Another religious post you can probably skip

I got on the wrong damned train taking the back route from Pisa back to Florence. Instead of one hour, it is taking two.  Ergo, this post is going to be long. 

This might surprise some of you, but when I was a wee Mary, I wanted to be a nun. (Even before I knew what sex was, intuitively I knew not having it wouldn't be a problem.) I liked school so the idea of being a student forever appealed to me. In my mind, being a nun meant other people would be paying for me to read, at the the time. I liked God and all that. Okay. Career, chosen. That was easy. 

Pope's balcony. What a different road I started on...(Vatican City)

But then stuff pissed Wee Mary off. Why couldn't I be a Pope just 'cause I was a girl? Why couldn't I be an alter boy? Wait, why can't I be a priest? Wee Mary wasn't impressed by institutionalized gender inequality. It was when I finally took First Communion, while I liked the dressing up, where I really lost interest.  

I dunno. The whole story doesn't make sense. (St. Peter's basilica)

Maybe it's because of the idea of scapegoating. Maybe it's the idea of water having to sacrifice it's own ice cubes into vapor. Other people have said it before and better than me, but a gift you are punished for refusing isn't a gift. That's a threat with a pretty ribbon. 

You can go through any door you like, there's really no difference from where you are standing, but if you don't go through the green door, I will make sure you regret it. (Pisa, Italy) 

As a child, I didn't care about saints. I liked the gory bits, being burnt alive or having one's breasts cut off (what can I say? I've always been chipper), but there are just too many. The whole process for being a saint is stupid. The average story goes along the lines of Persons have a problem and Saint solves it in a ridiculous, convoluted way that requires magic. 

"It's never a secret twin." (Pisa, Italy)

Okay. For example. Saint Helena. So, Helena is digging and finds three wooden crosses. One of them must be The Holy cross because...reasons. Now, you'd think that if this The One Cross it would be the one that magically not break down in the soil while the other ones did (you know, how wood usually works) or, if God wanted us to know this was The One, an angel would be all, "high five, my Jellyfish! You win Christian hide-and-seek." But, no. These three crosses get dragged to Jerusalem and a dead boy gets draped on them. On two of them, he stays dead, but on The Cross he comes back to life. The One True Cross is found, hacked into three pieces, and sent to different places. 

You'd think breaking The Cross into pieces like firewood would be bad but no. It makes you famous. (St Helena's basilica)

Also, side bit here, people come back to life all the time in the Bible. That's, like, their version of the sniff test for spoiled food. And how long do people stay alive after being brought back? And is it awkward to try to reclaim your stuff if you willed shit away?

"I got better! I'm gonna want my Xbox back."

Also, why doesn't this count as testing God? If someone has God bring a man back from the dead as a sign, they can become a Saint. But if I do it, that's a sin (and a disappointment when God doesn't turn my water to wine. I hate not being the favorite). 

Oh sure. The ONE time a miracle occurrs is when it is not in my favor. (Mouth of Truth, Rome)

I keep thinking about that priest I spoke to at the Vatican who asked me, with a touch of sass, "okay, so, how did the universe begin?" I don't know, and neither do you, Sir. Actually, I am not a scientist, so most questions I don't really KNOW the answer to. I can, however, choose to learn more. To study. To test. To define something by proving what it is not. Let's test that ol' cross of yours. Let's put a frog's body on part of The One Cross (if, every time you read that, you thought of the Lords of the Rings, good).  No? Sigh.  It's much easier to trust something is true when it's not forbidden to test it. 

Supposedly pieces of The Cross, one of the three nails, two of the thorns from the crown, the finger of the guy who stole all this stuff, and pieces of the cave Jesus was placed in. This is the evidence that the story is true, but I have a photo of me at a LOTR event that looks similar, too, so... 

I don't hate churches. In face, I have really enjoyed visiting churches in Italy. I liked visiting shrines in Japan, temples in Bali, mosques in Turkey. The architecture is interesting. 

I don't even know how many churches I have been to this week. 

Churches and all their cousins shouldn't still be treated as temples to the glory of a deity. Instead they should be museums dedicated to the power of Man's imagination. Really think about how amazing it is to create something bigger, magical, and more infinite than our brains should allow us.  No other animal has spent as much time as we have contemplating things we can't see. With those few handfuls of grey matter and, for must of us, an unimpressive grasping of basic math, humans all over the world made incredible mythologies. Our understanding of the universe via our application of the scientific process is amazing, but our ability to imagine the impossible! To create the fantastic. To write a book like Frankenstein or to paint sea monsters purely from one's own mind. That is something worthy of our palaces of marble and gold.  

It's just this shit that pisses me off. "Offerings." Um. Why don't you sell some of the not-for-visitors gold dishes you have laying in storage?(St. Giovanni basilica)

Can a city or culture as a unit have affluenza? You have a place like Italy  which has so many riches tucked into religious buildings and brand-names every where from shoes, mascara, restaurants, and cars.. You don't even see the wealth after awhile. But put one of these famous basilicas in almost any other of the 190+ nations and try asking for donations. "To the poor" a basket says. To the poor indeed. Next to the wealth being displayed here, most of us are impoverished.  

I mean. I have no gold. None. 

My blog needs a gift shop. Every institution that over estimates its own sf-importance has a gift shop. (Vatican City)

(Sigh) it matters enough to piss me off in isolation but not enough to, like, carry a banner and march somewhere. 

Sarcasm as a defense mechanism; 

flippant is the lowest level of 

outrage. 

Alms for the poor, Man.