of sheep and sin
Nothing new, but this essay won me a book the other day, so I'm posting it here in lieu of a real entry.
Being the religious black sheep of your family - like I am - is not an easy thing.
For one, you get left out of all the familial rituals that revolve around church, prayer, and blind faith. That's why I'm stuck at home, alone, writing this essay on a Saturday afternoon while the rest of the sheep - I mean, my family - join their fellow members of the flock in that glorious weekly sacrament of shearing off the wool they have for brains.
Don't get me wrong. My family is made up of highly intelligent people who can hold their own in conversations about almost any topic ranging from George Eliot's best novel to the cutting-edge technologies in oncology. Our idea of relaxing over coffee consists of in-depth etymological discussions - we once nearly came to blows in the memorable 2001 Battle of the Vicious Circle/Cycle, in which my mother insisted that the phrase "vicious cycle" didn't exist, my siblings and I swore it did, and my father almost sprained an ankle trying to locate a dictionary in time to prevent bloodshed.
But add God to the equation and all good sense flies out our window, which is decorated with a little stained-glass portrait of the Virgin Mary smiling benignly at the rationality zooming past her.
I've long suspected that this logic vacuum in our house is cutting off the oxygen supply to the brains of my family members, which seems to be the only explanation for conversations such as the one I had with my mother last night.
"You should say grace before you eat your meals, you know," she remarked to me out of nowhere as I stuffed my face with chicken rice.
"Mmpforg," I said unintelligibly with my mouth full.
Correctly interpreting that as a less-than-ideally-polite way of saying "you've got to be kidding me", my mother continued: "Praying over your food will bless it so you won't get food poisoning in case that chicken rice was cooked with anger."
She was serious. I left the table and went hungry for the night.
Sometimes the manifestations of my family's faith are a bit creepier. Last week I came home to find a spanking new LCD TV occupying pride of place in our living room and my parents sitting on one of the sofas opposite it.
The room was strangely quiet and at first I thought my parents had been arguing about something, so I announced brightly: "I'm home! Are we all sitting around admiring our new TV, then?"
My chirpiness was greeted with complete silence. I looked closer and found, to my horror, that my parents were in the middle of praying the rosary in what looked like some devout attempt to bless the TV and welcome it into our God-loving home. Rattled to the core of my devil-worshipping soul, I fled upstairs to the pagan sanctity of my bedroom.
The thing is, I used to be a pious church-goer too. I can still recite, word-perfect, the Ten Commandments and the major Catholic prayers. I know the hymns, the names and order of the rites, the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation. But ask me what it all means and chances are I'll just roll my eyes.
I stopped attending mass in my first year at university. Initially it was because the weather was awful and I was lazy. But the less frequently I went, and the more people I talked to who questioned my faith, the harder it became to persuade myself to keep going to church.
My parents kicked up a huge fuss when I first declared my intention to stay home from church one fine Sunday morning. Now, after years of emotional blackmail and tantrum-laden impasses, we've reached an uneasy understanding. I get to skip church, but in return I have to endure long lectures on how God is so concerned over my spiritual well-being that He - along with my mother - is losing sleep and ending up with eye-bags that even caviar facials can't cure.
But religious tensions can make for entertaining conversations too. Occasionally, when I've been deprived of argumentative discussion for a few days, I will (admittedly unwisely) provoke my mother during dinner, much in the manner of a village idiot who, in an idle moment, pokes a pointy stick through the cardboard cage of a sleeping circus bear.
One night, after I'd been sick over a whole weekend and bereft of human company for a few days, I decided to bring up, at dinner, the Gospel of Judas - a topic treated with so much disdain by the Catholic Church that the mere mention of it is considered a faux pas on the level of referring to the Holy Spirit as "that ghost dude".
"So," I began cheerfully, "what's the Catholic Church's stance on the Gospel of Judas?"
My brother and father paused in the act of eating, forks raised halfway to their mouths, as my mother calmly replied, "Stance? What stance? There's no stance."
Just as my brother and father resumed shovelling food into their mouths with hungry relief, she continued: "The Judas thing isn't a gospel at all."
Delighted to smell blood in the air, I said, "Oh! Really! Then what is it?"
"It's just nonsense," my mother said dismissively. "It was left out of the Bible for a reason. The Bible is God's word. God decides what goes into it."
"So God sat down one day at his desk and compiled the Bible and stapled it and then, like, threw it down from heaven?" I asked in exaggerated puzzlement.
That got a reaction.
"Look," my mother said, "the Bible has a central theme of God's creation and goodness and you would know that if you went to church more often because you know what happens to people who don't go to church? They - "
But I never found out my fate-to-be because my brother chose at that point to fake his own death by choking on a tofu.
If self-amusement is a sin, I'll be laughing all the way to hell.
posted by zyn ::
5:28 PM ::
3 Comments ::
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