Two weeks ago, I promised Part 2 of New Teachers, New Lessons would be about Alchemy. Turns out, that’s Part 3. Because this came up and needed to go next.
Do you recognize this man? Now, don’t breeze by too quickly but instead, pause yourself and look closely at this image. Do you know who he is?
You should. I am 100% sure you know his name and are familiar, if not VERY familiar, with his life story. And his death story. ESPECIALLY his death story!
When I was growing up, this man was probably THE most important teacher in my life and the life of my family. I think I’m on safe ground in saying the same could be said for you; well, most of you anyway. Most of the lessons he taught are still vital and relevant to today even when I say I’ve also had to let go of him some. Well, perhaps quite a bit were I to be honest. But my letting go of this man as my teacher, turns out, was more a function of how others portrayed him for me; how they directed me to picture him in my life. As I’ve gotten older and pursued a different path from the one others wanted for me, I see this man differently now. I’ve made peace with him now—but not, nor ever, with the structures others wanted to impose upon me to follow his way. And it’s made a huge difference in my life.
So, have another look. Recognize him now?
A little more of my story:
I feel it necessary to come clean some in order to build some “street cred” authenticity with you when it comes to my writing on spirituality. So here goes.
Trusting on the fact you are familiar with the saying “spiritual but not religious,” a saying so much the cliche now that I’m even loathe to use it here, I do still use it in order to provide a bit of a context for people when I say I am also very much an “agnostic with an atheist bent.” I’m not a fan of absolute labels placed upon humans though (afterall, “[We] contain multitudes!” ~ Walt Whitman).
I love what the famous philosopher/author, and famed atheist Richard Dawkins says when he speak with Christians (or all mono-theistic audiences): “We’re all atheists to a great degree. I just go one god further.”
In these posts, I’ve written often of my beliefs, faith, spirituality, Zen, Buddhism, blessings, and prayer. And I’ve written some on my (and my Dad’s and family’s) Catholicism. And I’ve written a lot about Soul. You could legitimately say everything I’ve written has been about Soul.
But here’s the thing I was starting to learn in my waning days of being a practicing Catholic: spirituality, faith, Soul, belief, prayer and blessing have NOTHING to do with religion. Or maybe it’s best said the other way: religion has nothing to do with TRUE spirituality, faith, Soul, belief, prayer and blessing. If it did, if religion really meant, deeply, each of those things, then simply ask yourself, as I have done for the past three decades, why there are so many religions in the world? Why the need to have more than one? What makes one religion THE religion in the eyes of its faithful and all others sacrilegious? Why do so many contradict others? And why is it okay to kill other beings (human and not) in the name of a God and therefore believe you’d die a saint and martyr? (Not to mention how could an entire religious faith group still enthusiastically back a corrupt, adulterous, “never-been-a-church-goer,” can’t quote a single passage from the bible, and multi-feloniously indicted former president? Oops—I just committed a cardinal sin there by pairing religion with politics):
Cutting to the chase some, I was slowly losing my faith in my religion (hey, THAT should be a song! Oh, right, it is a song, nevermind)—in my Catholicism, around the time when I entered college in the mid 1980’s. Because I was a deep reader and because I had an affinity for science through high school and through college, majoring in biology with an emphasis on genetics and evolutionary anthropology, the factual, scientifically-based knowledge I was learning had always been at odds with what I was hearing every Sunday morning from white men wearing formal robes engaged in deep, and what I thought was symbolic, ritual celebrated during the Catholic Mass.
[For the record, I let go of my Catholic faith just prior to the Boston Globe’s absolutely stellar and earth-shaking reporting on the abhorrent sexual abuse crimes of its priests across the United States, and then throughout the entire world. Crimes that were known and tolerated, (even covered-up), by leadership all the way up to the very tippy top of the Church hierarchy. I’m looking at YOU Saint Pope John Paul II (and it pains me to even think that, let alone say that! I loved the very charismatic “Johannes Paulus secundus.” Thank God for Pope Francis! Though I really couldn’t care less.) And don’t get me started on Pope Benedict.]
So at some point in the mid-1990’s, I stopped “going to church.” And I lived! But in doing so, I didn’t realize until relatively recently what that one act, of explicitly stepping away from the religion of my birth, did for me.
