I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (19 page)

Christianity was always put to me like that. All of us on earth, like it or not, are a family, and we will treat everyone with the same amount of love and respect. It all sounds sweet and beautiful, but try it sometime, especially when you're waiting in a long line at your friendly neighborhood coffeehouse, desperately needing a Red Eye, with three emotionally charged shots of espresso in it, and the "family member" in front of you is asking for a detailed description of every scone in the glass case, demanding to know which ones have nuts and which ones don't.

My mother converted to Christianity when she met my father, leaving behind a lifetime of Shinto Buddhism. And even though she could "witness" with the best of them, she never lost her ever-loving kindness, compassionate, reincarnatin' ways. This blend of spirituality resulted in a practical, nonjudgmental outlook. It had all the benefits of Christianity, but with a third less fat, and even less sentimentality.

In November 1978, it seemed to many of us in San Francisco that God had died. The Jonestown massacre was followed almost immediately by the assassination of Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and the tragedies fed on each other in a hopeless cycle of despair. I don't think God is dead, just busy. He has the whole world in His hands, so,
inevitably, you wind up tucked under His arm, or underneath His chin, and most everyone gets dropped now and again. He has a lot of shit to do!

I believe God exists in everyone and everything, even those people and things that get on my nerves. I see God constantly. I feel Him in my dog's velvet ears. I hear Him in songs by the Dresden Dolls. I feel Him in the throes of deep tissue massage, and really great sex. God rules, because it's all about Him all the time. There are many names for God. He's Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, Kali, Muhammad, Jehovah, Aphrodite, Ellegua, Shakti, Odin and more. I think all religion is touching, because it represents our need to know who we are, how we are, why we are.

Many of my contemporaries are atheists, and for good reason. God isn't really the problem. Some of His followers are big assholes.

Religion and politics have become intertwined in an incredibly frustrating way. It's inevitable, since both are about what you believe in, and how you live those beliefs daily. I have a great respect for all forms of spirituality, but I feel that a relationship with God is personal, fairly private, and shouldn't necessarily be shared. I also feel that in order to live together in a harmonious way, we have to grant freedom of choice when it comes to worship. Unfortunately, an ugly aspect of most belief systems is getting nonbelievers to go along with you, even if by force. Being a "fisher of men" has become more like a "hunter of men," and I feel that my values are being stalked by right-wing Christians wielding a crossbow just like Ted Nugent.

And now there seems to be no separation of church and state anymore, with right-wing politics becoming more aggressively Christian every day.

But these Christians today don't represent the Christianity I know. I want Jesus to come back and say, "That's not what I meant!" Where's the kindness? Where's the compassion? Where's the charity? All I see are Christian "family" groups wailing on about SpongeBob being gay. They're getting arrested trying to break into Terri Schiavo's hospital room with a box of Krispy Kremes, on their way to bombing an abortion clinic. Where do they get the time? Shouldn't they be preparing for the Rapture? Aren't they supposed to be leaving soon?

Scripture has been left behind, no longer words to live by, just a loose guide to refer to when you feel like it.

They need to read Matthew 6:5, where it says, "Shut the fuck up." (That's the King James Version, by the way.)

passion

I
went to the multiplex to see
The Passion of the Christ
, and it was a lovely film. I know how it ends, so it wasn't really suspenseful, but the way that it completely bowls you over is pretty scary. Being raised a born-again Christian and a Buddhist, I always heard a somewhat glossed-over version of the story of the crucifixion. We knew all the
details, but Mel Gibson's film brings the whole Jesus experience to new heights. I think his version is by far the most gory cinematic depiction of death to date, and I've spent most of my life trying to shut my eyes in time in horror films.

I like scary movies, but I don't like watching them. Does that make sense? The ugliness of the violence is that it's inescapable. The sound floods the senses, so even if you can't see it with your eyes you can still see it with your ears. The cast in Gibson's movie was remarkable, the costuming brilliant and lavish, the scenery superdusty, the script entirely in Aramaic and Latin, adding a totally different feel than your usual Easter Passion Play, or old favorites like
Jesus Christ Superstar
and
Godspell
. And the camera was unflinchingly steady—and the thrilling turning away of the lens just before the moment of impact is turned on its head and you got it all, complete and bloody.

