Religion

My wife, the professor, Culley Jane and I went to a slide presentation followed by an animated discussion at the Secular Hub today. By “secular” the group means non-religious. They strongly support the idea of the separation of Church and State. Lots of atheists and agnostics belong to the organization. Lots of former this’s and that’s. Church goers are not forbidden, but are not recruited, either. I'm a relative newcomer. I tell them I’m Catholic, but haven't gone to church in decades, but Catholic, nevertheless, like it’s a genetic thing imprinted onto my personal code during gestational years under the thumb of Dominicans, in black and white habits unchanged since medieval times. And then a short, but eventful stay at a Trappist monastery in the Missouri Ozarks where I read Thomas Merton and Kazantzakis and then I went to a Zen monastery in San Francisco and then to a Kundalini monastery in British Columbia. But I told the Secular Hub people that I wasn’t a churchgoer, which wasn't necessarily true or not. I didn’t tell them that I might become one if I ever moved to Selma, Alabama. My truck broke down there some years back when I was an over-the-road trucker. The company put me up in a Motel 6 until my truck got fixed. Sunday morning I took a walk around the neighborhood. I was just about the only white guy, but people on their way to a church down the street past pawn shops and check-cashing stores smiled my way. The cleaning lady at the Motel 6 had told me that Martin Luther King had once led a group of his followers down the very same street where I was walking. They were attacked by dogs. I was pulled along towards the church by their ghosts. The Reverend welcomed me at the front door. I told him I’d been hauling a heavy load of sweet potatoes out of Varnum, Mississippi, when my truck broke down. I told him I was Catholic but hadn’t been in a church for decades. He smiled, put his arm around my shoulder and led me inside. He mentioned me in his sermon and everybody turned to look at me and smiled and nodded. Then the place went crazy everybody jumping and gyrating singing Southern Gospel ecclesiastical Blues with all their might… me too! It was Great! I’d go back to that church if ever Culley Jane and I decided to move to Selma, Alabama. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities. You could buy a house there with a big back yard for what you pay here in Denver for a garage door opener, installed.

Anyway, I didn’t tell the Secular Hub people about the church in Selma. In some situations, I’ll go out of my way to fit in.

Culley Jane doesn't have that problem, though. She’s an atheist.

It wasn’t long after we first met that she told me that she was an atheist and I told her that I was a Catholic.

I think we knew right away that we’d never argue about it because we knew we’d spend all our time defining concepts that can only be defined subjectively.

People are communal. Our language is communal. We live our lives together. That’s how we learn all that we can know about one another’s religion. Like some people pass semis on the right, on the trucker’s blind side, expressing their religious faith without a sermon.

I had a good time at the Secular Hub today. I'll probably go back.