The Little Book of Jesus

I have had a very rocky relationship with religion.

When you're growing up, you just sort of follow along with whatever your parents do. And you're quite happy about it, in a very characteristically childish way. It's all sort of goofy and enthusiastic and full of songs and pretty colours.

But then you start to actually understand what you've been repeating all your life. You start to understand the words, rather than just knowing them. And... it's never quite the same after that. No matter how long you live, you'll never again feel that dumb and utter devotion. It's not possible. Before, you charged forward in that endearing mentality of a kid, sure you were right as long as it made sense to a brain easily distracted by a brightly-coloured pencil.

But after that sickening moment of clarity, you're quiet. You're thinking. You're wondering. You go through all of the lessons drummed into a developing brain, inspecting them under this new light that you have suddenly seen. It's almost like a divine revelation, except that it has very different effects on people.

For some people, it just serves to reaffirm their belief in whatever religion they have chosen. It makes their bond stronger with their architect of the universe. They no longer have the gullible belief of a child; they have scrutinized their faith and been reassured of its plausibility.

They are the lucky ones.

For the others, the going-over of what they have been taught is alarming. A fallacy here, an impossibility here, and why not just throw in a heaping tablespoon of corruption for good measure. Once looked at with intelligent eyes, their faith doesn't make sense. Or it's impossible. Or any of the infinite objections I've heard against religion.

I, unfortunately, must count myself firmly in the latter category.

A bit of background: I am by birth and baptism a Catholic. My dad's side of the family is very, very religious, but oddly enough they've never seemed strict to me. They are just people who go about their business, but God is just niggling in the back of their mind at all times. Would God like this? Could I have done that better? My mom's side has always been fairly lackadaisical on the religion front, at least in the surviving generations. My great-grandmother died a little over a year ago and she was quite devout, but after that it just kind of sputtered out.

Me, though? I don't particularly like Catholicism. It's been the cause of much strife with my parents, and to be honest I think we may be at an eternal stalemate.

I've noticed that it's based mostly on shame.

Think about it. According to the Bible, we are inherently sinful, and the whole of the Church experience is basically talking about how flawed we are, and how damn lucky we are that God took pity on our miserable carcasses and sent his ~ONLY SON~ to rescue us from our pitiful selves.

There is an entire sacrament devoted entirely to walking into a small room and verbally listing all the things you've done wrong. A priest listens and then gives you a penance, which is basically all the things you can do to make up for your horrible negligence. It's a horrid feeling. I have it harder than most in this, because the entire room is filled with a roaring, uncomfortable silence, the sort that gets stuck in your head and rings in your ears. And I wear hearing aids, so I have to ask the priest listening to me to repeat half of what he says. So I'm already flustered by having to categorically state my flaws, and then I miss even more, and by the time I walk out of the unbelievably tiny room, I'm basically shaking with nerves and embarrassment.

A more devout person might say that I am trembling in the face of God at my sins.

A more sympathetic person might say that I am a perfectionist doomed to fail.

Which is the worst feeling.

And then, you spend all your time wondering if you've inadvertently sinned. There's a running commentary just under the thrum of your veins that just goes, "Was that a sin? It might have been a sin. Oh crap, what if it was a sin? What am I going to do if it was a sin? Do I have to do a penance for this? Is there anything that isn't sinning? Jesus, this is exhausting. Crap, that was a sin! That was definitely a sin! What do I have to do to make up for that?" and so on and so forth.

(I don't think I've ever typed the word sin that much in such a short time before.)

Anyway. Back to shame.

It seems to me that shame is a rather back-to-front way of going about religion. If you want people to believe in your god, shouldn't it stand to reason that the proper way of getting them to believe is not telling them that they are completely flawed. But wait! There's more! All you have to do is believe in this guy and suddenly you're completely forgiven for all the flaws you've ever had! But if you're ever bad again, you need to apologize to a God who has suddenly become the epitome of disapproving mothers everywhere. Twice.

Also there's a zombie son involved who told people to eat his body. All cool?

You know, it just doesn't make sense to me.

I spend far too much time going over my imperfections and failures. I'd be much more likely to follow a God that made me feel better. I would want one that liked people as they were. I don't want to have to embark on a lifelong, inevitably futile quest to improve myself when I could just be happy with who I was.

The thing about Catholicism is that, in operating on shame, it essentially makes itself immortal. By telling us all that we're messed up fucks and then setting a perfect person to be constantly compared to, it's just one big sense of insecurity. What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do? Well, given the fact that even if he did exist in the terms that everyone supposedly thinks he did, that was still over two thousand years ago. I don't have a clue what Jesus would do. I don't want to know what Jesus would do. I want to know what the right thing to do is in a difficult situation.

Jesus is, in essence, a copy of the Little Book of Calm.

Maybe he works for some people. But he's also kind of made of platitudes. You know, stuff like "visualize the ocean" and "I am the light of the world" and "don't stab people".

What people don't seem to understand is that religion is quite literally myths. What about Zeus and all that lot? Perfectly valid religion. Lasted for quite a long time. And yet people just chuckle condescendingly and dismiss them as ludicrous. Like Christianity is any less insane. They need to be considered on the same basis.

Faith is defined as the belief in something that cannot be concretely, decisively proven.