After having witnessed the full Catholicism of Gibson's retelling, I never want to see it again. This is one DVD that I will not be buying, because I don't want to see the director's cut, the omitted scenes, none of the extras. I especially don't want to see any off-screen antics and bloopers. You know that would just fuck it up.

Catholics are mysterious and exotic to me, never having been to Mass, nor knowing much about it except what I gleaned from Madonna videos. They seem to like to dwell on suffering, what Jesus endured physically, which is so unlike what I always was fed by my Sunday school teachers. My education was filled with acoustic guitar–toting priests with short-sleeved shirts who went on and on about
how God loves the little children. In the "Good News" Protestant 70s, we got the singsong fables from the Bible, not the bone-crushing, thorny, nails-in-the-hands-and-feet, splintered-wood Son of God.

The Passion of the Christ
includes all the stations of the cross, which are blown up in flashback to Jesus' earlier, prepersecution days, where He tells all His stories and imparts all His advice. It's interesting to learn about the different ways God is worshipped, and how even within Christianity itself there are many different interpretations of what actually happened, and those stories differ in detail even among the books of the Bible, depending on who is telling them.

What I really found compelling in the film is that women are depicted as being closer to God, in very good and gentle relationship with Jesus. He is kind of like a rock star, because he has a hot girlfriend, my very favorite Bible character, Mary Magdalene, and lots of groupies wearing black. He is also a mama's boy. The kind of sweetness that women rarely get treated with in your average Hollywood film is nice to see, even when it's as graphic and tortured as this, with the poor guy always falling on his head right on that crown of thorns. What's really great is that Jesus doesn't ever say that anything is wrong, and He's forever forgiving everybody for everything.

After being in the midst of all this fighting about how same-sex marriage defies the teachings of the Bible, not once in the movie did I think Jesus was being judgmental. Jesus is really all about how we need to love one another, and He says it a bunch of times, not only when He's doing the Sermon on the Mount but just in general. He
does get mad at the weird Satan character, who is very beautiful but hairless, a sexy but sexless creature, but He gets mad only once, and that's in the very beginning.

I love it when Jesus gets mad in the Bible, when He is all hollering at people to get out of His father's house, and then when that fruit tree won't bear fruit. Also, there's that time when He yells at the disciples for getting all up in Mary's business when she's trying to put that ointment on His feet. He likes a pedicure, our Lord. So the message of the Messiah, of God and of this film: love everyone, forgive everyone because he or she don't know what he or she's doing, and keep your feet soft.

I bet Jesus is ecstatic about Rosie O'Donnell getting married, because He likes her comedy and admires her parenting skills, but mostly because He loves it when we are loving and happy. To think, He went through all that trouble just so we could love one another. That's why I'm a Christian, and a devout one at that. God and love can't be separated because they are one and the same. The love between my husband and I is what I see as a shining aspect of God, just as the love between the gays and lesbians getting married in San Francisco is God as well. I was stopped at a rally by a man who had been married only two days to his longtime partner. He said, "There really is something about wedded bliss." He didn't finish the sentence, and tears came to his eyes, and then to mine, because his message was very clear. They had glimpsed only the very beginnings of married life, and the taste of it was so deliciously sweet. There can be no wrong here. The way we love can no longer be considered perverse.

Prejudice is perverse. Bigotry is perverse. Hatred is perverse. These abominations will not be tolerated. Love wins all wars; love is all the ammunition you need to fight your holy war. Learning to love my enemies, who are many, is easy when I realize that when I love them the war is won.

semana santa

S
emana Santa is Holy Week in Mexico. That was where I was attempting to spend my vacation. I have a hard time relaxing. It was nice to escape to a completely different world, not so far in miles, but impossibly distant from the way we live.

