(no subject)
Your Jew is Showing
(What flags- religion, political ideology, or other have you had to lower to receive your boon?)
The ceiling is snaked with glass tubes, music floating upwards towards them as a line of small boys in white robes advance to the front of the cathedral. I am pressed into a crowd in the back, surrounded on all sides. My vision is impeded by a small amount of water. I sniff. There are thousands of people around me, thousands or more. I can’t tell. There are so many people, so many people with such feeling. It fills the room, inching out from the huddle of bodies, stretching to the walls and then moving back in to press on the walls of my chest. I watched them coming in. Line after line marching forward flowers and statuettes in hand. I find it incredibly interesting; this mix of patriotism and God and love. The way pieces of the culture mix and blend until the lines disappear. I had so much trouble with it at first. In all honesty it is still something I can’t quite understand, but here in this moment I can appreciate the beauty.
I was raised in a family of non-believers. My Pop-Pop (Grandfather) went to rabbinical school before deciding that God did not, in fact, exist and earning his zoology degree instead. My mother decided after a good deal of Greek Mythology that her religion, while occasionally comforting, sounded like a myth as well. I was raised to question, to map out, to insert logic. After studying the history of Mexico I couldn’t insert my logic. I did not understand. I knew that the Spaniards had been extremely religious, and that native peoples in Mexico had been extremely religious, but I could not understand how the people of Mexico today could still believe so reverently. The Spaniards converted Indigenous Mexicans. Some chose Catholicism, but others where forced and manipulated. I couldn’t understand how, knowing this, Mexicans could believe in Catholicism. I did not understand believing that despite the methods and despite the way the religion has changed, the right choices had been made, as Mexicans were meant to accept Jesus and gods undiluted word. The story of the Virgin Guadalupe helped with this a bit, but when told the story of I could not understand why the doubting priest in question did not think that the apparition was merely a painting, that Jose had great talent, but that he was becoming a tad fanatical and that he ought to head home for a rest.
I have always believed that Church and Temple have positives as well as negatives. They have the ability to provide support, inspiration, community, comfort and hope. They also have it with it their power to manipulate, to create hate, and to further isolation. I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with that power. Pressed in to the back of this room I still am, but I can feel it now, I think. In this moment I feel it. The beauty of it is pressing at my eyes, my chest, and the back of my throat. I am amongst the color and the sound and this love. Love for a country and a God. Love encompassing the love you have for your family, the love you have for your home, the hope you feel, tying it together and pushing to forward. It is something to be feared this love, as large and powerful as it is. But it is also something to be experienced. It has beauty, and while it is not my culture, while these are not my beliefs, in this moment I can feel it and I am glad.
(What flags- religion, political ideology, or other have you had to lower to receive your boon?)
The ceiling is snaked with glass tubes, music floating upwards towards them as a line of small boys in white robes advance to the front of the cathedral. I am pressed into a crowd in the back, surrounded on all sides. My vision is impeded by a small amount of water. I sniff. There are thousands of people around me, thousands or more. I can’t tell. There are so many people, so many people with such feeling. It fills the room, inching out from the huddle of bodies, stretching to the walls and then moving back in to press on the walls of my chest. I watched them coming in. Line after line marching forward flowers and statuettes in hand. I find it incredibly interesting; this mix of patriotism and God and love. The way pieces of the culture mix and blend until the lines disappear. I had so much trouble with it at first. In all honesty it is still something I can’t quite understand, but here in this moment I can appreciate the beauty.
I was raised in a family of non-believers. My Pop-Pop (Grandfather) went to rabbinical school before deciding that God did not, in fact, exist and earning his zoology degree instead. My mother decided after a good deal of Greek Mythology that her religion, while occasionally comforting, sounded like a myth as well. I was raised to question, to map out, to insert logic. After studying the history of Mexico I couldn’t insert my logic. I did not understand. I knew that the Spaniards had been extremely religious, and that native peoples in Mexico had been extremely religious, but I could not understand how the people of Mexico today could still believe so reverently. The Spaniards converted Indigenous Mexicans. Some chose Catholicism, but others where forced and manipulated. I couldn’t understand how, knowing this, Mexicans could believe in Catholicism. I did not understand believing that despite the methods and despite the way the religion has changed, the right choices had been made, as Mexicans were meant to accept Jesus and gods undiluted word. The story of the Virgin Guadalupe helped with this a bit, but when told the story of I could not understand why the doubting priest in question did not think that the apparition was merely a painting, that Jose had great talent, but that he was becoming a tad fanatical and that he ought to head home for a rest.
I have always believed that Church and Temple have positives as well as negatives. They have the ability to provide support, inspiration, community, comfort and hope. They also have it with it their power to manipulate, to create hate, and to further isolation. I have always been somewhat uncomfortable with that power. Pressed in to the back of this room I still am, but I can feel it now, I think. In this moment I feel it. The beauty of it is pressing at my eyes, my chest, and the back of my throat. I am amongst the color and the sound and this love. Love for a country and a God. Love encompassing the love you have for your family, the love you have for your home, the hope you feel, tying it together and pushing to forward. It is something to be feared this love, as large and powerful as it is. But it is also something to be experienced. It has beauty, and while it is not my culture, while these are not my beliefs, in this moment I can feel it and I am glad.