The Reader Travels

I always watch Edward Burns movies because there’s just something about him I love. And the way he pokes fun at Catholic-flavored wrong-headedness is plain adorable to me. One of my favorite exchanges in She’s The One was near the end of the movie where Ed’s character says something like, “But you don’t even believe in God,” and his father answers, “That doesn’t mean I stopped being a good Catholic.”

I didn’t really enjoy Ash Wednesday, though. Well done, certainly, in its darkness, but it just didn’t make me feel good. Through the whole movie, all I wanted was for him to wash his face. My OCD was kicking in, and I kept rubbing my forehead, trying to get the ashes off.

So, today is Ash Wednesday, representing the beginning of Jesus’s 40 days in the desert. And in honor of those 40 days, we make a symbolic self-sacrifice, focusing on the fasting and harsh conditions he endured because maybe in this small way we can be like Jesus.

I gave up something for Lent once. In my freshman year in college, my roommate was like a real Catholic, so she gave up something every year, and she inspired me to try it out. I gave up naps. For a whole 40 days, I didn’t take a single nap.

But like every good Catholic, I used a certain amount of bargaining. It didn’t count as a nap if I woke up after spending the night at my boyfriend’s apartment, then drove back to the dorms and went back to sleep. That was just going back to sleep. And I certainly wasn’t giving up the sex.

Have you heard of this thing called “cringe therapy” wherein people dig up embarrassing things they wrote during adolescence and publish them in a book or read them in front of a crowd of drunks? Well, I’m not sure what’s therapeutic about it, but the idea is most intriguing.

So, I went looking through my old journals to see if there was anything truly cringe-worthy to be found. The journals from those terrible teens were actually lost, but I did find something from when I was thirteen, still mostly flat chested, but on the edge of puberty and rebellion.

It was a spiral notebook from something we did called “Family Dialogue.” My parents picked this up from a Marriage Encounter retreat they went on through their church. They would ask us questions to help us “get in touch with our feelings,” and everyone in the family was supposed to go into a quiet corner of the house and write their answer to the question.

Now, granted, I look back on these exercises as a really strong growth experience in my life. I can make fun of it, but I’m really glad they did it.

With that said, looking back on the things I wrote, I can only say, I was a little robot. Nearly everything I wrote was a regurgitation of a lecture my parents had given me before we wrote down the question of the day. They’d lecture about violence in TV and cartoons, about the evils of atheists like Madalyn Murray O’Hair trying to take Christ out of Christmas, about finding Jesus in pop music, because when Journey sang, “Here I am, with open arms,” it was like they were inviting the spirit into their hearts.

Even though I was already smoking and drinking by thirteen, I sure was a “good” girl. Thank God I’ve been Saved since then.

San Francisco was named after the most beloved of all Catholic saints - St. Francis of Assissi. Now, whenever I think of St. Francis, I think of Bambi and Thumper and all the cartoon birds and butterflies of the forest, because he’s known for his love of nature and all the living creatures of the earth.

A couple of years ago, I went to an art exhibit that featured some paintings from Caravaggio, and I got a new image of St. Francis, and strangely enough, this one matches my image of San Francisco. It’s called Saint Francis of Assissi in Ecstasy.

Don’t you love it?

In Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Forest House, mushrooms are the drug of choice. In her poisoned haze, the high priestess can see the past, the future and the present. Like the Druids, San Francisco’s youth are also famed for their appreciation of hallucinogens, even if they do lack the sensibility and spirituality of Avalon’s priestesses.

In actuality, the priestesses don’t have any more sense than the trippin’ hippies of the ’60s. They’re still self important, immature and insecure, worshipping self destruction. But at least they’re not doing it because everyone else is doing it, like a bunch of sheep. They kept it to a few high-placed individuals, seers, who sacrificed their well being for their people.

It was okay when LSD was limited to people like Aldous Huxley and Carey Grant, mature individuals exploring the recesses of their minds, privately, like Plato’s philosopher kings. But the masses would only abuse this gift. “Hey man, let’s drop acid and go to Six Flags. Won’t that be righteous? Duh, huh.”

We can blame it all on The Beatles, right?

San Francisco started out as one of many Catholic missions established in California by Spanish priests. The priests and the natives of the land flourished together with the father, the son and the holy ghost for many generations. Then in 1834, the Mexican government smashed the mission system in an attempt to secularize the country. Priests were persecuted and the natives scattered like Jews in the desert.

The fogs of San Francisco Bay were mirrored by the hordes of people flowing onto the land in search of gold. People of all languages, religions and nationalities confused the religious landscape, made it difficult for the Catholics to regain the control they had lost. But they kept their presence in California, even when they had to hide.

The same sort of thing is happening in The Mists of Avalon. The Christians are taking over the land, persecuting the Druids, who must create a shroud of mist to hide the practice of their faith. Their actions are defensive, grasping in the fog to maintain control, to keep from losing their faith, when finally they realize that the Madonna is just another incarnation of the goddess, and She is eternal.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon books brought me to world of pagan appreciation for the beauty and power of nature. Churches with walls and roofs are an aberration, for the beauty of god is not inside a man-made structure, but outside with the earth and the sky.

In Lady of Avalon, priestess initiation happens on an ocean cliff described as one of the sacred places where earth meets sea meets sky. I visited San Francisco shortly after reading this novel, and I realized that the northern California coastline is also one of those sacred places.

As I sat along the shore and watched the waves crash into the craggy rocks, I couldn’t help but gasp in ecstasy. The rocks are hard, but the water is persistent, patiently molding the earth, crash after crash.

Divine.