Previously Me

From around the ages of 5 to 7, my mother had this annoying habit of refusing us kids the chance to get out of bed in the morning on weekends when we were dying to get up and watch cartoons. The rule was that we had to wake her up and ask her permission first before we could turn on the tv. And if she said "no," then we'd have to return to our beds and simply lie awake there until she deigned to get up herself and grant us our freedom. Problem was, my mother was a very heavy sleeper and a notorious late riser. She sometimes didn't wake up until just after noon!

This was extremely frustrating to me, obviously, but it also allowed me time to sit in bed for hours and ruminate on life's big mysteries. No, seriously, I spent a lot of time in my head in those early years when my mom was still alive and oversleeping on weekends. At that time, I only just recently became acquainted with the concept of God, and that his scary long-haired, mustachioed son had been murdered and nailed to wood planks for something that was supposed to be good for all of us. 

Dudes! WTF, seriously? Jesus!

Seemed crazy to a kid like me in those days ... but then, I already knew by that point that the adult world made no damn sense! So I just filed this away among more crazy shit adults believed in that didn't seem to reconcile with my uninformed view of the world around me.

So, hence, while I would wile away the Saturday morning hours in bed, I would attempt to make sense of said world in my own precocious way. Many of my ruminations have long since been forgotten. Or, in some cases, my conclusions were too embarrassing for me to want to admit to nowadays. Such as the morning I thought to myself: Is baby shampoo made from real live babies?

But sometimes my mental wanderings lead to more ... philosophical territory. Such as the morning I tried to understand what happened to people when they died. Informed, no doubt, by the passing of my youngest brother a year prior; and also fueled by the recent indoctrination, on mother's decree, of us kids into the Catholic church (something we were not born into, since her own upbringing was Presbyterian) -- I can see now why it was supposedly so important to little 5-year old me to ponder this concept. Where did we go after we die, anyway?

In my little mind, I imagined a ghost like figure rising up from the deceased body it had just inhabited, and heading toward the sky where I believed God was supposed to live. I think I had seen this allusion once in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and so the visual vocabulary was already imprinted on me. Up and up the ghost of the dearly departed would rise, and then an old man sitting on a cloud would lift up a finger to stop its ascent, before pointing back down the opposite end of the cloud to the Earth spinning below. And down that spirit would plunge ... down, down, down, returning to the ground where a baby was just being born. And into that baby the spirit would dissolve, and the newborn's eyes would open to the world for the first time.

Now, everyone I tell this story to these days think that I'm full of shit! That a little 5-year old boy, without any knowledge of other world religions, could have possibly thought up the theory of reincarnation all by himself.

And yet, I say to this: where in all that did I just say I invented the concept? Given the fact that more than one culture on this planet firmly possess the belief system that our souls are engaged in a constantly moving wheel of birth, life, death, and rebirth: did it ever occur to anyone that a child with a significantly curious and open mind might just tap into something that, to him, is just an obvious forgone conclusion? That, perhaps, he was just awakening to a realization that should have been as natural to every other human being as the sun rising each morning?

For me, I thought I figured it all out. And it wasn't until some years later when I was a 'tween of about 11 or 12, that I discovered other, more ancient, peoples had already beaten me to the punch! And that this so-called theory of mine was in fact called "reincarnation."

Something quite like this.

Scary, no? It makes me think that maybe, just maybe, there may be some truth to all this.

And if so, then what about our past lives? Do we have them? And if so further: is it possible to remember them?

I honestly don't claim to know the answer for sure (heh, heh), but I suspect it might be true.

But I'm also crazily intrigued by the possible lives my particular "soul" has lived. I can't quite put the finger on why exactly, but I get this sense that my soul has been wandering this planet for a very, very long time. It's a feeling I've had since early in my childhood. I've always had this "world weary" heaviness in my heart, like as if I've been through the ringer and back again -- and this was clearly before even all the major bad shit that was yet to happen to the younger me in this current lifetime occurred.

So what have I done in my previous lives. Who was I, and did I lead mostly good lives instead of bad over the millennia? I do get the feeling that, before this life, my soul hadn't been in circulation for centuries. Like as if the last time I was human was back when the center of the world was still in the Middle East. Who knows, maybe I did something so bad back then that I had to spend the next 400 to 500 years as various forms of insect before I could eventually work my way back up to human form. Exciting, eh?!

Was I a feared marauder of villages?

Who knows? It's possible! And maybe that will be a blog post ... for another time, eh?

And what about you? Do you have an old soul? Or do you feel like a Spring chicken in this game of (eternal) Life?

Let me know in the comments!

