|
Home LETTING GO OF GOD |
|
11. Jesus Suffered, But So Did A Lot Of People I mean, first of all you can say that Jesus suffered, but he didn't really suffer any more than a lot of other people have suffered. I could think of examples in my own family. My brother Mike, who had cancer, suffered unspeakably for a very long time. Eye lids freezing open and his eyes drying up, canker sores all over his throat and he couldn't swallow, weeks and weeks and then months of gut wrenching vomiting and nausea, before he then died. So, okay, Jesus suffered. He apparently suffered terribly. For one, maybe even two days. I heard someone say once, "Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins." I thought, "Why would a God create people so imperfect, then blame them for their own imperfections, then send his son to be tortured and executed by those imperfect people, to make up for how imperfect people were and how imperfect they inevitably were going to be?" What a crazy idea. I looked at the Crucifix, and for the first time instead of seeing a symbol of transcendence and compassion, I saw a horrible execution device. What kind of God sends his son to be tortured and killed like that? Oh, I guess it is the God of the Old Testament, that's exactly who would do something like that. But when I looked at Jesus as just a guy, just a human, just this impassioned young idealist who lost his temper a lot, but who could also wax on teary eyed about loving your neighbor and helping the poor, and because his ideas were so outspoken it threatened those in power, who ordered him to be tortured and killed.... And then reading how Jesus died, astonished and heartbroken that his own God abandoned him, his story became so tragic. Jesus' life and death made me want to go out and campaign for free speech, not sit in a church and worship him! So, I decided I would concentrate on what I did like about the Church. The stained glass windows were pretty, the light in the church. The religious art. The songs. Not the words to the songs, exactly, but the melodies to the songs were nice. Especially at Christmas. It was all so... pretty in the church then. 12. Father Tom Blesses Me & I Get Out Of There Father Tom saw me outside the church and he said, "Happy Easter, Julia." And I said, "Happy Easter, Father." And he said, "You know I can see you frowning from the pulpit." And I said, "I'm sorry, Father. But please, help me! I am finding this all just impossible to believe." He pulled me over to the coffee and donuts table. He said, "Listen, I've been speaking with some of the other priests about your... predicament." I loved how he said "predicament." I felt like I was 16 and knocked up. I said, "Yeah?" He said, "Listen. We all struggle with doubt. But we all come back. Just remember Proverbs 3-5, 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.'" "So, God gave us the gifts of intelligence and curiosity and rationality, and then we're not supposed to use them?" Father Tom sighed, like he was so tired of me and my struggle. And I was so angry that he used that particular Proverb. It really felt like he was slamming the door in my face. Then all of a sudden Father Tom started to bless me. It was sort of awkward, he just started moving his hands over me and chanting this phrase in Latin. Not that this is so out-of-the-ordinary or wrong or anything; it's just in this instance it really felt like he was trying to perform an exorcism. Afterwards, I went back into the empty church. I sat down and stared at the altar. When I was ten or so, the Sisters at St. Augustine's announced that anyone who was interested in becoming an altar boy were to go see Monsignor at the rectory. And I thought, "I want to be an altar boy!" So my best friend, Janie Parker and I went to the rectory and knocked on the door. When Monsignor answered I said, "I want to be an altar boy... altar girl... altar people. Whatever, we want to do it." And he said, "Don't be ridiculous." And then he slammed the door on our faces, as we stood there. Janie and I were so angry, we were so mad. We went into the church and we went where they had always told us we could never go, up to the sanctuary. And we knew it was a sacrilege to touch anything on the altar if you weren't a priest or an altar boy. And we ran around and touched everything; we touched every little thing. We got our girl cooties all over that altar. And, suddenly, remembering that, like a big ocean wave, the force of all that I hated about this Church welled up in me; all the pompous, numbing masses, the unabated monotony of the rituals, all the desperate priests trying to tease out something meaningful from a very flawed, ancient text. I was driving home, going east on the 10. And I was near tears thinking, "I've tried so hard! I tried to learn more about my Church and it just made everything a lot worse. I thought they knew something I didn't know. Like they had to have, this whole huge institution is built on it!" And I thought, "I feel like the Catholic Church is this great huge cow that I am lying underneath, and I am sucking on a teat, trying to get some milk of meaning. And I am sucking and sucking. And then I usually do get a teaspoon of milk. And I thrill to myself, 'A teaspoon of meaning! A teaspoon of meaning! Hallelujah!' And now my neck is so exhausted and even the muscles in my shoulders and back are starting to ache." And I prayed to God, "What am I going to do? I can't go back there again." We could go to some other church together, me and God, and find some other way. But this is not the right way for me. I will not make this drive again, it is ... finished." Then I did start to cry. And as if God were crying too, it began to rain. And I could almost feel God, sitting in the passenger seat next to me, and we were ripping down the freeway together. And I could practically hear God say, "I can barely stand it at that Church myself, let's get the hell out of there!" And so we did. 13. I Begin To Drift East, Spiritually Speaking