Isn’t it funny that most people are religious in the same religion as their parents? Ever seriously consider why that is? YOUR religion isn’t necessarily because it’s the one, true, and only religion and everyone else is going to hell because they don’t believe like you and yours. Nope—your religion is your religion because it was likely your parents’ religion. It was mine, anyway. And you don’t cross your parents—especially your rosary-reciting mom who was adept at the whole Catholic guilt thing. I was made to believe I would commit a sin if I so much as went to the Protestant church or synagogue of some of the friends I grew up with.
“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.”
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Here’s the Letting Go/Softening Part:
So as alluded to, I’m on a new path—a path that does NOT include participation in a formal, human (likely “man”) created religion. This is to say I’ve intentionally let go of how I was raised to believe in the dominance and superiority of one faith structure. And as mentioned, I continue to live—haven’t been struck (yet???) by a bolt of lightening from the retribution of God’s right hand.
My learning over the years has taken me deeply into the history and patriarchy and skepticism of religions. Religion is a human creation. And as my favorite philosopher, John O’Donohue has said, by putting human structures and frameworks around a belief in God, or a god, or gods, we’ve cut ourselves away from an experience of the truly divine that exists in our natural and miraculous world if only we allowed ourselves the gift of looking around to see just how miraculous our lives, and the lives of all Souls in nature, truly are. When it comes right down to it, the man-made dogma, catechisms, commandments, precepts, rituals etc. were all meant to control the populous by a selected few (“the clergy” or religious authoritarians). Even the symbols chosen were purposefully chosen to control what and how “the faithful” believed. So that those in power could stay in power.
About those symbols, case in point:
Go back up to the picture of that man at the top of the post. Recognize him now? Yes? No? You should—but we in the Western world have been programmed differently. Programmed because early religious clergy (aka Popes and the “early church” hierarchy) knew psychology and the politics of power and control. So in addition to barring the Catholic faithful from owning and reading the bible themselves (those authoritarian officials, those MEN, preferred their congregants to be illiterate), church officials even went so far as to control the local artists and artistic renditions of biblical saints and personages. They knew that to better control the people, they had to present to the people images of the saints from their dogma and biblical stories THAT LOOKED LIKE THEM! To make the medicine of the dogma more palatable. So, I doubt you really knew, at first glance, who that man in the top image was. Instead, we’ve been brought up (well, I was brought up) to picture him more like this:
He da MAN! Um…not really.
That man depicted at the top of the post is a result of some rigorous historical, genealogical, genetic and anthropological, scientific research into the times and geographical locations in the Middle East/Jerusalem of the historical Jesus. THAT man is likely more the way the actual Jesus looked like! Instead, we got the white-skinned, even blue-eyed and beautifully bearded, sandy or amber haired Jesus from clergy MEN who knew what it took to control others and retain power over them. If we were grounded more in reality and away from the psychology and politics of power—and let’s not kid ourselves, even the politics of race—we’d get the depiction at the top of the post from science.
THAT’s Jesus, y’all!
JESUS CHRIST!!!
(Pardon my French.)
But, we’re not just talking Jesus here, right?
When you think of Adam and Eve, what do they look like to you? Maybe early versions of the Barbie and Ken dolls? (Yes I did that intentionally—tho’ haven’t seen the movie… yet. I’m told I should.) Beautiful flowing hair, fair skin. Well-proportioned, thin, nude bodies always with the obligate and well-placed fig leafs (unless you get depicted by Michelangelo who never painted fig leaves!). Okay, okay, there are NO analogues from science on what Adam and Eve looked like because scholarship into the matter definitively says there was NO historical Adam, no historical Eve. And btw, no historical Cains and Abels nor their wives, either. Their WIVES! (Where the heck did THEY come from???).
How about Moses? Charlton Heston, right?
I mean, c’mon, even Michelangelo himself thought GOD himself looked like Charlton Heston!
That’s God there, in the white robe and the white beard looking all Charlton Heston-y, bringing Ken, I mean, Adam, to life. In case you didn’t notice, that’s also a lot of white skin there too! Michelangelo was heavily influenced, and even commissioned by, Pope Julius II AND the Medici family—early prototypes of a “cartel-like” banking family in Italy. BTW: told ya no fig leafs! Made ya look, didn’t I.
