Life in the Cheese Drawer

st. simeon. the original performance artist? hmmmm.
when i read the initial description of st. simeon in the 12 days of christmas, i thought maybe he was banished to a platform as punishment. but no. he seeked it out.
so here’s what happened with sim. (can i call him sim? i’ll call him sim.) sim was the son of a shepherd, born in present-day turkey. he became enthralled with christianity at the age of 13 after reading the beatitudes and entered a monastery before the age of 16. he was so obsessed and extravagant that the monks deemed him unsuited to community life and kicked him out.
so he shut himself up in a hut for a year and a half and spent the whole of lent without eating or drinking. (i find this hard to believe.) he came out and it was hailed a miracle. (miracle or not, 40 days with no drink or food=death.) then, from that point forward, he decided he would only stand as long as his legs would support him. no sitting for this diehard.
sim wanted some more extremes, so he decided to live on a narrow rocky outcrop on a mountain, but crowds of people sought him out to ask advice and for his prayers, which annoyed him because he couldn’t pray. so he decided to run away.
he found a pillar in modern-day syria and placed a small platform on top of it. local boys would climb up the pillar with flatbreads and goats milk. 
now of course some monastics wanted to know if he was doing this out of actual humility or out of pride. if he obeyed an order to come down, they decided that he was humble and would leave him on the pillar. he obeyed, so he got to stay. 
the first pillar he was on was about nine feet high, and the last one he was on was more than 50 feet off the ground. his platform was believed to be about a meter square (a little bit longer than 3’x3′) and surrounded by a railing. 

sim stayed there day and night, summer and winter, standing or doing a yogic forward fold. and people still came to him. he decided to be available each afternoon to talk with visitors who climbed a ladder to speaking distance. he wrote letters and preached against profanity and high-interest loans. (??????)
people were so enthralled that a double wall was built to keep the crowds at bay, and women were not allowed within the wall. not even his own mother. except when she died. sim decided then that he could look at the coffin and say goodbye to her dead body. (can i roll my eyes any more at this? no. no i cannot.)
he died in 459. a disciple found him stooped over in his forward fold, and the buried him by a pillar. a look

i never fail to feel like a disappointment to my parents. even though they raised their children to be open minded, perpetually curious, and self sufficient, they are seemingly surprised when these traits actually take hold in their children. 
i know some people go to christmas church just because it’s the thing that they do, even if they don’t necessarily want to go to church. i feel like it’s a farce if i go to church on christmas; i haven’t gone any other time of the year, and i’ve never been a fan of church anyway. i enjoyed going in new london, but now it’s just st. charles, and i have no emotional ties. so why go? carols alone do not compel.
however, when i ask about church expectations, i get a mixed response all over the emotional scale. if i got a simple, non-sarcastic or angry “your relationship with a higher being is your business. christmas church is your decision,” i would stop concerning myself with church at christmas. as it is, simplicity is not in the cards.
so i’m not going to go to church. whatever backlash happens will happen. i’m old enough that this should be a non-issue. being a disappointment, however, has no age. 

saturday night i went to a healer at the catholic church in town with liz, my dad, and his sister (religious aunt), as well as uncle and two cousins. (my mom had a cold and decided to stay home.) one cousin is pretty sick, so they were willing to make the drive from austin.
now i have seen and heard some weird stuff from people – speaking words (strangers telling others specifics), my dad’s wake-up call, and melissa’s calling. i’ve never experienced anything myself apart from a timely $20 i attribute to my uncle squire. i’m a cynic, but i know universal energy floats around from time to time. i’m also agnostic.
when people started lining up to have the healer lay his hands on them, i was surprised that almost everyone in the church was willing to go up. personally, i was freaked out about going up just because i was afraid something would happen. people were falling down after getting hands laid on them, including my non-sick cousin who was there. now, just for show, or not, i’m not sure.
my dad, a true cynic of this kind of thing, after i asked him if he was going up, said “why not?” and off we went.
i was so nervous about falling down that i almost fell down myself. but while the dude was laying his hands on me i almost started crying. spirit? self-awareness? who knows.
but here’s the rub: for show or not, something happens if you do feel something. whether it’s the spirit coming to show you her ways or god saying, “hey there!” or universal energy or self-awareness, it’s something. for me personally, i think it’s a combination of the energy in the room along with a self-awareness or self-realization.
when you think about it, everyone projects themselves onto who or what each thinks god is. there is no duplication of god anywhere on this planet. there are probably a looooot of close renditions, but each person’s own experience shapes each person’s perception of god – a reflection of self, really; your perfect self.
so, one person’s holy spirit is another person’s gaia is another person’s buddha is another person’s personal moral tendencies.
and if calling it touched by god is what it takes for a person to have a personal self-realization or calling? energy transforming through death as a way to get loved ones’ attention? the brain registering actual physical voices as a way to get you to figure out what you want to do with your life? physically healing as a result of positive self awareness or relaxation?
does it matter what we think it is versus what it actually is or what we call it as long as the end result is what needs to be?

