Easter
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about religion. The Unitarian church has been a blessing to me. It is amazing to be around a group of people who want to think and debate and reason and figure things out for themselves. We went on Sunday because it was Easter and R felt strongly about going. The service was an essay, taken from a feminist book, and it was an adaptation of the story of Christ’s death and resurrection. It was told from the point of view of Mary Magdaline.
You can read it here http://books.google.com/books?id=Jvlmr5ePKnsC&pg=PA8&dq=Mary+Magdalene%27s+Witness#PPA8,M1
When I asked R what she thought of the whole service afterwards, she said “I thought it was sacriligious”. And I wanted to cry. My heart sank and I realized that though we are quiet about it, she and I are very different, and though she has tucked it away neatly for the sake of us, she believes that one set of things is right and one set wrong and that’s the way it is, period, the end. I realized that this church may not be a possibility for her and that it may become a point of contention if I decide that it is for me.
When we got home, with fear in my heart, I tried to explain it to her. I said, if I were to take you outside right now, point upward, and tell you ‘look, that’s the sky, and it’s purple.’, you would have two options. You could say ‘no it’s not, it’s blue. That’s just a fact, it always has been blue, it always will be blue, you must be crazy’ or, you could stop, and wonder. You could wonder why I think it’s purple, you could wonder if my eyes function differently than yours or if my brain just knows a different word for the same color. You could stop and wonder whether purple is right and blue is wrong or whether blue is right and purple is wrong. You could decide at the end that both might be equally likely. You could like me anyway. We could both like the sky. We could decide not to discuss its color and simply talk about the clouds and the wind and the rain and the things we agree on. Or we could go on forever, you talking blue, me talking purple, and not letting it bother us that we think of it differently. Whatever the truth is, it will still be there, it will not change because of us, or the way we think of it, or what we call it, or how we feel about it.
You can read it here http://books.google.com/books?id=Jvlmr5ePKnsC&pg=PA8&dq=Mary+Magdalene%27s+Witness#PPA8,M1
When I asked R what she thought of the whole service afterwards, she said “I thought it was sacriligious”. And I wanted to cry. My heart sank and I realized that though we are quiet about it, she and I are very different, and though she has tucked it away neatly for the sake of us, she believes that one set of things is right and one set wrong and that’s the way it is, period, the end. I realized that this church may not be a possibility for her and that it may become a point of contention if I decide that it is for me.
When we got home, with fear in my heart, I tried to explain it to her. I said, if I were to take you outside right now, point upward, and tell you ‘look, that’s the sky, and it’s purple.’, you would have two options. You could say ‘no it’s not, it’s blue. That’s just a fact, it always has been blue, it always will be blue, you must be crazy’ or, you could stop, and wonder. You could wonder why I think it’s purple, you could wonder if my eyes function differently than yours or if my brain just knows a different word for the same color. You could stop and wonder whether purple is right and blue is wrong or whether blue is right and purple is wrong. You could decide at the end that both might be equally likely. You could like me anyway. We could both like the sky. We could decide not to discuss its color and simply talk about the clouds and the wind and the rain and the things we agree on. Or we could go on forever, you talking blue, me talking purple, and not letting it bother us that we think of it differently. Whatever the truth is, it will still be there, it will not change because of us, or the way we think of it, or what we call it, or how we feel about it.