I came home and it felt remarkably quiet. It was like God and I were empty nesters, and now we had no church or rituals or special prayers to distract us. Just me and ... God. Not saying much, just pondering. Not a big conversationalist, God. In retrospect, I could have easily become an Episcopal at that moment. But I didn't. Instead I went to Rocket Video and rented all those Bill Moyers-Joseph Campbell tapes and I re-watched them. And I reveled in the common themes that all religions share. But it was different than the first time I had watched them back in 1988. Back then all I really remembered was, "Follow your bliss, follow your bliss, follow your bliss!" And I thought, "Okay, I'm following my bliss! That's good advice." But this time I thought, "You know what? I believe in everything! All religions worship the same God; they just do it in different ways." I began to drift East, spiritually speaking. I took a meditation class and began to meditate rather regularly, and I found it challenging and it really sharpened my concentration. I got Huston Smith's guide to the spiritual classics and I read them all: the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Rumi, The Essential Kabbalah, and The Way of the Pilgrim. I was on a Spiritual Quest. Fortunately, around this time on the work front for me, I was cast in two direct-to-video family dog movies, Beethoven 3 & 4. I know, I hate to throw my credits around, but... Anyway, one of the scripts had this nightmare sequence which involved a bunch of drooling St. Bernards licking my terrified face. And this was accomplished by... well, by taking a whole bunch of St. Bernards and not feeding them for a very long time, taking me to the beach and burying me in sand up to my neck, rubbing a bunch of dog food in my hair, and then releasing the hounds. And as the dogs galloped towards my fragrant cranium, I thought, "Maybe I'm a Buddhist. In a way, it seems inevitable. I live in California, it's practically Buddhism's second home." I was so excited about Buddhism; I decided I wanted to spend some serious time traveling in the East, in countries predominantly Buddhist and go visit the places where it all began. And the money from these two movies allowed me to do it. I took off and traveled for several months. I went to China and hiked along the Yangtze, and then to Tibet where I went overland from Lhasa to Katmandu. And I spent some time hiking in Bhutan, this little Buddhist monarchy high in the Himalayas sandwiched between India and China. As I hiked up and up and up to a monastery, I could hear the monks chanting and singing in the distance. Prayer flags whipped in the wind and the giant mountains hovered. It was all so otherworldly and exotic. It also happened to be my fortieth birthday. I kept thinking, "Forty. Wow, forty. I always thought that by this age, I would be married and have kids, maybe even grown kids." I could almost hear God laughing in the wind at how differently everything had turned out for me. Ahead of me on the trail was an old man carrying a prayer wheel and one of those rosaries of prayer beads that have the same number of beads that Catholics use, a mala, I think it's called. And I thought, "Wow, he almost looks like my grandmother walking to church." I got closer to the monastery. But as I got closer, I could see how young some of the monks were: it's a tradition in places like Tibet and Bhutan that the second son automatically goes into the monastery. Some boys were as young as seven, the Age Of Reason, but hardly an age where someone could make an informed decision about their life purpose. They would get only a religious education; they would never experience a heterosexual relationship, with its particular joys and sorrows, or a family of their own. Instead of being inspired by them, I wanted to free them.
As I hiked back down, I thought, maybe I have it backwards. Maybe we don't all worship the same God. After all, the Buddhist Gods are so different than the Judeo Christian God. But, we worship them in the same ways: we recite prayers, we make sacrifices, we wear special garments, and we use special objects. From there I went to Thailand where I happened to visit a woman who was taking care of a terribly deformed boy who was an orphan. I said to his caretaker, "It's so good of you to be taking care of this poor boy." She said, "Don't say 'poor boy.' He must have done something terrible in a past life to be born like that. When I came back to L.A., even though there was still a lot about Buddhism that intrigued me, I had to admit, I was less interested. I kept thinking, "The Buddhism we get in California is all cleaned up for us." And I wondered what enlightenment really meant. I felt pretty good about my level of attachment and detachment to the world. To me, life was not all suffering. In fact, what I mostly felt was a growing sense of outrageous luck. I realized I wasn't just looking for inner peace so I could be happier or more content with my life. I was trying to figure out why I was born, who God was, and I guess, what the meaning of life was. 14. God Is Nature; The Galapagos Bill Moyers was to appear once again on my quest. Not exactly as a spiritual guide, showing me down the right road, but more like a friendly gas station attendant who had some pretty good maps for sale next to the cash register. He did this interview with Sister Wendy. Sister Wendy is this British nun who is on PBS all the time, walking through museums talking rapturously about art. I adore Sister Wendy. To me she has the perfect, dream life: half the year she spends in a silent monastery, and the other half she spend being a television star. I've watched all of her shows and Bill Moyers did a special interview with her. He did ask her question, after question, after question about her sexless existence, which got to be rather annoying and then even a little disturbing. But then he asked, "When you're at the monastery, what