Zombie Mass in the Dessert

This year December 24th I went to my local Catholic church to celebrate the birth of the zombie god.

It certainly was pretty.

The first surprise was that when I crossed the threshold neither did I burst into flames or get attacked by rabid Christian maniacs. No big unbeliever alarm went off when I went in.

My wife walked me through the little steps as we went along and I asked questions when necessary. We walked in through the front door instead of the side door to get the full effect of the hall. I was very surprised by the beauty of the church. From the outside the place looks a bit like a desert brick. Like some Egyptian 3000 years ago slapped some clay and straw together into a square shape and dropped it on the corner. It truly is one of the uglier of the buildings in the city.

But on the inside it's lovely, it really is. Firstly it's not gaudy at all. The ceiling is very high and crossed with enormous beams.


We stopped by the holy water and my wife showed me how to cross myself. She walked us past the altar to which I bowed. I learned later that this was the appropriate action and I was pretty much the only one doing it. I just did it because my purpose there was to honor my sisters and brothers who live under Christ. To give my energy and love to them and to support them on this day which is so holy to them.

We arrived an hour early. We'd set out early to hit the store on the way and to avoid traffic. We needed plastic forks, the one thing that we'd missed in our Christmas brunch preparations. We passed the time with my describing the various bits of the church and answering any questions that such descriptions or the actions of the other people filtering into the hall raised. Also by picking on the priests outfits which make them look terribly fat. Perhaps it's not the outfits.

Mass followed pretty much as I had expected it and I won't even bother to try and go into it in detail here. For those of you interested look up 'Catholic Mass' on the googles. They have a very prescribed system and you will find almost 100% of what we did documented there. I will touch upon a few points where it raised interesting points.

There was a lot more singing than I had anticipated which I liked, even though the songs were slightly creepifying. I feel modern Christianity has very little soul. I think the white churches could learn a few things from gospel singing churches. There were readings from the old and new testaments and a little sermon, which I'm told is called a homily and a homily is different than a sermon but a lot like one. I'm totally going to have to look that up myself because I really don't get the difference. I think it's supposed to be less 'preachy.' That is less telling you what to do and more sharing with you. 

I have come a long way in the arena of interfaith and brotherly love and I think I'm doing worlds better in the arena of not being so damned judgemental. I didn't spend much time shuddering in revulsion. In fact I didn't feel judgemental much at all and slapped myself around any time I did. I wasn't there to be judgmental. I was there to share, to offer my own faith, power of prayer, spirituality, whatever. There are monks in seclusion who live their whole lives meditating or praying for the world. Working for the betterment of all. I wanted to do this in my tiny little way for my brothers and sisters in this church.

Watching the ceremony was kind of cool. It's just interesting to watch ceremonialized stuff. It's like watching the history channel. There's a point in mass where you kneel on these little kneeling benches that fold out from the pew in front of you. It's the image you see in all the movies where people are kneeling behind a pew and have their elbows on the seat in front of them.

I didn't get to do that. What I got instead was a whole ton of pain. The guy sitting in front of me was about five hundred years old and came in with a walker. Each time we stood his son, who is older than me, would grab his arm and hoist him up. When we go to the kneeling part it was no surprise that he didn't get up. So instead of resting my arms on the back of the chair I just knelt there with my palms together. What did come as a surprise though was when he leaned back. This forced me to do the same so I spent about five or ten minutes in this position. That doesn't seem like much until you do it for the first time in years. My legs were shaky for an hour afterwards.

The highlight for me was the homily. The priest told a cute little story of some family that couldn't give each other presents so cut out pictures and told us how god wasn't afraid to get down and dirty, he came amongst us. He started the whole thing by asking us questions. Questions he wanted us to ask ourselves and keep in mind. This was where the 'Jeezusy' really kicked in. His first question was 'Who brought you here?' To which I started to go all esoteric but he clarified it to mean who had introduced you to Jesus, who was responsible for you learning of the beauty and love or whatever of our old boy Jesus. This is where the brainwashing started.


But what I realized is that I was hearing what I had hoped for and not the brainwashing that I had feared. Because as he went on about the meaning of the questions and the meaning of the holiday and what not. What was important was that for every time he said "serve Jesus" or "In his name." For every time that he said some variation of "live God's will" He said "spread love to the whole world" at least five times often in the same breath. When he said that we were called to live as Jesus did it was bringing peace and joy to the entire world.


One thing that has driven most, like me, who have been driven away from Christianity is that 'His message' the message that Jesus seems to want us to spread is apparently to spread his message. All we ever seem to hear about the word of god is to spread the word of god. We are pushed away by this unrelenting need to convert everyone in the world to Christianity. It is that creepifying homogenization that scares us and that makes us think of  Pope Urban II commanding Europe to "destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends." A.K.A the Crusades.

What I saw on this night had none of this flavor but instead had the flavor of peace and love. It tasted not of commandments and hellfire but of a teacher offering us some suggestions on how to figure out the answer to a problem and where to go to learn more.

ZOMFG the death penalty

Holy fricking crap.

I just became against the death penaly.
Literally less than five minutes ago. While brushing my teeth.

No that's not entirely true I was actually flossing with my waterpick. The idea hit me about 5 minutes earlier and I tried to resist it. Hoped I'd forget.

I've been pro death penalty most of my life. I've also been against killing, wars and violence in general* for most of my life. I have, however always felt that murderers and others that wreak havoc upon our lives should be culled. Not as punishment but generally as a cleansing of the gene pool.

No really. There's something wrong with these people. Yes upbringing is a possible source but by culling them off the way you would kill a cancer you A) Remove a source of the phsycopath gene from the gene pool and B) Show others that it's a BAD IDEA.
Now I understand global harmony and I love the idea and want the idea but the murderers are a current problem and global harmony is a future solution that we** are working towards.