today i got a brochure from my aunt kathleen (aka my religious aunt) and in it she circled a section on the evils of the vagina monologues.
here is what it says:
“In 2005 performances of the vile ‘Vagina Monologues’ occurred at 27 Catholic colleges and universities – that’s more than 10% of all the Catholic colleges in the US. This ‘play’ is replete with vulgarity, fould language, and graphic descriptions of lesbian activity. One scene depicts the seduction of a sexually inexperienced under-age teen girl by an adult lesbian, who first intoxicates the girl with vodka. And far from presenting the incident as sexual abuse that would be prosecuted as statutory rape in many states, the play celebrates it as the girl’s liberation and salvation….” blah blah the rest is about abuse in the catholic church.
next to it she wrote “Lord Mercy!”
i’ve seen the V monologues. the girl in question, i think, was 16? that is more than legal in many states. she also goes into detail about how she lusted after this woman forever before actually doing anything.
profanity? yelling the C word to reclaim it.
the overall feel of the monologues? celebrating and embracing femaleness.
a) i don’t think kathleen has see the V monologues and
b) i think she wanted to be born a man (cuz, in the catholic church, men are spiritually closer to god, apparently).
c) now that i’m married, she’s moved on from sending me celibacy and evils of pre-marital sex brochures to sending me “degradation of society!” brochures. oh boy.

highly unusual of me to post 3 times in one day, but here it is.

tonight i had a conversation with angie about religion, because she and chad are kind of at odds about their child and how it will be raised (oh yeah, for those of you who don’t know, angie’s pregnant) and specifically, when it will be baptised. angie’s religion, assembly of god, basically doesn’t baptize people as babies. they baptize when they feel they are ready to be saved. kind of more like confirmation in the catholic church. so, from the time you can be accountable for the things you do (i don’t know, age 5 or so?) and the time you decide to be saved, you are basically going to hell.

in the midst of the convo, she basically told me that if she died tomorrow, there was no doubt in her mind that she was going to hell.

now, here is my survey of the week.

do you believe in hell?

i don’t know if i do….if god is love, she would be awfully hard-pressed to send anyone to hell. unconditional love is god’s presence on earth, and if you have loved unconditionally, you have experienced god. in my mind, anyone who has loved completely unconditionally can’t go to hell. i do believe in purgatory – it makes sense to me that for all your misdeeds on earth, there should be some sort of penance period before heaven, but how could a god that is love embodied let anyone go to hell for eternity?

i think i’ve come to the conclusion that either there is no hell or it is very very very very hard to get there.

to the previous entry. i talked to my mom about it after that happened. she says she’s seen “saying words” many times. her friend louise did it to her when she was young (and they knew no one mutually).
the mom says it may be weird the first time you witness it, but it’s really really weird the first time someone does it to you. my mom said it’s a result of when you’re not listening to what god wants you to do, s/he needs to send someone to shake some sense into you, basically. that would shake me up, someone telling me stuff that no one knows but myself or am even willing to admit to myself.
this weekend i’m going to see melissa and see if she’s ever seen anything like this.