Sometimes, Life Throws You A Rotten Lemon

. . .  And just you try making lemonade with rotten lemons!

Was watching a tv show last night where this boy gets reunited with his mom after 18 years, having not seen her since he was just a toddler. And I thought what a sweet moment that was, and how it gives one hope. And then it hit me: I'm never going to see my mom. Like, ever. And that hit me pretty hard indeed. See, there won't be any tearful reunions. No "sorry I missed out on most of your life, son." I will never have that. Ever. My life won't resemble a Lifetime movie, or a Hallmark card. My mom is gone from me forever.

Forever.

Now, sure, I've known this all along. But something about that moment, watching it happen on the tv screen, just brought it all home at once in a way that twenty-seven years of mourning have not. I mean, it struck me with such clarity and force that -- HOLY SHIT! I will *never* be with my mom again. I think somehow, some way, deep down inside . . . I think I actually had this feeling like I would see her someday. Like this nightmare would one day end and all would be well again. I would have my mom back, and this lifelong empty hole of loneliness inside me would somehow fill up and make me whole.

But, nuh-uh. Not happening, buddy. This is life. What, you thought it would have a happy ending? Fuck that shit!

Needless to say, I don't believe in heaven and angels and harps 'n' clouds and all that bullshit. I do believe that none of us on this Earth have even the foggiest real notion of what happens to us after we die. So, with that in mind, perhaps there is still a chance I will be reunited with my loved ones someday. Because, who's to say that I won't be, right? I sincerely doubt it, though. Something tells me that what you see is what you get with this life we have to live. So, I guess the message is: make the best of it when you can, while you can. This Earth is meant for living life to the fullest and getting the most out of such a corporeal, tactile existence.

Because we might not know what happens next, but it damn sure won't be like this.

So, New York . . .

Ya did something good for once, did ya? I'm glad, my home state you. And -- phew!

If you don't know, New York just passed a momentous law into effect that will make gay and lesbian marriages legal here. This makes it the 6th and largest state to do so.

I have to say, all the arguing back and forth over the past several weeks was really starting to make my blood boil. I think it's utterly ridiculous to disallow two human beings from marrying. This isn't marriage between a woman and her horse, or a man and his dog, after all. These are PEOPLE, people. Damn!

And, you know what? I don't give two shits what your religion says on the subject. Although I think if some of you go back and read your relevant sacred texts more closely, you'll probably realize that you're more wrong on the subject than you previously thought. But I won't get into that here.

No, I don't care about the religion angle because the law has nothing to do with religion. Read up on your separation of church and state sometime . . . our Founding Fathers explicitly put that part in there. The bible has a nice little comment about giving Caesar his due and what not, too. The point being, let the government handle the legal side of things while the church handles the spiritual side -- and neither the two shall meet!

And, at least for now, New York State has taken a major step in keeping those sides firmly apart. There's more that can and should be done, but that also is a topic for another day. For now, I'm proud and at peace. I'm happy any day justice and equality is to be had, and bigots get to go home to cry in their cups. I also expect that church services all across the land this Sunday will be a particularly lively event, which too makes me cackle with glee.

Ah, such are the amazing times we live in . . .

More Research . . .

I realized tonight that I'm going to need to do more research for the practice novel, this time reading up on the Eastern Orthodox Church, and in particular the Romanian Patriarchate. Although, since the story takes place in 15th century Wallachia, the Orthodox authority in that country was still a Metropolis answering to the Constantinople Patriarchate, technically making it still part of Greek Orthodoxy.

Hmmm, seems I have my work cut out for me. But I think this is all such fascinating reading material. Can't wait to dig in!

Luckily, I don't need this information for the first chapters I will be writing starting next week. The characters who will benefit the most from this research won't have their chapters written until after the holidays, I think. Phew! Gives me plenty of time to do more reading -- yay!

And, on the off chance anyone reading this might know more on the subject -- or if you can point me in the direction of some good books -- please leave a comment! I can use the help.

Inspiration Comes From Anything

I just finished watching the Jimi Hendrix special they had on the Biography channel this week, a 2-hour program by which the life of this crazy-talented guitar god was retold in his own words, via Bootsy Collins, as pieced together from various interviews, letters, and recordings during his brief time in the spotlight from 1963 to 1970.

One thing he said really stuck with me. It was while Hendrix was just setting out to make a name for himself during a tumultuous time in America's social upheaval during the 60s:

"I went to Nashville, where I lived in a big housing estate they were building. Every Sunday afternoon we used to go downtown to watch the race riots. We'd take a picnic basket because they wouldn't serve us in the restaurants. One group would stand on one side of the street, and the rest on the other side. They'd shout names and talk about each other's mothers and . . . every once in a while stab each other. Sometimes if there was a good movie on that Sunday, there wouldn't be any race riots."

