Holiness

                   Cats and Believers

Discussing matters of belief –

it doesn’t matter whether

it’s Christianity or astrology or free-market economics –

with people who actually

believe in them

is a less useful way

to spend time

than waiting for a cat

to make up its mind.

            Hah-oh-ah-lee-uh

When I was little

and had to go to the Jewish temple

whenever my mother made me,

what really impressed me

during the service and sermon

was how the rabbi

was able to drag out the word ‘holy’

into five syllables,

each lasting a full second or more.

I wondered if they had special classes

in rabbi school –

I didn’t know the word yeshiva then –

where they learnt how to do that.

                    Sanctity

When I referred to the oak tree

in our house’s back yard

as sacred,

one of my then-adolescent daughters

asked me what makes something sacred.

Although I’d never thought about it,

I answered immediately

that if somebody just says

that something’s sacred

and others believe that person,

then to those people it’s sacred.

To others it isn’t.

This seemed to make sense to her and she nodded.

                  Bullshit Studies

The more complicated, intricate, detailed,

and demanding of exhaustive study

such superstitions as

the Abrahamic and Hindu religions

and the homeopathy, astrology, acupuncture,

and free-market economics pseudosciences are,

the more absolutely ludicrous

any honest, open, and clear-minded consideration of them

reveals them to be.

They do provide their devotees

with something to use up their time, however,

and also a sense of fellowship

that creates a support system

to help them maintain

their precious delusions.

              Symbolic Headgear

When the Pope was in the Middle East

I saw TV images, on Mute of course,

of a papally attended interfaith service

in Jerusalem or somewhere near there,

I’d guess,

and it struck me that no matter which

monotheistic religion or denomination they represented

– Catholic, Islam, Judaism, Orthodoxy, and so on –

all the clergy present were men

wearing funny-looking hats

of one sort or another.

Outlandish, non-functional headgears

clearly have significant mana

in traditionally organised monotheism,

although I fail to divine

their spiritual significance, myself –

except, of course,

the Pastafarian colander.

          Hallelujah!

Church hymns, xmas carols,

and other religious songs

are not about the soul or the spirit.

They’re about power –

people controlling others –

with some cultural solidarity

thrown in as seasoning.

                             Blessed

My paternal grandparents were hard-core Stalinist atheists.

Since my mother hated them more than she hated anyone else –

and she was a prolific and vehement hater –

she made me go to a middle-of-the-road –

neither orthodox nor reformed – Jewish temple.

Since my daddy had done a generation-gap thing

and become half-assedly semi-religious

he let her, although I don’t remember him going himself.

He, by the way, enjoyed dissing Christianity,

something for which my mother always scolded him,

and made it clear to me that following that example

was not to be on my agenda.

My memories of going to the temple

centre on listening to the cantor,

a small man with a large-nostril nose

that he employed for singing stuff in a language I didn’t understand

in an operatic tenor,

whilst I sat with the backs of my thighs burning from my wool suit –

my being painfully allergic to wool making no difference

to my mother’s clothing selections for me –

with my mother beside me violently hissing at me to stop fidgeting,

and elbowing my ribs and kicking my shins with the side of her shoe

when I failed to do so.

I went through with the bar mitzvah bullshit

because I had no choice

and also because I wanted to rake in the pressies.

Besides, I’ve always enjoyed performing.

After that I rapidly lost interest,

and when I ate on a fast day

and nothing negative happened,

I thought the whole thing through

and concluded that it really was all bullshit.

                   Blasphemy!

It was when that weedy-looking little bloke

came up to me after a performance

and told me that he found it to be offensive

because he was a Chris-ti-an

(that’s three syllables: Kriss-Tee-Anne –

people like that tend to be prissy

as well as egocentrically superstitious)

that I realised how fortunate I was

to live in a country

where blasphemy is not a crime.

A Catholic colleague of mine

when I worked as a high-school teacher,

and who was, incidentally,

as prissy as they come –

a celibate queer in denial

who was crushed to learn that Liberace

had died from Aids,

refusing to accept that his hero

had enjoyed sexual love with another man –

had been horrified when I told the old joke:

‘What’s invisible and tells lies?’

(pause)

‘God.’

He informed me with much sadness

(because he really was fond of me – really)

that I was doomed to Hell no matter what,

because no matter how much good I did in my life,

the only Sin that God would never forgive

is blasphemy.

My only response was,

Well, that’s that, then.

         Monotheism and Taxonomy

Although I acknowledge that

people must have the right

to believe

 – without empirical evidence –

in some ancient

Middle-Eastern-culture’s

semi-anthropomorphic,

masculine,

simultaneously monotheistic and triumphalist

sky-god,

and to pray to

him as if

the whole seething universe exists for them,

and as if he gives a shit

about their stupefyingly picayune, personal peccadilloes,

and also to obey unquestioningly,

and violently –

if that’s what it takes –

those who say that they know

what he wants,

their doing these things

makes me feel

disgust and dismay

and ashamed to be

in the same species they are.