'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.