November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

I Believe in Deviled Eggs

(Page 2 of 2)

November-December 2008
by Angela Long, from Geez 
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I wasn’t aware that my ignorance of the true meaning of religion was disrespectful or irreverent. The only time I seemed to breach the contract I apparently signed with my baptism was when my grandfather scolded me for exclaiming something remotely blasphemous (“Holy cow!”) or too close to the Lord’s name (“Geez!”). If you had asked my 12-year-old self if I believed in God, I would have replied yes without a moment’s hesitation. Of course I believed in God. At that time, I believed in everything.

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I especially believed in Sunday—those spring Sundays when crocus shoots appeared, robins pecked at ground still damp from snowmelt, and the scent of rural Ontario filled the air. I believed in the look on my mother’s face when I walked down the carpeted stairs in something other than corduroys and a sweatshirt. I believed in the hostess at Bo-Peep as she lifted the barrier to the banquet room and laid five heavy faux-leather-bound menus, one by one, upon the round table. I believed in sitting there, uncomfortable in my dress, passing around the ketchup and not wanting to be anywhere else. And when my older brother, after a week of torturing me in a subtle, big-brotherly fashion, laid his prized slice of dill pickle on the edge of my plate, like an offering, I even believed in miracles.

 

Angela Long’s writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, Arc, Fugue, and Prairie Fire. Reprinted from the “30 Sermons You’d Never Hear in Church” issue of Geez(Summer 2008), which promises “holy mischief in an age of fast faith”; www.geezmagazine.org. 
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  • Rick 12/10/2008 10:35:32 AM

    Amen to that, sister.

    I was an Evangelical Christian for about 13 years. I came to it as an adult. I remember so many sermons and diatribes about how Catholics and others were caught up in ritual, that it was empty and superficial. To them it was all about the "Word of God," as they put it. And whether or not you were REALLY "born again." Oh, and whether you'd "led anyone to Christ." Or did you at least "witness" to them? Who do you "fellowship with"? (Sorry for the quotes on everything, I just wanted to denote what, for many Christians, are just meaningless phrases they like to say.)

    It was towards the end of my run with the Evangelicals that I can to see how wrong they were. One of the churches I attended allowed people to come and go and chat and laugh while singing the hymns at the beginning of the show -- the part where we were supposed to be worshiping God and getting close to him. But God forbid anyone should move or talk or try to come or go while the pastor was preaching his sermon. The sermon became the ritual, and it was a sucky one at that.

    Before dropping out altogether, I attended an Episcopal Church. It was there that I truly realized that it was the rituals, the standing and kneeling, the recitations, the Holy Communion, the passing the peace, and even the brief homily, that were what made us close to one another and close to God. For Catholics, it is the crossing oneself, the rosaries, the feast days that mean something.

    A clever sermon, or a pithy slogan on the marquee out front do not bring us closer to God. We're like kids and it is that repetition that comes with ritual that reinforces God (who/whatever we conceive that God to be) in our hearts.

    I guess in the end, that's the real purpose of Church.

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