I might believe that I can fly, but until I can actually prove that I can fly, other people have the right to be skeptical. And until I get proof that Catholicism is any more real than the ancient Celtic goddess of war, then I am perfectly entitled to remain in an agnostic state of religious belief.

A Worn Sort Of Gold

I'm typing this wrapped in a gold blanket that has curled around my form so often that even when there is no Sarah to be held, it curls in on itself, even though I've only had it a couple of years. It is a remarkably comfortable thing. It was originally one of those blankets that is so soft you just kind of want to spread it out and rub your face all over it like some sort of incredibly tactile cat, but in the three or so years that it has been mine, it has dulled - for lack of a better word. It's like it softened while also getting less soft. It is worn, now. It isn't a shiny new gold anymore. Rather like a favourite necklace, it has been used and loved and held,  and there are little evidences of that in its appearance.
I... this is a very odd description, but it's the sort of blanket you'd use to curl up with a good book in a secondhand bookshop. You'd not want a new fluffy blanket that still smells vaguely of the elsewhere-where-blankets-are-made. You'd want one that had been lived in a bit. You'd want one that is used to holding a person through the highs and lows of a paperback novel with pages yellowed with the caressing of absorbed hands, the spine destroyed from constant reading, and a few tell-tale graves of tears on the final page. You'd need a blanket with experience of that sort of thing. One that doesn't mind a cat twining sinuously through your limbs as you read. One that will give you a peculiarly blanket-y hug when you get mad at the world for not being like a book, and the hug will make you feel better even though the world is still an awful place full of people that you'd hate if they were characters. You would need a blanket that belonged in a room full of books, messy in a purely cozy way that reminds you of places you've always sort of liked best, full of cock-eyed lamps for dog-eared pages.
My gold blanket is not soft like summer wind anymore. But it is still soft, in the way that it knows I need it to be. I don't want a blanket that looks like it belongs in some sort of poncy housekeeping magazine aimed at the sort of people who watch Oprah with fanatical devotion. I want this blanket, because in the past three years, we have gotten to know each other. I know the corner that feels best against a fevered forehead, and it knows when I just need tangible proof that something is there, that I haven't gone insane. I know the side that works best in summer when nothing actually wants to be in contact with anything else, and it knows how to keep my toes warm during the January nights when I'm exhausted and don't care about anything but the softness of my pillow.
I've always preferred moonstones to emeralds and silver to gold, but in this case, if it is a very worn, lovely sort of gold meant to be used rather than kept on vain display, I'll have that.
Because it does rather compliment the delicate pastels of a pale afternoon, and the inky darkness of midnight rain. Because gold mixes well with the mahogany of my hair and green-grey of my eyes.
Because it is poetry, in an achingly soft and tenderly domestic sort of way, and most of all because it is the closest thing to home that I have found so far.

Smart

I really don't like it when people call me smart.
And before my writer brain intervenes and tells me to use a different way of expressing my dislike, I have to say that that really is how I feel. I don't hate it. I don't loathe it. But it's not pleasant, and I can't really describe it beyond a vague sort of dislike. It's somewhere between apathy and loathing. There really isn't a better way of saying it than that I do not like it.
Now for the gaping pit of psychological issues.
It's all anyone says about me. No one ever says I'm funny, or athletic, or nice, or even ugly or mean. Just smart. Like that's my sole defining aspect. Like that's all that's worth noticing about me. And I know I'll get over this, just like I do every couple of months. It's just that it's somewhat overwhelming me at the moment.
And there's the moment of awkwardness when people say it. It's a compliment! It's nice, actually. But while I may be able to make history understandable and interesting to my friends, I am a total deer in the headlights when it comes to a compliment.
What are you supposed to say?!
I don't even consider myself especially smart. Look, I may be good at all the booky stuff, but I'm the most socially awkward person who ever lived and and and and!
I could make a list of flaws here, because if I'm honest I'm just a completely fucked up person, but I'd rather live in the fantasy that this is normal and everyone else is just like this and so much bigger on the inside. I'd rather believe that the real world doesn't exist and I can be happily peculiar and no one will question me and give me weird looks when I start talking about all the history that I adore.
Because history is just such a fascinating thing! It's written by the winners, and in that there is a whole psychology of the human race, and I may not be great shakes at actually dealing with humanity, but I do rather like studying it.
And to be honest, I'm an idiot.
The other day I walked into the shower wearing socks.
I'm an idiot in everything that counts, but when grades are what determine people's futures, I'm something to be respected and hated in equal measures. And.. it's sobering, really. I've only just worked that out. I didn't actually realize that until I wrote it.
It explains a lot.
I know everyone supposedly feels like this, but whenever I talk I feel like I'm just bothering people. I get a lot of blank stares from people. And then I just kind of stutter and hobble my way to a silence where there shouldn't be one. And I don't talk for hours.
Look, if I have one fatal flaw, it's that I am completely and utterly insecure. I have a lot of flaws, but my insecurity runs rampant over my delusions of grandeur, my sporadic hubris, and all the other shite running through my brain.
You know what? I can't even remember what point I was going to make anymore. There was a point. Now there isn't. Now I'm just rambling on hopelessly and hoping something poignant falls from my fingers.
However, it isn't, so have this post. I'm sick of looking at it and you are too, most likely.