On the subject of religion

McKenzie's babysitter, Ita, has been pushing my mom to have McKenzie sleep over for a weekend. When Mom told me this, I knew it was Ita's overt ploy to bring my sister to church. And that meant she and Mom would have their first conversation about religion. It would go something like this:

"They're going to have great music, dancing, and they'll even offer you snacks," Mom would say. "But don't believe anything they tell you. It's all bogus."

"What kinds of snacks?"

"Stale crackers and grape juice."

"Oh," McKenzie would say, setting down her crayons as if to consider Sunday morning alternatives. "Do I have to go?"

The Temptation of St. Anthony

Salvador Dali, 1946

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_temptation_of_St._Anthony_in_visual_arts#Dal.C3.AD

For the purposes of maintaining readership, I won't go into too great depth about religion on this blog. But I will tell you that my immediate family is mostly agnostic, bookended by a set of Jewish-by-blood, athiest-by-brain grandparents and two born-again grandparents who routinely tune into Jerry Falwell reruns. The range of religious perspectives in my family connotes the variability of modern man's theological path.

My parents invested in a private education for Morgan and me, at a school that happened to be affiliated with the Episcopalian church. They sent us there because it was the best academic education we could get. Sending two kids to Saint Mark's for eleven years added up to a sizeable fortune that should keep our entire family in good standing with God for a while. At least until they have to decide between Episcopalian and Catholic grade school for Kenz.

Inclusive of the religious aspects of our education, I am grateful for every bit of the experience. We'd attend chapel daily, and on Wednesdays we'd sit through an hour or so of mass depending on the time of year. Fuzzy-faced and jolly Father Ralph ran services. Entertaining a crowd of hundreds in a hot church seemed to be as natural to him as breathing. After procession, dark patches of sweat would emerge under the neck cuff and armpits of his ankle-length white robe, and sometimes along the rope sash accenting his happily protuberant belly. We'd started wearing wool red blazers to mass around the same time that girls should realize the wonders of deodorant, and about a half-hour into ceremony the middle school section stunk of crawfish carcasses left in the sun.

Father Ralph gave the same sermons every year. The most memorable was his shaving cream demonstration. He'd start with a can and an empty food platter, and begin dispensing the cream onto the surface until there wasn't any more. Then he'd shake the can up and deposit twice as much onto the plate; shake it again, dispense until the foam tower keeled over; and so on and so forth, illustrating the idea that no matter how tired or defeated you feel, you'll always have more to give of yourself. Sometimes he'd cite stories from the Bible, but he usually served up a dose of chicken soup for the soul laced with a personal anecdote or two.

Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Salvador Dali, 1951

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_of_St._John_of_the_Cross

In addition to storytelling, church introduced me to song, and was my gateway drug to musical addiction. All those God-love songs are catchy, and Mrs. Davis, Music Director, made it cool to join the chorus. From chorus, I joined the musicals, followed by piano and classical voice. Every kid was required to perform in the Lessons and Carols Christmas Program, which became my parents' annual date night. They'd drop us off at church around five o'clock, and pick us up four or so hours later.

Through music and stories, church became one of my favorite parts of going to school. Then one day changed everything.

"Who took communion today?" the religion teacher asked my seventh grade class.

Everyone raised his and her hands.

"Would someone tell me why you could take communion today?" he said.

The whole class raised our hands again, and he called on me at the front corner desk.

"'Cause we're all supposed to take it," I said. "It represents the body and blood of Jesus Christ."

"No," he said. "It's because you were baptized."

My unfiltered twelve-year-old mouth blurted out that I'd never been baptized, and no one ever told me I couldn't take it. He told me I'd go to Hell if I took communion again without having been baptized. And I should pray for forgiveness for having taken it so far.

Kids began whispering around me. Have you been baptized? I didn't know you could go to HELL for that! Dribbles of sweat boiled under my skin. Then I wondered if it was me who smelled like a lobster, so I excused myself to the bathroom without asking to blot my face with a damp cloth and make sure there were no stains on the pits of my middy blouse.

I’d never confirmed or refuted the teacher's ideas with God's doctrine, probably because I was so madly absorbed with him telling me that I had done wrong. Because I wasn't baptized, I lacked the religious identity that everyone else seemed to have, and the whole class now knew that and the possibility that I might go to hell if I didn't do something about it.

The Sacrament of the Last Supper

Salvador Dali, 1955

http://www.allartclassic.com/pictures_zoom.php?p_number=32&p=&number=DAS036

The way I recall things, most seventh graders don't think about death and what happens afterwards because they're too busily concerned with problems like what lunch table they'll sit at that day or if their training bras are showing. Since my family is pretty consistently wacky, we'll probably all end up in the same place. That's the important part. But no matter how I framed things in my mind back then, it was a lonely feeling, being told I might go to Hell and believing it. In a place where I once felt socially rooted and creatively inspired, I was now shunned.

Intersections and head-on collisions with religious influencers occur at many points in a person's life. We'll all follow different paths of revelation and devastation and sin and redemption and spiritual fulfillment. Tons of people will tell Kenz that her ideas are wrong, and more scarily, what's "right." I just hope she will be equipped with the agency, resources and attitudes at every such point in her life to decide for herself what to believe, to be sympathetic to all theological stances, to discuss global religious issues intelligently, and to not buy into any religious establishment that serves stale crackers.