And don’t get me started on what the rest of the band looked like! “Jesus and the Boys” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
Okay, I’ll come full circle clean with you. Here’s my own iconoclastic image of Jesus:
I LOVED this television mini-series produced in 1977! Robert Powell’s Jesus was ethereal and sublime. At the time, it made me proud that I was a Catholic and believed in everything it was depicting—right down to the blue eyes. Even in the present day, if it happens to be on, likely during the Easter season, I’ll try to catch some of it. But it won’t take me away from a Ted Lasso episode. Sorry Jesus.
I’m certain the entire family of the recently deceased 84 year old retired Moxee hop farmer huddled around their console television in 1977, in Toppenish, and watched the entire series. Funny, though, that I can see in my minds eye everyone in the family watching EXCEPT for dad. I can’t remember if he was reclined in either his recliner or the sofa with his required big bowl of popcorn or if he was either in his office or bed.
So, gone but never forgotten:
If the priests of my youth were allowed to have taught me the iconoclastic symbolism and metaphors that the Catholic faith is really intended to be, heck, I might still be a regular Sunday Mass faithful. Hell (see what I did there?) I might even be wearing a white collar “meself”—I did, semi-seriously, look into Seminary when I was in college. I did. But then I met the love of my life and future bride—and all bets were off. All HELL broke loose you could say—in no small measure of truth.
But, and both vitally important and germane to my present path and faith, I am grateful for all the experiences I have had that have led me to this present moment. All the CCD classes, and Sunday Masses, and alter boy service; all the priests and nuns from my life, all the rosaries prayed, sins offered up during confession (most sins being ones I had to really strain to create in the moment kneeling adjacent to the priest in the confessional—I mean, exactly how bad can an eight year old rural farm boy sin?) and Eucharists eaten (and wine—aka c’mon now, “the blood of Christ”— consumed); all have gone into the making of me. Alchemy teaches me that I cannot be who I am had each and every one of those teachers and lessons not been in my life. They were perfectly placed and timed in order to produce this present me. And for each, yes, I am grateful.
Even as I have let most of them go now. Even for good reason and good riddance.
But Jesus, not the “Catholic” or religious Jesus, but the historical/philosopher Jesus, remains an important teacher in my life. If anything, it says much about the kinds of teachers I now seek.
Side note of historical United States interest: Thomas Jefferson, yes, one of our most influential Founding Fathers, Secretary of State and third President of the United States, was also heavily influenced by this same historical/philosophical Jesus. Because of his own practical, scientific proclivities, Jefferson detested ALL the ethereal, supernatural miracles depicted in the bible—but he did buy into and believe, even adopting and integrating many of the values from those “non-miracle” teachings of Jesus into the early Founding documents that he authored—including the Declaration of Independence! (“…They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”) Jefferson actually took his own bible, (while he was president btw and living in the new White House!) and with an actual razor, physically cut out, removed, from the four Gospels, all passages that alluded to miracles. What was left was actually a beautiful book on Jesus’ teachings on the ethics, morals, and values of compassion, kindness, service, forgiveness, gratefulness, and love.
You can buy a copy of “Jefferson’s Bible” on Amazon.
And even read from the actual book he edited himself online:
So, turns out my current Jesus-as-teacher is the same one Jefferson admired and learned from (albeit imperfectly—Jefferson really didn’t mean “all men” when he wrote “all men are created equal.” No one believes Jefferson was a saint. But at least we know what he really looked like, despite the ugliness. Jefferson, too, contained multitudes.).
This now clears the way a bit so I can get on with the newest teachers that have entered into my life. Starting with Part 3 next week. Those teachers, and those lessons, are providing for me a clearer path to the Holy, the deeper Divine and Sacred that exists, and is present to us all, in this Universe and from this Universe. A path not built from dogma or patriarchy or even from human creation—so all supernatural need not apply.
But I don’t want get ahead of myself. Part 3 is for next week.
All the learning from my past REMAINS an important part of my life, THAT’s what I wanted to say here—even as my beliefs and faith have changed. They continue to evolve.
I continue to evolve.
“I contain multitudes.”
Thank you, as always. And as always…
…and Ubuntu,
~ kert
Postscript: okay just one more:
Do you recognize this woman?
You should. You know her name too, though likely much less of her story.
The same science tells us it was SHE who birthed the baby that grew into the man at the top of this post.
Recognize her now?
You should.
JESUS CHRIST!!!
(Pardon my French, again. Off to say 10 Hail Mary’s—I trust you see what I did there!)