Wow, that really resonated with me. It just goes to show how silly all this hate and fear mongering really is, that it can be so easily set aside the minute some cool new flick is out in theaters. It also serves to illustrate how dangerous idle imaginations can be. I know I'm egregiously oversimplifying things here when I say this, but I truly do believe in entertainment--be it books, music, movies, or video games--as a venue for relieving stress, anger, fear, and all the other pent-up energies that threaten to undo society when not allowed a safe and harmless release.

But it also got me to thinking about such moderations on society, and how this benefits the government and/or religious leaders who use entertainment programming to keep the unruly mob in check. And, yes, Sunday sermons and church pontificating is the oldest and most effective form of entertainment there is out there. What, you don't believe me?

Naturally, such thoughts then led me to an interesting premise for a sci-fi story. Although, my work would be cut out for me if I chose to pursue this route, what with the Matrix trilogy and various other sci-fi stories already beating me to the punch with this idea of a complacent mass media-consuming society kept under wraps by its manipulative overlords.

Still, that's one of the great things about speculative fiction writers: we're not always inventing new ideas, but sometimes re-inventing and re-interpreting old ones.

Oh, How Very Christ-Like Of You

To Pastor what's-his-face down in FL who think it's a keen idea to encourage the burning of a certain religion's holy books in service of his Lord, here's what your Lord had to say about the matter some 2,000 odd years ago:

"On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"
                                                                        -Matthew 7:22 - 23

Those who call themselves Christians should probably spend a lot more time reading their own holy book before condemning and destroying that of others, no? Call me crazy, but I doubt very much Christ would approve of this self-indulgent and hateful act done under His name.

Am I wrong?

The Hypocrisy Is Strong In This One

LOL! I love The Daily Show. Jon Stewart and crew should charge us admission to watch them make utter and complete fools on a continual basis out of those ignorant bigots over on FOX News. The show could be about nothing but this and I would happily watch. Check out this clip from the latest episode, and tell me he did not get them but good! Especially watch for that one dumbass, Eric Bolling, with his index cards and yellow highlighted "facts". Yes, "facts" that just happen to have question marks after them:



I've decided not to say anything here on the blog over this ridiculous issue re: the Cultural Center/Mosque *near* Ground Zero. I've said enough on Facebook, for better or worse. So this video will have to suffice as my officially endorsed mouthpiece to the thoughts churning around furiously inside my head this week.

And of course, because this is Jon Stewart, it's full of the funny.

Faith Of The Heart

***WARNING -- This will be long!***

Yesterday I posted what some would consider a very loaded line of questioning regarding certain religious views. And while I seriously need to stress the rhetorical nature of that topic (I truly was playing Devil's Advocate for the sake of conversation, and in reaction to something I'd overheard) -- I thought maybe now might be a good time to express my own religious views (or lack thereof).

To be clear, this will not be an open attack on anyone's religion. I will shut down the comments section if anyone is disrespectful or using profanity. That being said, I'll not only accept but welcome differing views or challenges to anything I might say here. Open dialogue being, you know, the hallmark of enlightened society and all that.

That being said, where do I begin? How about, hey, at the beginning!

I grew up in a lax religious environment, in that my mother truly did not care whether we went to church or not. This was mostly due to her own hectic schedule trying to raise two boys on her own while making ends meet in the midst of crippling personal traumas. In such an environment, ironically, church came last. For most people, this is when they turn to religion the most, I know. But not for my mother. She had enough worrying about getting food on the table.

Still, eventually it dawned on her that perhaps her children's souls might be worth saving, so even though she could not drag herself out of bed on most Sunday mornings, she did provide for the local Sisters from St. Rita's to come by and, along with all the other neighborhood children, gather my brother and I up and march us to Mass (much to our chagrin).

In such a manner I became schooled in the dogma of the Catholic church. Since I was an avid reader, I devoured all the literature and sermons thrown my way. Because I was raised to trust adults almost unconditionally, I believed everything I heard/read in both Mass and Sunday school (which was actually held on Saturdays for us kids). I read the children's book of Bible stories, then eventually graduated to reading the actual Holy Bible. I was baptized at the age of 7, along with my brother, god-brother, and my newly born baby sister. I went through Communion and learned the Stations of the Cross. I even thought I might one day become a priest!

