Friday, April 21, 2006

Losing My Religion

Batch 86'...
"Girls....below the knees please...!"
Grew up Catholic…

until a certain point in my life.

The point were it became pointless to do something that has no meaning. …no meaning for me. Shocked my foster parents I know… and most of my Catholic friends. They knew me as someone who would most likely swim against the current, but to relinquish a sacred traditional belief….that was a big unholy splash I made….. the greatest taboo…equaled by fornication, of which, of course… I did grandly as well.

I had the sublime audacity because I no longer lived at home…my foster parents home. And I guess because…I was merely me. Technically, I left when I was 19… felt like I never belonged anyway. I never belonged anywhere, and with a freshly teenage broken heart, neither did I belong to anyone anymore. So, left home….left school…left church. …left everyone…

I was a proud walking scandal of an Asian third world Catholic infested conservative hypocritical society locked in the caricature of a western subculture gone mad. I was the lost unacceptable prodigal daughter abandoned by a foreign soldier…Society didn’t know what to do with me…..how to hide me….I was a living dust…a speck…a glint…. a white embarrassing reminder of a putrid war that parked in our garage….much like an abandoned tank…..

I left in hopes of finding me…finding God…finding meaning….finding whatever it is I thought I didn’t have. In the process, I acquired a husband, a baby, a home, a car, a job… and a new religion. Perfect. In America, I think… they call it the American dream. This was my whatever dream…in this land of brown sugar, coconut palms and blue whaled oceans….I was living for real…

Until I found a new church….a new religion.

It was warm and fuzzy and filled with cookies and coffee and nifty sweet ladies whose cleavages never showed…with their pastor and deacon husbands ever the gentleman who would never look at another woman…a certain way.

And I served…and I served…and I listened to these heavenly sent men and their enlightened wives on how dutiful it is to submit to the higher authorities (??)…and to open your little purses for the mission to be fulfilled and the message sent forth…for many are lost and a building worth millions will save them….

And I wore the longest skirt so my legs wouldn’t show…..for much like the Puritans we are to be decent so….

and I believed.

And I listened to that foreign blue eyed, golden haired dignitary of the preacher of God... dressed in his Armani…holder of a dozen theological degrees from somewhere down there in the yonder wild south of the New World were they have cowboys and a sexy drawl…

And I listened on how he expounded that getting down on your knees in front of a man to praise his highness is of the devil….damned…. for the mouth has its use…and on how the dutiful Christian wife should joyfully bear as much children as she could…to not deny her body to the flow of life…for the earth is in need of godly citizens only the womb of the blessed wife can give…And I gasped and I balked and I sweated to the core…..in humble belief of all that… of course….the authorities….with the degrees ….

( O’ what a sinner I was… I so realized!…

lost and misguided and horribly blinded was I…..

I promised to never ever ever kneel…. for thy beholden site of me in such a bemoaning position would be so repulsive and repugnant in the sight of my man…any man…. )


Until one day…..

One day…

Somebody in a similar looking holy Armani whispers something to me….

And….it came to that point….

where it became

once again…..

pointless…. to believe in anything anymore…




and they continue to whisper …..
and they continue to whisper….
and they continue to whisper….

religion…..

leaves a bad taste in my mouth…


11 comments:

X. Dell said...

I grew up a Presbyterian in a Catholic school. It shocked my parents to learn that I wanted to be Catholic, like my classmates, when I could determine my religion for myself.

They took me out of Catholic school.

I became heavily involved in my church, and was quite religious. . . you know, the kind of piety where you're not only in the church on Sundays, but four or five days a week.

But the more I became involved, the less I came to believe in the way the church wanted me to believe. I wanted to believe like everybody else told me to, but I couldn't. Then, I lost faith.

It was only after forsaking the church when I found faith again.

Maybe your journey will be similar.

BTW, you're always welcome on the X-Spot.

Lady Prism said...

Amen!!!

Lady Prism said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
velvet acid tongue said...

you know ... its just another drug ... religion: opium of the masses.

Lady Prism said...

lee...

thank goodness...have enough arguments to last me a week!

velvet...
nice to see you...so right there!

..................... said...

Ahh, organized religion....
my very first post, the reason I started blogging, was a really long rant about my feelings towards religion, my confusions about it....
the post was lost in the nether regions of cyberspace...
I never could replicate it.
I live in the bible belt of the good ole' USA, grew up in Germany though...
I am always fighting being sucked too much into the Church culture...
I am not an unbeliever though,
but I fear loosing my identity.
Don't want to turn into one of these mainstream, middleclass, middled aged Southern white ladies.
This post here of yours was very powerful. I enjoyed reading it very much.

Gary said...

You have a fascinating blog. I haven't figured out yet what to make of it, but I like it.

Lady Prism said...

Schaumi...

exactly!...I believe in God..His presence and goodness..BUT...i'm fighting it as well...getting sucked in once again into the mainstream...

Gary...

thank you!...thank you!

X. Dell said...

Velvet Acid Tongue: Curiouser and curiouser, opiates have become the religion of the masses. The need for our species to seek transcendence didn't leave just because we entered a logocentric age.

Mayden' s Voyage said...

Oh Prism...
A personal relationship with the God of the universe is what I have been taught to pursue. And I can not tell you how many times I've awoken in the moringing with the deepest wish that I could just touch Him. That I could feel the warmth of His embrace, hear His heart beating, and inhale His goodness as I rested in His arms.
And such a morning has not yet come. But...I am wondering if the times when my husband is holding me in the middle of the night...is not this the very thing I was looking for in God? Or when my nephew runs to me with arms open wide to plant a kiss like only a 4 year old can...is this not the very love and passion I am looking for in my Savior? I KNOW I have my idea of God wrong in one sense...He can never really be understood with my earthly mind. The church can grind us down with legality...a list of do's and don'ts as long as any steeple, but what about LOVE? What about being open to just love...
I have to undo myself, unlearn all the critisims, stop listening to all the human blather of what I should be doing to be holy...and just breathe...just love. I shut myself off and out from so many...trying to be what I should be, and look how I should look, and do what I should do...and it means nothing.
But daily encounters with people who love me...and I them...this has to be what life is about.
Faith in Love. Not faith in people, not faith in myself, but faith in love. Faith in a God who does not stand with hands on His hips looking at me with a dissaproving glare...but looks at me covered in the mess of my life, and loves me anyway...

Oh...I think you opened a flood gate for me in that one! -Cora :)

Lady Prism said...

apersonal relationship..how oft' have I heard that phrase...there was a time when I thought I had that...a pretty long time...

I don't know honestly if I still have that..the older I get the more I question everything...I question if everything is indeed real....

Ironically though..my last post prior to the pic was one about my family...and my Hubz'...how we spent our special day...

Could this be...what is is...after all??

faith in love...as you said so aptly...

love that you take your time to be with me...Mayden:))