Sunday Blog 167 – 12th January 2025
At the tender age of 14, my family’s tightly woven Catholic framework that had swaddled and coddled me loosened. The impetus for this was my eldest sister joining the Orange People. As I puzzled through all the culty aspects of the Rajneshees, I suddenly realised that the brand of Catholicism I’d been raised in was, in fact, a cult.
By age 19, my faith had unravelled to the point I deliberately bought a bacon double cheeseburger deluxe (remember those?) from a fast-food outlet on a Good Friday. It was a powerful, if humorous, repudiation of my childhood faith. Together with my sister, I munched on its greasy goodness with relish. We laughed and laughed as we ate, but I’m sure it wasn’t just me secretly checking for lightning bolts from the sky. Meat on a Friday was always a no-no, but Good Friday? Sheesh.
As an angry young ex-Catholic, I boldly declared my new views and thinking. As the scale of sexual abuse in the Catholic church emerged, my justification was complete. But under the conviction and bravado, there was a deep sense of loss. I missed the quiet time each Sunday, sitting with others and sitting with myself. The belonging. The rituals. But it was and is clear to me that religion room is a locked door that I never want to re-open.
Over the years, I’ve mitigated that loss as best I can. I drew a line separating religion and spirituality. The former I associate with power and control while the latter is a direct, personal, mystical relationship with Higher Power/God/dess. I immersed in yoga nearly 30 years ago and learned, among other things, the vitally important fact that you don’t have to listen to or believe your thoughts. Taking responsibility for my choices and consequences was in. Feeling like a slut-shamed extra rib was out. Certainty and black and white thinking was out, puzzling paradoxes and grey were in.
Can I cherry-pick from other faiths? I’ve often wondered. This week, tuning in to Rangan Chatterjee’s interview with Alain de Bottom about happiness and fulfilment, I was plunged right back into the loss I once felt as I listened to a keen description of what I missed;
Religions are giant machines designed to help people to cope with the weakness of their impulse to do what they think is right, but lose sight of at critical moments… They’re machines for repeating things.
As someone who’s had the chance to visit Europe and stand in awe in the giant medieval cathedrals, I nodded my head as he said religions “are alive to the kind of sensory nature of human beings… using things like architecture, music, art, fashion, design, the visual realm to instil a message which might drain away.”
We remember and forget, remember and forget.
Yes, I concluded as I listened. Not only can we cherry-pick, but we should cherry-pick. I can join other yogis at least once a week to create shared quiet time. At home I can listen to Tara Brach’s discourses over and over (with the same Dad jokes that I somehow always find amusing). Seek out gatherings with people to enjoy a meal. Take the opportunities to mark festivals and occasions.
Let the ongoing, discerning cherry-picking roll!