a stone...yes...a stone...boat, with no oarsman and no paddles and sent him out to sea.
Many, many years later, a priest, in Spain, was involved in deciding who the remains they found in some cave belonged to. He decided, likely in a convenient dream, that these bones belonged to James who became St. James. This was a very convenient way for the Catholics to take over a pilgrimage that was previously walked by the Celts, Goddess Worshippers and Druids. Bad bad pagans.
The Camino is rife with tales of visitations by the ghostly St. James. In the battles between the Christians and the Moors, apparently St. James was pivotal in helping the "Good Guys" win. In fact he gained the nickname The Moor Slayer for thoughtfully showing up...as a ghost...and winning some substantial battle for the Christians, turning the tide in the Holy Wars in Iberia.
In Santo Domingo del Calzada, on the Camino, St. James was, once again, a hero. Apparently a young man who was studying to be a priest was staying in an inn...inaninn...*grin*...all the good stories take place inaninn, don't they? And they all have innkeeper's daughters involved...although that metamorphosed, over time, to being bad ass farmer's daughter's. But I di--I am a Mennonite!
So, anyway, Poor Unsuspecting Priest Boy was being seduced by the Evil Innkeeper's Daughter and he spurned her advances. Advances apparently should never be spurned...spurning is bad. The inn in question was a Spurn Free Zone. So the spurned innkeeper's daughter decided to place a candlestick in his baggage and called him a thief. The young man was tried, convicted and hung...to die...didn't want to confuse you with the possible sentence of being hung for fun.
His inconsolable parents left the town and Dad had a dream. He dreamt that his son was still alive...that St. James...yes, that handy dead guy...was busy holding their son up so he wouldn't asphyxiate. Very thoughtful of James, don't you think? Especially because he had that whole errand list of Moors to decapitate.
Mom and Dad ran back to the judge, who was eating a chicken dinner and said "Our son is still alive! You must cut him down!" The judge said, "Why, your son is just as dead as the chickens on my plate!" At that point, the dead chicken carcasses got up and danced. The judge had the son cut down and he was indeed still alive. The whole incident was declared a miracle and sworn upon by at least one or two holy priest types, that this actually DID happen. The cathedral in Santo Domingo now houses live chickens to commemorate that amazing, miraculous deed by the ever busy ghost of St James.
I have two words for the many Catholic miracles of the Camino. 1/BULL 2/SHIT!
I had hoped, when I started on my Camino, to be able to set aside some of my cynicism...say that after a few drinks...set aside some of my cynicism (that was fun, wasn't it?)...but what happened was that it grew even stronger. I decided, while on the Camino, that I really should get around to reading the Pagan Christ...a book that raised an interested eyebrow on me when it first came out, but I never got around to it. Hey I am Mennonite...we're late bloomers, it's what we do.
So, I returned to Canada and went over to my very Catholic Camino Coach's home and looked up in her bookcase and found what else? A copy of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ. I picked up the book and devoured it.
Harpur does an incredible job of proving, at least to me, that Christianity is a farce. The beautiful stories I grew up with of the beautiful Christ the Saviour were stolen from Egyptian and Greco Roman myths. I am not going to list his arguments...he does so very eloquently in his book...pick it up. I dare you. He also goes on to prove the unlikelihood that a man bearing the handle Jesus the Messiah ever actually walked the Earth. There are no references to that guy ever making his mark in history, except in a handful of books from the Bible that were written many years after he supposedly died. In a time in history when things were avidly recorded, there is no reference to Jesus Christ. Ever. Not one.
Harpur also quotes Men of the Cloth from antiquity who admit, shrugging, that they did make stuff up...it was all for a good cause, so what was the harm?
LET ME TELL YOU WHAT THE FUCKING HARM WAS! It was thousands, probably millions of people who were murdered, including pagans who knew the truth of the cover-up, for this phony religion. It was and is centuries of Jews being put to death and discriminated against for killing Christ. It was and continues to be, a reason for people to discriminate against blacks and women. It was and is the cause of murders and suicides of gays and lesbians all over the world.
It was the cause for me, that excruciatingly painful night where I begged God not to let me be gay, to hate myself and want to die. It was the cause for me to become the martyr I emulated, effecting my relationships and the quality of my life, something I still struggle heavily with.
So, this Christmas, I have a bit of a bitter mood on about the season. For the first time in my life, I don't want to celebrate Christmas, I want to celebrate something real. I want to celebrate in the pagan tradition. I want to revel in Solstice and Yule. 'Cause I am a pagan...it's what we do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)