I just emerged from a weeklong meditation retreat with my brothers. Less than 72 hours later, I found myself leaning on a bar stool, sipping a gin & tonic and discussing Catholicism with two of my favorite colleagues. I revealed, much to their surprise, that my freshman year of college had been spent at the University of Notre Dame– that is, until I chose to leave. I couldn’t reconcile the proud Irish alcoholism of my peers with their fear of sex (not of the act but of the ramifications of doing the deed before marriage). You’ll get wasted to sickness EVERY night but you think sex at age 19 is a definitive sin? Good grief. I’m so grateful that my gut encouraged me to flee before getting yanked into three more years of the same. If not, the influence of the place would have inevitably pushed me towards either resigned conformity or a full-scale potentially ugly rebellion. I was not anti-religion–quite devout in my own spiritual way–but what that environment had produced in my peers scared me. So I traded that collective for
a collective of adventuresome, environmentally conscious and often self-righteous college students in Vermont. Now the provincial hippie thing makes me itch and my collective lives in NYC and talks about books, arts, politics and self. This collective is provincial too because collectives exist on being so.Despite the love, I still cringe at having to define myself by a group, though it’s unavoidable. I’m an environmentalist. I’m a woman. I’m a writer. I’m a……. Something about it feels so final, and maybe I prefer the option of being a chameleon. Admittedly though, like anyone, I crave the stable lot and the idea of an unchanging collective that could hold me up and guide me– perhaps this is what I miss about the organized religion of my young life. Those songs and ritual, as much of a chore as they were to me then, are still ingrained in my body. Now, if I even step into a Catholic Church, raw emotions bubble up and I’m a goner. It’s not provoked by a thought; it’s a feeling. Part of me just wants to sink into the collective and allow it. The sharper part of me prickles, holds her stake to the ground and fiercely pronounces “No, I will conform to nothing.” Where’s the balance? The urge to belong is intrinsic. And we each have a set of collectives we call ours. What are yours?
It feels good to dance with people, not just alone in your bedroom. Ask anyone who played high school sports– amazing, right? If anything, it just feels good to be listened to and understood. When a close friend dies of cancer, or a young girl is sexually assaulted, or the Darfur struggle continues, or a soldier perishes, or 37 countries are in food crisis, it helps to have someone, something explain all of that shit. Some people turn to their definition of God. Others reject the possibility of God. Others seek solace in their collective, which provides a buffer, something to support the sad bits in life. It’s appealing to be taken into the fold and consoled. Being “alone” is terrifying. Safety in numbers, safety in sameness. So, what’s the down side? How easily a collective becomes fundamentalist, either religious groups, teenage girls or, for example, in Central American gangs as profiled in this morning’s New York Times. We are masters at manipulation and that can turn sour.
Still, sameness feels good. We run around like magnets. We’ve all had that feeling of colliding with a stranger and you are face to face saying, “Me too! Totally, me too!” And suddenly you are best friends because you both have red hair or have lived in Ghana or love baseball. If not by immediate sameness, we link together at the potential of sameness. That person displays something inside of you that you want to access, a way you want to be. And, poof, we have a friendship, which might just lead to a larger collective. I always tell people that if I threw a dinner party and only Democrats came, it might be comforting (we could all applaud ourselves) but it would also be immensely boring. That’s an exaggeration, but plug any collective into that sentence and that’s how I feel. Yet, we can’t ignore the inherent power in sameness– look at Hitler’s Nazis or women’s rights activists. Does that power of shared belief stop us from seeing light in the people outside of the collective?
We’ll never let go of the desire for sameness– it’s hard wired in us. So, can we get there with eye contact instead of ideals? It’s hard to look into someone’s eyes and not see a reflection of you, literally and figuratively. You become same. It sounds saccharine and precious, but it’s true. I’ve been paying focused attention to this, especially since I live in a city where eye contact rarely happens among strangers. One to one sustained eye contact is the most delicious and scary feeling ever, whether with a friend, lover, enemy, annoying person at work, stranger, sibling. If you actually look closely enough (and none of us really do), it’s magic. My immediate impulse is to want to merge with that person– hug, touch in a way that connects. And there, despite all the superficial differences, lives the sameness.
Imagine if you approached everyone like this. You’d either freak people out or we’d have instant world peace. An eye contact collective. A friend of mine recently used the word orbit to describe the collective of people who circle around in his life. Maybe cultivating a loose orbit is the best way, and plus the word orbit makes me think of galaxies which make me think of something larger than us, which is always comforting.