For the important days, my husband and I rattled an ancient rental car up the mountainside to Taxco, a small village famous for its silver and for its remarkable rituals between Good Friday and Easter. The altitude is high in the Taxco Sierra, and the air is thin, as it always seems to be in the rooftops of the world. It's that way in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where my dear friends live, two men—one white, one not—who were celebrating their eighteenth year of love that week. And it's that way at the mouth of the Ganges, where worship is the way of life, as if proximity to God were directly related to actual closeness to Him.

Taxco is one of these heavenly locations. It's an evening affair, beginning Maundy Thursday, with penitents walking in the streets,
shrouded in pointy-hooded black cloaks with slits for eyes, horsehair belts around their waists and chains around their ankles, dragging bare feet over miles of cobblestone. Old women cautiously walk in front of them, picking up pieces of debris so the penitents won't cut their feet. It's tetanus just waiting to happen, and I get lockjaw even thinking about it. Little girls in white lace wave frankincense burners in the air, and teams of strong young men carry icons of Jesus, all the stations of the cross, heavily on their backs.

There are such cute boys here, about seventeen to twenty-four years old, my demographic, apparently. There aren't many Asian women; actually, I'm the only one. The boys' faces are bright and proud, their brown eyes huge and luminous, and they are all trying to be sly, stealing glances at me, saying "China" to themselves, moving on, but not before I register my dirty, midthirties woman reaction. I kind of wish I'd come alone, but then I remember that this is a religious affair, and I have no intention of helping anyone lose theirs. Besides, my darling husband is taking photographs with all the mad joy of Jimmy Olsen. We share stale pastries and mangoes, and realize that this is our honeymoon, and that nothing could be more romantic. Candles light the night, the Virgin floats above, the choking smoky air tastes of blood. The Passion Play carries on.

Looking up the steep stone causeways, I see a procession of possibly a hundred Jesii or more. Some are most elaborately tricked out, with rims, electric lights and mahogany altars, and they are flanked proudly by countless penitents who are flogging themselves with small ropes with nails embedded into the tips. Other penitents are
more lackluster, with cardboard crucifixes and blood that is actually too-orange tempura paint, and they attract fewer other repentant souls.

I'm alarmed at the size of the crowd, and its silence. This supposedly is revelry, yet the late hour and the crowd that by all rights should be drunk and unruly but is not make the quiet oddly ominous, for Christ is to be crucified all over again, and the tension is thick as the crush of the crowd. It's hard to breathe, and everyone feels it. There are few lookie-loo types in the crowd, people who come here to worship, not gawk, and their quiet dignity keeps me from being traumatized by the blood I see dripping down the backs of the pointy-hooded penitents; thorny sticks tied together yoke their necks.

I wonder what it takes to get
that
job. If it's a scary, Shirley Jackson "The Lottery"–type selection process, or if the positions are hotly contested, as to who gets to wear the itchiest horsehair belt, the heaviest load of prickly sticks, who's the holiest of all, kind of like
Catholic Latin American Idol
.

All I know is, this Messiah stuff's really not for me. I'm no James Cavaziel. It looks like it really hurts, and I love God and everything, but there's a point where I must absolutely use a "safe word," even with the Lord Himself.

At times, I welcome pain, and can enjoy many varieties of it, but I said "Yellow!" and He must honor that. I'm a big bottom and everything, but there are limits. Just kidding. Simply put, I'm awestruck by the display of devotion to Christ, and that people believe in a bloody salvation sincerely and absolutely. I, a foreign presence, not
unwelcomed yet not asked to participate in any way and have no business at all making light of their faith, nor do I want to minimize what it means to them.

Good Friday is worse. There's an endless parade of hooded men carrying hundred-pound yokes of thorns on their now bare shoulders. They march through the town tirelessly, and there is no end to them. My empathy is taking over. My heart and my feet hurt. I can't take it anymore, but it's become inescapable. Even from the expensively converted mission we have rented overlooking the village, we are inclined to look down from the balcony because, sometimes, even when you want to you can't stop looking. Besides, we can still hear the clatter of the chains without looking.