At school, J presented me with a typically excited rave about a book he's reading, as he tends to do from time to time. He likes fictional books in which apparently magical things are demystified to be scientifically explained (so, books in which Merlin is a chemist, and Excalibur is forged from ore taken from a meteorite) and "non-fictional" books in which 'science' is mysticized. For me, that ruins both types of books. I want magic in my fantasy, and none in my science. This latest one pretty much, he said, scientifically proves that The Force from Star Wars exists. Time travel, telekinesis and telepathy are all real. Science says so.
What I took to be the latest manifestation of an achingly obvious frantic searching after the mysterious and "spiritual" without wanting to feel gullible or superstitious, and failing utterly on both counts (so far anyway, one must admit) annoyed me a bit. This troubled me. I always feel annoyed when science, the nerdy kid with the headgear and coke-bottles, steps onto the football field of spirituality mid-game and decides to point out something about angles and inverse square law, all the while bemoaning "the need for all of this running around and sweating." It's like, "Go home!"
He lectured his English class on it as well, very excited, and admitting he'd tried some telekinesis last evening. This made me question why I was temped to be mean and shut down his seeking after spirituality. Why? Because I know it all? Because his nonsense is stupider than mine?
So, when I went into the local bookstore to pick up books, and started to tell the guy about this book, and its facile, obvious "spiritual" points about "everything affects everything to varying degrees" (duh) the door opened and two women swept in. One looked to be about 50, and the other about 20, and they were dressed identically in matching long, dark wool coats (like mine, but buttoned to the chin and down to the ankle), and big clunky shoes. They were very thin and angular, which made the 20 year old look unnaturally octogenarian. Their hair was identical as well. They had elaborate 19th Century "up hair" held in place with many pins. The sort of hair one sees in pictures like this one, only more "old lady," less stylin', and with way more hairpins. All on the back of the head, in a way that screams "PRIMNESS PERSONIFIED!" I knew immediately that they were Christians of a particular vintage, shall we say. They muddled around a bit, and then the younger one, with a fixed smile, held up a piece of yellow paper with small, plain text on it and no images or wanton use of things like italics, bold or underline, and said "Can we put this notice on your notice board? It's for meetings. Bible meetings." Chris said "Of course!" And I thought, "I know you. I know your soul. I know where you keep your heart, and what it is allowed."
Mission accomplished, they swept out, and I started up again about the book, and mentioned The Celestine Prophecy, The Shack, The Way and other books like that, and how I felt that they were packaging spirituality in a way that the irreligious wouldn't get hives from, but also, providing any remaining insights in the form of watery pablum. Immediately, another late-afternoon-before-my-nap apparition appeared (that means "apparated," J.K. Rowling) as if from out of the floor, before my bleary eyes. It was a Wiccan. One whose husband was from my home town, and had hung out with a Plymouth Brethren casualty of the most violently 'crashlanding and taking the whole world down with him' type. The one who was praised for taking in troubled teenaged boys, and then damned for giving them drugs in exchange for sexual favours.
Where the 1820s Twins had been primly, smilingly closed to anything but their own agenda, blinkered like horses pulling an Amish buggy through downtown Ogdensburg, the Wiccan was so open it hurt. It was like she was one hundred perCENT reactive, and badly needed things to respond to moment by moment so she could keep from turning into a standing stone in a field by a hill. She was just standing there wanting me to fill the air with references to people, ideologies, religions, books and geographical locations for her to grasp vainly after (like an alchemist with ADD, or a Jack Russell terrier at a religious revival during the healing and snake handing). She dropped drug references, as well as the names of places, poets and authors like a steady hail of esoteric frou frah and kept saying she would leave, and then not leaving. She was determined to leave right before me, but couldn't seem to bring herself to leave if I was talking. So I took my leave of the shop keeper and she managed to get out the store ahead of me, and was visible wandering up the street casting about for someone else who might do or say something interesting so she could smile vaguely at their left ear for slightly too long, make a kind of oddly-inhibited stage magician's gesture or two now and then, and ask if they'd read some book or other that she'd enjoyed the lifeforce Gaia beauty in when she was teaching English as a second language to disadvantaged children in unspecified third world countries.
Earlier, in the middle of the discussion with the shop keeper (while the extras from Little House on the Prairie were gathering courage to ask to place the ad) I had kind of started to tell what I felt the function of a human being, and purpose of our creation, actually is: to be created in the image of God, and then be expected to walk around daily, hourly, decidedly un-omnipotently encountering things, people and situations that aren't quite what they should be, and being as gracious, kind, loving, truthful and so on as possible. Not descending into pride, dismissive arrogance, meanspirited superiority, or judgmental impatience, and all the while not being quite what one should be one's self and dealing well with that.
Then I went to the butcher's. The woman in front of me asked if they had any salmon which was caught free-range, rather than from a fish farm. When the lady behind the counter !'ed slightly, the customer started into a pitch about what happens to fish in these awful fish farms, and how unhealthy and just plain unsightly it all is and what her doctor said about her absolutely needing to eat free-range salmon. There was religion in her eye and in her voice. She was parroting a sermon she's sat under the sound of recently and she badly needed to share it with all who would listen. (I'd heard the same thing in J's voice this afternoon.) She was aglow with the very prospect of being more clean and powerful, body and soul, less adulterated and associated with the besmirched, tawdry trash of this present, evil world. Her god was organic, and she didn't even know it. To purity!
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