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what about other stories on the same theme? I mean what about
Persephone going down into the underworld?
I mean, that's psychologically true too then, I suppose.
Or, what about stories from the Iliad?
Or Darth Vader? Or the Little Engine That Could?
I mean, those are also psychologically true stories, aren't they?
"And what's so psychologically true about atonement?
We were taught that Jesus died for our sins,
based on this idea of atonement,
or that somebody else can pay
for the sins of other people.
For the first time, after going to church
basically my entire life,
I considered the idea that
God sent his son to earth
to suffer and die for our sins. Why?
I mean, first of all you can say that Jesus suffered,
but he didn't really suffer any more
than a lot of other people have suffered.
I could think of examples in my own family.
My brother Mike, who had cancer,
he suffered unspeakably for a very long time.
Eye lids freezing open and his eyes drying up,
canker sores all over his throat and he couldn't swallow,
weeks and then months of gut wrenching,
vomiting and nausea, before he finally died.
So, okay, Jesus suffered. I mean, he apparently suffered terribly.
For one, maybe even two days.
I heard someone say once,
"Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins."
I thought, "Why would a God create people so imperfect,
then blame them for their own imperfections;
Aha! then send his son to be tortured and then murdered
by those imperfect people,
to make up for how imperfect people were
and how imperfect they inevitably were going to be?"
I mean, what a crazy idea.
I looked at the Crucifix,
and for the first time instead of
seeing a symbol of transcendence and compassion,
I saw a horrible execution device.
What kind of God sends his son
to be tortured and killed like that?
Oh, I guess it is the God of the Old Testament,
that's exactly who would do something like that.
But when I looked at Jesus as just a guy,
just a human, just an impassioned young idealist
who sure lost his temper a lot,
but who could also go on teary eyed
about loving your neighbor and helping the poor,
and because his ideas were so outspoken
it threatened those in power,
who ordered him to be tortured and then killed...
And then reading how Jesus died,
astonished and heartbroken that
his own God abandoned him, his story became so tragic.
Jesus' life and death made me want to go out
and campaign for free speech,
not sit in a church and worship him!
So, I tried to concentrate on
what I did like about the Church.
The stained glass windows were pretty,
the light in the church.
The religious art. The songs.
Not the words to the songs, exactly,
but the melodies were nice.
Especially at Christmas.
It was all so... pretty in the church then.
Well. Father Tom saw me outside the church. He said,
"Happy Easter, Julia."
I said, "Happy Easter, Father."
And he said, "You know I can see you frowning from the pulpit."
"I'm sorry, Father. But please, help me!
Because I am just finding this all just impossible to believe."
He pulled me over to the coffee and donuts table.
He said, "Listen, I've been speaking with
some of the other priests about your... predicament."
I loved how he said "predicament."
I felt like I was 16 and knocked up.
I said, "Yeah?" He said, "Listen.
We all struggle with doubt. But we all come back.
Just remember Proverbs 3:5,
'Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.'"
"So, God gave us the gifts of intelligence and curiosity
and rationality, but then we're not supposed to use them?"
Then Father Tom sighed, like he was so tired of me and my struggle.
And I was so angry that he used that particular Proverb.
It really felt like he was slamming the door in my face.
Then all of a sudden Father Tom started to bless me.
It was sort of awkward, he just started
moving his hands over me and chanting this phrase in Latin.
Not that this is so out-of-the-ordinary or wrong or anything like that;
it's just in this moment
it really felt like he was trying to perform an exorcism.
Afterwards, I went back into the empty church.
I sat down and stared at the altar.
When I was ten or so,
the Sisters at St. Augustine's announced that
anyone who was interested in becoming an altar boy
were to go see Monsignor at the rectory.
And I thought, "I want to be an altar boy!"
So my best friend, Janie Parker and I
went to the rectory and we knocked on the door.
And Monsignor answered, and I said,
"We want to be altar boys... altar girls... altar people...
or whatever."
And Monsignor said, "Don't be ridiculous."