But that's really the problem with the death penalty right there. It's just like your diet, or that reading you want to do or the excercise you should do, the gardening, the time with your kids.

It's always some day isn't it?

Some day.

But we all know some day doesn't come. It's bullshit. Some day is never today, it's always some day, out there, some place we look at. It's a dream, a lie.

It's bullshit.

And it won't be real until we make it real. It won't be real until we decide 'Fuck it!' Some day is today! So how will we heal the world if we don't start?

I know, I know, it's so much easier the other way. After all they're BAD PEOPLE. They really are. It's so much easier to want them punished. But that's like curing cancer by smoking. It sows the seeds of hate. Yes, more murderers are out there and more will come but how will we stop hate if we don't start? How will we end death if we don't start?

I'm such a fucking hippie some times.
sigh.

It was so much easier the other way. This is going to be hard. I don't like this idea but it's right.

Well, off to finish the evening with some Zazen. Maybe I should quit. This is the crap that's giving me this new clarity and all it's crappy revalations. ^_-


*except in sports conexts like martial arts.
** most of us.

Some Progress 1

This is actually a bit late. I've pretty much made about six steps on my goal towards not hating everything about wife's choice of religeon but I had to get through those steps before I could be comfortable enough writing about them. Truth is I'm making a much bigger deal of it than she is. But I knew that would be the case. I'm the one with the problem not her.

Well I've been doing a bunch of reading. Read 'Living Buddha, Living Christ." by Thich Nhat Hanh. I'll be seeing him sept 19th. He's doing some speaking. Funny part is while my wife was searching for God she brought home "Jesus and Buddha as brothers" by him. I read about three paragraphs and said "Looks like it's just some attempt to make Christianity palatable for Buddhists. I have no interest in understanding and accepting them." Man, what a dick.

I knew subconciously it was her attempt to help me be comfortable with it but it didn't sink in that she'd already made her choice to be Christian. The ironic part is that she doesn't remember that book, apparently she didn't read it and now I'm the one getting the books and giving them to her. I'm not pushing the Buddhism on her but she's trying to understand it as much as I'm trying to understand hers. There's a bunch of concepts in Buddhism that are, to be honest, kind of odd and very difficult for most western minds to wrap around. I'm not really sure why I don't have a problem with it. I'm exploring that, more on that in a later post.

I'm a lot more comfortable than I used to be with the wife's choice. It helps that she's Catholic. Much to my surprise Catholosism is one of the most flexible. Supporting science and such things. hell the vatican is becoming solar powered. The most important part is the importance they place on helping people. The teachings of Catholosism and buddhism are actually very close. Jesus said go help people. My wife made a comment once. "There are two ways to view what Jesus said. You can focus on helping people here on this earth and pray as well. Or you can Pray constantly and focus on helping them in the after life. You can guess from the number of Hospitals with names that start with 'St. ...' which one the catholic church focuses on.' it really helps.

Tao (the way)

So I've started a spiritual journey. It's been tough. I am a little surprised that I'm doing it and it's not really the sort of thing I would normally have sought out.

The truth is I was forced into it. You see my wife found God. She's not being preachy or trying to steal the kids from me or anything horrible. She's been great about it. The problem is me. You see I have a problem with Christianity. I hate it, I loathe it, I feel that most of the terrible things that have happened in this world have been a result of it. It's a feeling that has grown in me gradually over the past 15-20 years. Or at least I did for about the last ten years until about six months or a year ago when I started to calm down.

So when I finally found out about the wife I had a crisis. I couldn't believe she had brought this evil into my house. I actually said that out loud in front of her can you believe it? After a while of reflecting on this. A while being months and months. Plus being torn by the fact that I love her dearly and that I respect her greatly I started to realize something very important. In my hatred of what Christians had done in the name of God I had learn to hate Christians. I had become the very thing I hated them for. A vessel of ignorance, hatred and intolerance. This had to change. A little history Some 20 years or so ago I was an avid church goer. During that period I learned of this ignorance and hatred and I knew that God could not be like this. So I found my own path. Over the next 5 years or so I explored myself and the universe deeply through contemplative meditation and developed some very strong feelings about how the world worked. They included ideas like reincarnation and the love and interconectedness of all things.

about 15+ years ago I discovered Buddhism. I was and still am constantly amazed at how much it matched my own explorations and theories and so I began following it. I'd already started down the path and here was a guide from those who had gone down the same path before me.

Unfortunately I didn't stick with it. The Buddha sort of moved from my heart to my back pocket. Buddhism was always something I would get back to. I've got completely unread Buddhist texts that I've had for 5 years now. Some day. I would get back into Buddhism, learn a bit more and start meditating again.

Well this was the day. See Buddhism speaks to me very closely. And one of the neat things about it specific to this situation is that Acceptance of other peoples religion is a requirement. No Buddhist who truly understands the Darhma will ever tell you that your religion is wrong, less accurate. So I'm diving in full bore. Grabbed a bunch more texts and I'm reading them. Some from the buddhist restaurant we go to for the vegitarian chinese food. Some online, some I've just had for a long time and don't know why. Some that folks have brought to me from taiwan or something. Others that I've picked up as giveaways and a chinese Buddhist restaurant.

Tao in Chinese means way or path. Both of these words are used to describe the Buddha's teachings. Both by him and by others. My initial exposure to Buddhism was essentially zen. But in the kung fu theathre sort of way. I got it from a martial arts instructor and a very good frient. I learned a lot spiritually from the man. I'm sure there will be more on him later.