Thought-provoking post, Molly. I do agree, we are magnetically attracted to those we share some common thread with — whether something tangible like our personal geography, our love for literature or photography or running, or sometimes its the things that are less tangible, like that we both stop to marvel at slanted light as a dark summer storm rolls in or that we both laugh at inappropriate moments when no one else is laughing or that we find freedom in spontaneity. Yet on the other hand I would say our desire for connection goes much deeper than this yearning for a collective of some sameness. I like what you say about longing to merge with each other. This goes far beyond any superficial interests or life experiences we have had. I think of the words painted above the doorway of my former church in Santa Fe, “Though we are many, we are one body, for we all share one bread and one cup.” This is why the ancient rite of communion has become such a profound experience for me in the past few years. It is one of the few actions we take where we literally drink from the same cup as friends and strangers alike. Kneeled at the altar are Republicans, Democrats, anarchists, millionaires, homeless veterans, the elderly, eager toddlers, the broken, the joyful, the handicapped, political figures, refugees from Burma, recent immigrants, fifth generation Austinites. It saddens me that so many associate religion with the unthinking yearning to feel somehow the same as another, when in reality it is one of the only forums left in our highly economically stratified and racially divided society in which we are united in our difference around something essential, something radical — a deep communion, a collective of otherness. I have always loved ritual for this reason — not because it is the unthinking duplication of something done before but it satisfies the deep yearning you hit on — to be united with our common humanity in a way that can’t always be explained in words. During Holy Week before Easter this year, I walked the path of ancient Christians by practically keeping vigil in my urban Episcopal parish in downtown Austin — the most powerful of the eight services I attended that week was Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday in which we engage in the profound and uncomfortable act of washing each other’s feet with our bare hands in large wooden basins of water below the altar. Much like your description of sustained eye contact, we enter the intimate space of a stranger, without even exchanging names, in silence and gentleness and humility, wipe the dirt from their feet. This act is connection. This act breaks down the false separation we create when we develop disdain for “other.” It is this deep sameness I think we ultimately yearn for. It is just so hard to find a way to get past the superficial sameness in our day to day — so it is a much easier and more practical way to establish connection through common likes, dislikes, and experiences. I wish the world would stop and wash each other’s feet. I think we’d remember how false the barriers are we create and that we all have the same deep yearnings — togetherness.
You have a narrow take on Catholicism, one that’s uberpopular in a typical American anti-Catholic way. The Catholic Church is much richer, and more feminist and loving of bodies and lives than your one shitty freshman year suggests. Recall that there will be great diversity among any group of 1 billion people. The substance of that flawed and human church–what G.K. Chesterton called a thick steak and a glass of red wine–is better than the thin gruel of consumerism or any other variety of popular and unoffensive thin gruel. Look at how the Catholic Church, for instance, alone in the world, has constantly and stridently opposed American Empire, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fact of nuclear weapons.
Alice, Wow, Thank you for the image of the feet washing–certainly uncomfortable and intimate, much like eye contact. You are completely right that ritual unites us across difference. But why do you think there are a lot of lapsed Christians today? Are we responding to a rule bound collective that caused much pain to our parents and grandparents? Are we on the extreme of the pendulum, in a rule-free place where few young people engage with a religion? Eventually we’ll have to swing back to some center. Boundaries can be gifts. Without them, we don’t know where we are.
Juanita, I love the Catholic Church. I love its original teachings. I love that Jesus invited everyone to his table, even the lepers, even the whores. Unfortunately, I’m quite sure my gay brother would not be welcomed with open arms into the Catholic Church today, (despite some Catholic priests molesting young boys) and that is a challenging bit for me. Yes, humans are flawed. Yes, consumerism is perhaps the most evil ill today. And, I agree that the Catholic Church has stood for beautiful ideals and brought comfort to many people; it is thriving in Africa and Latin America. Religion is a powerful and crucial support system. I do not mean to label Catholicism based on that tiny slice of my freshman year. But I did see a lot of people struggling with the limits of one model and they seemed to yearn for some breathing room. When enough people feel that way, I think it’s an appropriate call for the beginnings of some adaptation.
I’m sorry if my last comment was too strident. I, like the vast majority of practicing Catholics I know, think that gays ought to be allowed to be married and should–of course, of course, of course–have a full welcome into the Church, if that is there home. After all, so many of us know, too, that one is born gay, and that God, in God’s goodness and love of diversity, makes us variously. (Male and Female and Hermaphrodite/Intersexed God made us). Anyway. I hope you find your heart’s home and know that there are many of us (who think women should be priests, too!) who stay in the Church and rejoice and mourn and struggle there. Again: sorry if my earlier comment was too much.
Juanita, Not too much at all. The dialogue is great. I like your use of words–that people “rejoice, mourn and struggle” in the Church. Very accurate, very beautiful.
Molly,
Your perspective on “lapsed Christians” is widely recognized — articles claim we have lost faith as a society and generation, but I am witnessing something very different on a personal level. Every week at my church there are more and more young people appearing, longing for anchoring in tradition and a place to build community, find support, build relationships outside of their comfort zone. Weekly, ten women gather to talk about how to be a Christian, to follow Christ’s example as a social revolutionary, to be an advocate for justice, to be a vessel of compassion in a violent and hateful world. Last night, I sat around a table at a potluck and talked with twenty or so twenty and thirty somethings who are part of an interfaith group — Buddhists, Bah’ai’s, Christians, Jews, Muslims. They grew up with different backgrounds — Iranian-Americans, inner-city New Yorkers, and newly found Christians. I think it depends where you look but I am consistently amazed that everywhere I turn in my life I find more and more young people of faith that not only consider themselves “spiritual” but also “religious.” What is in common among them, though, is an awareness that religions are no better than the humans who create them. There is a long history of struggles with corruption, oppression, and violence in all their stories and what has driven people away if anything from organized religion today is not, in my opinion, any product of religions being “a rule bound collective” but the politicization of religion in the public sphere — the claiming by dogmatists that Christianity is one very black and white inside or outside model. It is a loud message and it is tied up in the same polarization our democracy suffers from today. It is a trend that is already swinging back with the leadership of a new generation that isn’t anti-Republican, anti-Democrat, anti-religion, but pro-humanity, collaborative, and visionary. More later but just some thoughts . . .