And he slammed the door on our faces, as we stood there.
Janie and I were so angry, we were so mad.
We just went right back into the church and we went
where they had always told us we should never go,
up to the sanctuary.
And we knew it was a sacrilege to touch anything on the altar
if you weren't a priest or an altar boy.
And we ran around and touched everything;
we touched every little thing.
We got our girl cooties all over that altar.
And, suddenly, remembering that, like a big ocean wave,
the force of all that I really hated about this Church welled up in me;
all the pompous, numbing masses,
the unabated monotony of the rituals,
all the desperate priests trying to tease
something meaningful from a very flawed, ancient text.
I was driving home, going east on the 10.
And I was near tears thinking, "I've tried so hard!
I tried to learn more about my Church and
it just made everything a lot worse.
I thought they knew something I didn't know.
Like they had to have, because there's
this whole huge institution built on it!"
And I thought, "I feel like I am lying
under this great huge cow of the Church,
sucking on a ***, trying to get some milk of meaning.
And I am sucking and sucking.
And then I usually do get a teaspoon of milk.
And I thrill to myself,
'A teaspoon of meaning! A teaspoon of meaning! Hallelujah!'
And now my neck is so exhausted and
even the muscles in my shoulders and back are starting to ache."
And I prayed to God, "What am I going to do?
I can't go back there again."
We could go to some other church together,
me and God, and find some other way.
But this is not the right way for me.
I will not make this drive again, it is ... finished."
And then I did start to cry.
And as if God were crying too, it began to rain.
And I could almost feel God,
sitting in the passenger seat next to me,
and we were ripping down the freeway together.
And I could practically hear God say,
"I can barely stand it at that Church myself,
let's get the hell out of there!" And so we did.
I came home and it felt remarkably quiet.
Sort of like God and I were empty nesters,
and now we had no church or rituals or
special prayers to distract us from each other.
Just me and ... God. Not saying much, just sort of pondering.
Not a big conversationalist, God.
In retrospect,
I could have easily become an Episcopal at that moment.
But I didn't. Instead I went to Rocket Video
and rented all those Bill Moyers - Joseph Campbell tapes
and I re-watched them.
And I reveled in the common themes that all religions share.
But it was different than the first time
I had watched them back in 1988.
Back then all I really remembered was,
"Follow your bliss, follow your bliss, follow your bliss!"
And I thought,
"Okay, I'm following my bliss! That's good advice."
But this time I thought,
"You know what? I believe in everything!
All religions worship the same God;
they just all do it in different ways."
I began to drift East, spiritually speaking.
I took a meditation class and
I began to meditate rather regularly,
and I found it challenging and
it really sharpened my concentration.
I got Huston Smith's guide to the spiritual classics
and I read them all: the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad-Gita,
the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Rumi, The Essential Kabbalah,
I was on a Spiritual Quest.
Fortunately, around this time on the work front
I've been cast as the mother in two direct-to-video family dog movies, Beethoven 3&4.
I know, I hate to throw my credits around in these shows, but I have to...
Anyway, one of the scripts had this nightmare sequence
which involved a bunch of drooling St. Bernards
licking my terrified face.
And this was accomplished by...
well, by taking a whole bunch of St. Bernards
and not feeding them for a very long time,
taking me to the beach and burying me in sand up to my neck,
rubbing a bunch of dog food in my hair,
and then releasing the hounds.
And as the dogs galloped towards my fragrant cranium,
I thought, "Maybe I'm a Buddhist.
In a way, it seems inevitable. I mean, I live in California,
it's practically Buddhism's second home."
I was so excited about Buddhism
that I decided I wanted
to travel in countries predominantly Buddhist
and go to the East and see the places where it all began.
And the money from these two movies allowed me to do it.
I took off and traveled for several months.
I went to China and hiked along the Yangtze,
and then I went to Tibet where
I went overland from Lhasa to Katmandu.
And I spent some time hiking in Bhutan,
this little Buddhist