Delusions of Glamour: The Time I Went to Spain and Told Lies to My Boyfriend

Ch. 8: My Secret Diary

February 25

In a café, Madrid

It feels good to be home. Excellent perspective to see how a friend’s study abroad experience is unfolding, see how it’s the same and different in another city/country. Generally, we probably all go through the same emotions: fear, elation, independence, uncertainty, confidence….whoa I just realized I wrote “good to be home” as in Madrid is home….that was major.  

Torino was so much fun, por supuesto, and so special to attend the Olympics. But….buuutttt….I want to take a break from so much partying. There’s more interesting stuff to do around here than get tipsy all the time. Lock it up!

Today I’m back to walking around this city alone and discovering my thoughts on life. Had some big thoughts today, God and stuff.

I think Christianity could be bogus. I was out walking around, my favorite thing to do here, alone, and I saw a huge gorgeous cathedral, so I went in. For every jamón in Spain there is a church, for every bottle of wine, a church. These are lame metaphors, but the point is there are churches EVERYWHERE....land of the Inquisition. I went in hoping to take a guided tour, because I'm a dork like that, but there was a service going on so I sat down. Put my feet up on the nice foot rest right there in the pew, got a dirty look from a vieja down the way and realized it wasn't a foot rest but meant for kneeling in prayer. Oops.

I'm sitting in a café and I’m in one of those moods...tired, cranky, introspective. Writerly. So here are my thoughts on Christianity:

I appreciate that I wasn't raised with any one religion forced upon me, my perspective is totally clear and uninfluenced. We did Jewish holidays with dad's family, and celebrated Christmas and Easter with mom's family, but it was all really just about having family get-togethers rather than the religious aspect.  

Here's what I don't get about Christianity:

--Why such a gory image, a man hanging bloody from a plank of wood, left out to die? It's such a violent and grotesque concept, why is the darkest capability of human nature what we have to be reminded of? Is this because it invokes deep fear, and more importantly--guilt, which thus makes people follow the religion? Seems like a cheap marketing trick.

--And the "immaculate conception"...what's up with that? Mary conceived Christ without doing the deed because sex is so dirty? But why would God have his own child conceived differently that how he designed his greatest creation--humans--to conceive? I suppose to reiterate that God/Christ/the whole situation is "above" mere humans...but they're too good for sex?

The most incredible act he gave us, the ability to create a person, is thus a sin....this doesn't make sense to me. What if it's just a convenient story the church made up to make people not have sex: God created his own child without the sex act because sex is dirty, but you little humans have no choice but to have sex to create your young, so therefore you're all sinners, from the moment you're conceived. Feel ashamed. Feel very ashamed.

I would feel more connected to worshipping a being that has sex as I do, lives and dies as I do.

What's crazy to me is how people have followed the story, the church. The money, the effort that's gone into building churches, statues, the only system of professional priests etc...it's astounding. To build these huge, overdone places to "worship," why? When all that money could have fed people, etc.? Do they think it makes God happy to have such exaggerated places "in his honor?" Rather ridiculous, I say. 

And this whole "man is God's greatest creation"...I don't know. I think the earth, the animals, are pretty great. And humans have really fucked it up, haven't we? And why do people really go to church? Do they think God is paying attention, making tick marks next to their name for when they die? Thelma: went to church 7,652 times--heaven. Bob: went to church 3,924 times--hell.

How can a Sunday trip to an overpriced building to listen to someone recite from an old book make good on the shitty things you do all week?

To Do: Buy/read a book on the Bahai religion

To Do: Work out, a LOT, makes me happy and energetic...try yoga? need to be "in touch with my body"

To Do: Work on my soul, my emotions, deal with past events

To Do: Find, meet, fall in love with an Israeli. They are hot. Just something mysterious and magnetic about them.

--H

(p.s. I was craving a chocolate con churro, the best Spanish thing to eat EVER, I walked out of the church and into this cafe with a chocolate con churro special right there. An act of God? Hehe)