But even at this time I started to question certain aspects of the faith. For one, I could not reconcile with the fact that the Catholic church was clearly in the business of idol worship, though the 10 Commandments and certain other passages in Exodus expressly forbade this. Yet, all around me were statues of Jesus and Mary and various Saints being prayed to, and rosaries being rubbed like good luck charms. But even more troubling to me was seeing the same people I went to Mass with committing blatant sins of flesh, pride, and false witness during the rest of the week. The same people coming in and singing pious blessings as loud as they could on Sunday. It began to dawn on me that the Church was a great harboring ground of hypocrites.

And then my mother was murdered by my sister's father, and everything changed.

I didn't blame God for what happened, no. I was never so dense as to believe a higher power would be directly involved in such a thing. i knew exactly who did this, and the blame rests solely on him. But it did plant the seeds for a theory I would later cultivate called the "uncaring God" theory, in which I firmly believed that God existed, but was not as involved with humanity (at least, not on an individual level) as most people deluded themselves into thinking.

But I'm jumping ahead.

After my mother died, we moved in with her mother, our grandmother, whom we all loved very much. My grandmother, like my mother, is White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Or, at least, she used to be. By the time we started to live under her roof, she had removed herself from any denomination--Anglican church or otherwise--and considered herself simply "Christian." She respected all the subdivided faiths under this encompassing banner, but did not trust too keenly the human-devised doctrines of these established churches. Although very devoutly Christian, she did not realize that this would only fuel my own departure from my relationship with Christ later on.

Although I did not blame God for my mother's death, I did eventually grow to resent the hypocrisies of the Catholic church and those who worshipped under its gilded ceilings. My grandmother insisted that we still attend our church, although she did not set foot inside. My brother and I still went to Mass and Sunday School, and still attended the church-sponsored summer youth camp each year. But eventually this all stopped. As we came into our pre-teen years, my brother and I eventually stopped going. And my grandmother no longer insisted that we keep it up. By now, my view of the Catholic church was a negative one, and even to this day I am strongly opposed to all that it represents.

Meanwhile, however, my grandmother taught us about God from home. We would have deep conversations long into the the late hours of the night on Christ, the Bible, and what it meant to be a good person in this time of great evil and suffering. Although I have since turned my back on certain aspects of religion, I still cherish these moments to this day. I know my grandmother certainly does.

Eventually, however, I took her distrust of organized religion to the extreme, as teenagers are wont to do. Instead of just shying away from the physical structure of Christianity, I decided to wage all out rebellion upon the faith as a whole. I became very angry, I stopped saying my morning and evening prayers, stopped reading the Bible, and became an all-around atheist asswipe. This is also when I came up with the "uncaring God" attitude -- that God is an absentee landlord, as Al Pacino so succinctly put it in the film "Devil's Advocate." In fact, I doubted He existed at all.

You see, atheism is fine if that's what you want to be. But there's a rational, informed way of going about it. And I was certainly not this. I was the typical teenager, full of know-it-all'ism and hubris. I thought I had it all figured out. Religion was for sheep; science held the keys to true enlightenment.

I would hold these views for a VERY long time. Certainly throughout high school and college, and most of my early twenties. However, as with most things in life, experience and maturity began to change my views yet again. I cannot point to any one specific influence, but perhaps my increased knowledge of the world and the many different cultures and religions that populated it informed this metamorphosis into a more accepting and inquisitive temperament.

Or maybe I just grew up!

This is not to say that I'm not left with some pretty radical notions on the matter. I'm listed as "agnostic" in my Facebook profile for a reason. Which is to say that I do believe there is a higher purpose to life, and that *maybe* there is a greater being out there who shapes and guide our souls. But, more importantly, it means that I'm still searching for (capital-K) "Knowledge". Of God, if there is one; what He might be; and what He specifically wants of us. That sort of thing.

Moreover, it has left me with a great deal of impatience regarding organized religions. By "organized" I mean the wholly man-made and humanly run money-making machines that are most denominations these days. Nor do I reserve this view solely for Western religions. Unlike some agnostics, I don't believe that Easterners got it right, either. I'm as much against Buddhism and Islam as I am Christianity. I'm of the belief that all of these faiths are idealistic and human-made, and are therefore fallible and most unreliable. I reject the Bible as just a collection of allegorical tales, the Koran as merely a beautiful tapestry of verse, and the Torah as simply a quaint moral guidebook of song. They have their place, and I would encourage my own children to study and respect these tomes completely. But not for purpose of spiritual enlightenment.

