This week’s Photo Friday theme is Religion, which gives me good reason to re-post one of my favorite photos from last summer’s Saint Anthony’s Feast in Boston’s North End.
I’m usually shy about taking (much less posting) pictures of strangers, but I love the look of adoration in this woman’s eyes as she hangs a dollar-pinned scapular on a statue of St. Anthony. That look, I originally noted, “says everything you need to know about the spirituality of Italian-American festivals,” and it also says a lot about religion in general. Religion is the act of holding out hope in the face of both doubt and the impossible, repeating the rituals of those who have walked before you, joining with others who share your devotion, and daring to stand by your beliefs regardless of who is watching. That combination of hope, practice, fellowship, and testimony lies at the heart of all religions and is a human impulse to be cherished: the good within us seeking the good outside.
“It’s easy,” I wrote last August, “to scoff at someone else’s beliefs, seeing another’s spirituality as nothing more than superstition: my favorite wry definition of the word ‘cult,’ in fact, is ‘The house of worship down the street from yours.’” Whether we see ourselves as “religious,” we all have things we individually adore, and we all (presumably) have had moments of sharing that adoration with other, like-minded folks. The emotions of excitement, camaraderie, and pride sports fans feel at a game are expressions of a secular religion, sport serving as a spectacle around which fervent fans from both sides gather to hail the virtues of athletic excellence, teamwork, and personal sacrifice. Whether you are inspired by athletes, musicians, artists, actors, or writers, you too have presumably experienced moments of transcendence when you’ve gathered with like-minded devotees to share simple wonder, the performance of a perfect poem, stunning symphony, or beautiful ballet being enough to transport you for an ecstatic moment in time.
You might not call these “religion” but simply “amazement.” But what else is religion but the shared experience of awe?
Jun 28, 2008 at 9:00 am
Religion, a dangerous topic.
I rant about it so much on my own blog, I’ll keep my counsel here.
If it provides comfort to someone, and they don’t use it to crap on someone else (now there’s a fantasy), I guess it’s harmless.
Jun 28, 2008 at 10:38 am
So, what is the difference between ranting against religion and preaching for it? Aren’t they both a way to “crap on someone else”?
Jun 28, 2008 at 12:54 pm
“Religion is the act of holding out hope in the face of both doubt and the impossible, repeating the rituals of those who have walked before you, joining with others who share your devotion, and daring to stand by your beliefs regardless of who is watching. That combination of hope, practice, fellowship, and testimony lies at the heart of all religions and is a human impulse to be cherished: the good within us seeking the good outside.”
I like this….My youngest said to me yesterday, “Yeah, but Daddy you’re always so optimistic, you and Ryan (my son).”
I said to her, “It’s true, it’s sorta my religion–his, too.”
Goes right along with what you’ve written here…
Jun 30, 2008 at 7:15 am
Lorianne— I don’t think so.
Jun 30, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Optimism makes as good a religion as any, Tim. So Amen and hallelujah, brother!
You don’t “think” so, twoblueday? From a Zen perspective, this “thinking” is exactly the problem, not the philosophies of either “religion” or “no religion.” So if you cling to any thought, that’s what causes suffering. It doesn’t matter if your thought is “Religion is great” or “Religion is awful”: it’s the clinging to your own thought as “right” that causes the “crapping.”
So I no longer practice Catholicism…but I also admire the heck out of folks (like the woman in the first photo) who faithfully do. “No Catholicism” might be my practice, but “yes Catholicism” is cool, too.
Jul 2, 2008 at 7:30 am
Hmmm. I had an evidence professor who like to use the phrase “straing at gnats and swallowing camels.” My sense of what this kook was trying to say was that much argumentation/dialogue ends up being like the proverbial trains passing in the night.
So, I neither admire nor loathe people individually. Folks I associate with regularly, and like a lot, are believers, churchgoers. I don’t respect them the less for that (or admire them more). My views are about what “religion” as a political movement/power base has done to (not for) the world, for humanity (although I often express myself unclearly about this). I have nothing agains any comfort people find personally in religion. I do not expect anyone to change their beliefs because of my views; I am not going to change my views (on this issue) based on their “faith.”
Jul 2, 2008 at 7:31 am
Yikes! The word I meant to use was “straining.”
Jul 3, 2008 at 5:13 pm
I very much agree with the idea of religion as “shared experience of awe”. As Carl Jung noted: “this is the original meaning of the word religio – a careful observation and taking account of (from relegere) the numinous”.
Love your blog, by the way—your photography is simply gorgeous.