do you do all day?" And Sister Wendy said, "Well Bill, I pray a lot. And I live in the sunshine of God's presence. It's absolute bliss!" And I thought, "The sunshine of God's presence, huh? The sunshine of God's presence. Maybe I'll spend more time in the sunshine! Maybe for me, God is nature. The beauty and harmony of our natural world." And as soon as I said it to myself, I just knew it was right. I could almost hear God inside me saying, "Duh." And I walked around saying, "God is nature, God is nature. That's the way for me to connect with God, by spending time in his masterpiece, nature!" Now, you know Catholics don't emphasize nature all that much. There's something almost pornographic about the whole idea of nature to Catholics. I don't remember a lot of hiking, growing up. We weren't like those crazy Protestants who were out camping all the time. I guess the idea was that nature was so lush and unabashedly bright. You just didn't know what you were going to get tangled up in, out in... nature! So, I decided I would try experiencing God while I went on a hike. Or on a bike. And it was pretty fun. Really fun. And I began to notice the smallest leaves and what a web of life was out there, so intricate and beautiful. I was able to continue my travels and I headed to South America. And I went to Ecuador, and visited the Galapagos Islands. I went on a weeklong boat trip with eight other people and a naturalist. In the common area of the boat was Charles Darwin's, "The Origin Of Species." And it made me laugh when I saw it. Because I thought, "Either you would be someone who would have read the 'Origin of Species' and that would be why you were in the Galapagos, or you would be someone who would never read the 'Origin of Species.' And how supremely dorky would it be if someone saw this book and thought 'Huh, I wonder what this is about?' and started reading it here, of all places. That would be so ridiculous!" And in a few moments I was that person. 15. Sister Charatina's Theory Of Evolution & God Is Not Nature Now, of course I accepted the theory of evolution. I remember Sister Charatina telling us all about it in 8th grade, how we, as Catholics believe in evolution. We weren't like some of those uneducated protestants who believe God literally plopped people onto the Earth in one fell swoop. She told us, "This is the way it happened: God set everything in motion in order for humans to evolve. Then there was a specially pre-ordained moment when there was the very, very first human man and woman. Because think about it. There had to be some moment when there was the very, very first man and woman. And that was Adam and Eve. And that's when God put a soul in us. And then everything else happened exactly as it says in the Bible." And then she sort of encouraged us not to think about evolution so much anymore, because, "After all," she'd "just explained it. Right?" In any case, the idea of evolution wasn't threatening to me in any way, I just didn't really understand much about it except that over time animals change or something. I thought that "The Origin Of Species" would be way too scientific for a person like me to read. Personally, I had avoided science at all costs in school. In fact, I had this prejudice that doing well at science was somehow an admission that you didn't have the complexity of mind or subtlety of character to take on the humanities. Science was for people who couldn't handle ambiguity and needed black and white answers, people who couldn't get in touch with their feelings and had nothing left to think about. But to my surprise, "The Origin of Species" was actually very easy to read. And truly a page-turner. And Charles Darwin described evolution in ways that Sister Charatina had not. It was a lot more scary and chancy and frightening the way Darwin explained it. The next day we visited an island where the Blue-footed Boobies were tending to their new babies. The Blue-footed Booby babies are the cutest animals in the world, almost to the level of absurdity. They have this bright, white, longhaired fur that sticks out all over, and these blue beaks and feet, and these huge plaintive eyes. Usually the Blue-footed Boobies have just one baby per pregnancy, but every once in awhile they have two. And when they do the stronger sibling usually pecks the brains out of the weaker one. So we were looking at all these adorable Blue-footed Booby babies and then we found one pecking the brains out of its weaker sibling. And the naturalist was telling us that this was routine. That now the frigate bird would probably come soon and carry the dead baby off to feed its family. That's the way it went. And I looked at this poor doomed Blue-footed Booby baby, with its brains hanging out of its head. And we sort of looked at each other in the eye for a moment. He looked at me like, "What are you going to do? I'm the weaker Blue-footed Booby baby." I thought, "Oh. God... is not nature. God is not nature. I mean, nature is floods and famines and earthquakes and viruses and little Blue-footed Booby babies getting their brains pecked out by their stronger sibling. God, I mean, the God I know, the God of love and compassion, that isn't exactly found in nature.
I went back to the boat and clouds formed overhead. And I decided I would just lay in the fetal position on the boat for a while and consider nature. So God and nature are separate. Oh, it is so obvious that is true. God is a moral force and nature is utterly amoral. Nature doesn't care about me, or anybody in particular. Nature can be terrifying. Gosh, why do they even put words like "natural" on products, like shampoo, like that's automatically a good thing? I mean sulfuric acid is natural! I could almost hear God saying, "Duh." "But then, God, who are you? Because, I can't stop thinking, 'Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!'" "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall not fear, because you are with me... ?"
|
