I was steeped in Catholicism when I was a Wee Lad. Those early formative years were gilded with lots of Bible, God, Lucifer, Jesus, Sin, Guilt, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo, Communion, Confirmation, Confession, Prayer, Kneeling and Beseeching the Lord. No denying all of that had a major impact on my squishy new brain. I think it was all sort of "accidental," both my parents went to Catholic grade school too, and I think they just thought going to Catholic grade school would be good for me, it would keep me on the straight and narrow. I did learn how to read and write and found out I was terrible with numbers. Still, the best thing that came out of all that rigamarole, I learned to love reading books, which later led me in another direction.
I never quite bought the whole Religion thing. It all seemed like grand theater, definitely engaging, but also pretty implausible. One of the Nuns, dressed in her Darth Vader costume convinced me that Heaven was not for me, I was a lost, stupid, recalcitrant, sort of lazy, and dreamy kid on a fast track to Hell. I was resigned to the flames, alienated, and, I basically rejected the whole she-bang. If Heaven wasn't going to have me, I wasn't going to have Heaven. They were selling Fear and Repentance. I wasn't buying. I think now: "You go kid!" I thought Jesus got a raw deal, a pretty cool guy who got in a little too deep, and ended up being treated very badly, but that roll away the stone, rising from the dead thing seemed like a major stretch. There were better fairy tales to be told.
For years I rebelled against all that shite. And then, one day I had the realization that my Rebellion was also a blind alley. I dropped the Rebellion and Embraced the Theater. Even today I look back fondly on the Spectacle of it all; the Incense, the Pomp and Ceremony, the long robes, the Golden Tabernacle, the Communion Wafer, the Magic of the Bread & Wine, the Blood, the Cross, the Suffering, the Holy Ghost, Jesus washing the feet of Prostitutes, Walking on Water, Raising the Dead. Good stuff. The best lessons that still stick with me to this day? The Golden Rule. Also "There but for the Grace of God, go I..." and, LOVE, HUMILITY, KINDNESS.
I would say I am free of the Dogma, no longer a pissed-off ex-Catholic. I realize now all of that Church stuff fed my IMAGINATION. I realize, of course, GOD did not create Humans, Humans created God, Devil, Heaven and Hell. Luckily, later I discovered other voices and characters that were probably even more influential than Jesus, Moses, the Virgin Mary, & the Holy Ghost, I am thinking of characters & voices like William Blake, William Shakespeare, J.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville, Jack Kerouac, Mad Magazine, Picasso, Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Sex, Drugs, R&R, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, The Beatles, The Who, the Stones, The Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, Aleister Crowley, The Tarot, ZEN, Meditation, Dalai Lama. I filled my head with alternate takes on Life, Love, Humanity, Spirituality, Intelligence, all much more compelling and persuasive.
I now know all that Religious Mumbo-Jumbo is pretty good imaginative mulch. It fed my mind, opened the door to Spirituality & Magic, the Transcendent Power of the Human Imagination. I think of William Blake's great work: "The Marriage of Heaven & Hell", sort the anti-Bible, and a ripping good read, and I realize that phrase "Marriage of Heaven & Hell" is an excellent description of the Human Condition. We have conjured Gods and Demons to explain ourselves to ourselves. We are the marriage of good and evil. Angel on one shoulder, Devil on the other (like in that great Heckle & Jeckle cartoon). These are all imaginative creations that help us explain the unexplainable nature of the Universe and being alive in the midst of the crazy-ass being Human thing.