In other words, I believe it is only possible to know God through my own self-exploration. No book or high priest(ess) is qualified to to do this. Only me. In addition, I believe in living life as a good, honorable, morally centered individual. Not because God tells me so, or because I might burn in hellfire and damnation if I don't. But simply because it is reprehensible to live my life at the harm or expense of others' rights.

I will never tell another person that their beliefs are wrong. Such is not my concern. I can only be concerned with my own spirituality. The path to God is a personal one. Not even my wife or children may join unless they choose to believe in what I believe of their own volition. My wife is Catholic, for instance. Do I berate her and force her to abandon her beliefs? No. We each have our own path to take.

So there you go. A lengthy diatribe, sure. And if I've offended anyone, I didn't mean to. Just letting you know where I stand, and why despite my beliefs I'm completely open to any and all interpretations of spirituality being discussed here. Not that I ever want this blog to delve into such weighty matters on a consistent basis.

I didn't start this experiment to be one of *THOSE* type of bloggers (rolls eyes dramatically).

Becoming Catholic: The Unbecoming

I mentioned it in passing here before, but once upon a time I was a Catholic. That's something that surprises people who know me, because I rarely bring this fact to light in general conversation. And for those who really know me, well my views on organized religion are well known, to put it mildly.

This all came about because my mother, for whatever reason, wanted to fit in with the largely Hispanic population living in our part of the south Bronx during the 70s and 80s. She was as Caucasian as the Queen of England, but in high school she hung with a mostly Latina crowd and I guess it rubbed off on her. She spoke Spanish fluently, but never took classes. I guess you could say it was "street" Spanish. In any case, she dressed and spoke like her friends, and had the same taste in men as them (which probably explains my f.o.b. Dominican father). I never did get the chance to ask her, but I think their religion rubbed off on her as well. Much to the chagrin of my little brother and I. For, sometime around the age of 4, we found ourselves being forced to attend mass on Sunday mornings. A year or so later, she also enrolled us in children's Bible study classes, which I did not exactly enjoy. I was never that kid who loved school, academic or otherwise. But in the beginning I remember being a devout Christian, pretty much believing everything the teachers and priests told me to believe.





Fast forward to age 7 when my baby sister was born. My mother suddenly decided that all three of her children should be baptized. We had to attend special preparatory classes for three months before the church would allow us the honor of washing away the sins of our souls. In the pic above, you see my brother Jose (right), my godbrother Angel (center), and me all dressed up on the day of the ceremony. My mother picked her best friends and their children to be our "god" family. These people really were a second family to us at the time, so I thought it was a swell idea, although by this time I had started to have doubts about the whole Catholic faith (more on that later). I would eventually learn that my mother's mother, my grandmother, was not so happy with the prospect, and that this caused a great deal of friction between the two. My grandmother is Protestant, you see. And I'm guessing she thought my mother was taking her little "Latina fantasy" a little too far by damning her grandkids' souls via idolatry.





Here you can see us before the water in that cauldron is poured on our heads. My godbrother (hidden behind the lid), me, and my brother are listening to the priest as he reads the important words that will save us from hellfire. My mother in the red dress seems downcast, as do everyone else for that matter. Maybe it was the solemnity of the ceremony. Or maybe there was some tension that us kids weren't aware of. My godparents are directly behind us, and my grandmother is behind them. I can tell just from looking at her face that she's upset, because I know her moods so well.





I have to laugh at my expression here. This is usually the face I make when either: (a) I'm annoyed; (b) I don't want my picture to be taken; or (c) all of the above. I hadn't yet completely turned against the Catholic faith at this point, but the beginnings of some tough questions were already forming at this age. My discontent with the religion, and eventually ALL religions, would come to a full boil after--wonder of wonders--my mother died so tragically.

I once asked one of the Sisters at the church if all people go to heaven.

No, she replied, only those who believe in Jesus do.

But what about if I'm good my entire life, never doing crime or being spiteful to others?

No, she repeated, only those who believe in Jesus will enter heaven. A man, no matter how good his deeds, cannot be with God at the final judgment unless he is baptized and saved first.

This did not sit well with me. I thought it didn't seem fair as a kid, like as if something was not right with the universe as I saw it. My grandmother echoed the Sister's explanation when I asked her the same question, which eventually led me to rejecting all religions. This was a major moment in my life, the asking of this one fundamental question. I believed in good and evil, and I believed that any moral being should do as much good in life as he can. I didn't see what saying rosaries, praying to statues, and getting doused by holy water had to do with having a happy afterlife.

So, ironically, although my baptismal was supposed to be the turning point towards a deeper understanding of my faith, it in fact served as the first step to my eventual removal from religion altogether.

Bet no one at our church had anticipated that.