The Marginal Christian's Handbook.

Lessons on Christian Life and True Charity: Annie Lamott and Oprah.

  I posted this note as an entry to my journal blog ("The Flatland Chronicles") and then realized that it is almost entirely about matters of faith and the meaning of the Christianity that Christ taught. I have written a lot here about charity and the meaning of charity, and plan to write (when I have time to do it justice) about Lamott's   Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith.

In the meantime, here this note gives some suggestions for further additions to a marginal christian's reading list as well as some further thoughts on christian charity and how you go about doing it.

To read all about it, JUMP NOW TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.

"Franny and Zooey" as a Manual on Prayer.

I learned to pray from my parents.  They told me to bow my head and say certain words before eating and they taught me to say "Now I lay me down to sleep" before I went to bed.  I am trying to remember how I worked out who this "God" person was they were going on about or how I came to understood that I was meant to be talking to him (He was always "he" to the adults of my parents' generation). 

When I think about it, it seems to be something I've always known.  Though obviously, that can't be true.  At some point, the words would have just been words.

The blessing my father said at night went like this:  "Father, we thank thee for these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty.  In the name of Christ the Lord, Amen."  Where I grew up, it was sort of the universal adult blessing of the food. 

In school, we learned to say this: 

God is great
God is good
Let us thank him for this FOOD.
Ah-MEN!

This lent itself easily to schoolyard variations, e.g., "God is good; God is great; Help me get the biggest plate."  When a friend of mine said it instead of the real blessing, a little girl---my cousin Julie, I'm guessing---got very worked up.  That's how I learned the word "sacrilegious."

Was Jesus Married to Mary Magdalene (or anyone)? Why this Heretic Prefers to Think Not.

[published on July 14, 2006]

1.  That visceral assent.

I read---nay, devoured---Holy Blood Holy Grail----years ago.  In other words, years before The Da Vinci Code essentially incorporated a sizable chunk of its main thesis in a thin--but colorful!---fictional shell.  I did NOT like The Da Vinci Code, which I felt presented the same arguments much less stylishly (or coherently), but I loved HBHG.   

One of the authors of HBHG recently published The Jesus Papers.  A few days back, I discussed a review of the book by Laura Miller, writing in Salon.com, criticized it for---among other things---its amazing leaps in logic.  And there are some amazing leaps.  I liked it, and I liked HBHG, but only to the extent that both served as food for thought (or for imagination).   I know the difference between history and an imaginative construct such as HBHG. I also know that when you start looking for connections, you'll see them everywhere, so I am not surprised that the authors were able to link, for example, Jesus to the Merovingian dynasty or the Merovingians to the Templars.  Human beings have changed since the dawn of time, but not THAT much. 

Anyway:  about this whole Jesus-as-husband-of-Mary-Magdalene deal.  First of all, I remember first having the theory called to my attention.  It was during one episode in a kick-ass show Chris Carter show called Millenium, in an episode called Amanuensis.  I highly, highly recommend it; I much prefer it to The Da Vinci Code.  I think I saw it (it was a rerun) in 1998.  At the time,  I felt chills go down my spine and my scalp prickling and something that a character in Ursula LeGuin refers to as 'the visceral 'yes.''   It seemed right.  It felt true.  Or I wanted it to be true.

2.  Other people who also want it to be true.

Apparently The Da Vinci Code  has brought about the emergence of huge numbers of people who reacted to this theory pretty much in the same way I did.  I was sitting at a Starbucks with my husband one afternoon shortly after publication of The Da Vinci Code, when a grey-haired classic old- lefty type  wearing skin-tight biking gear caught my eye.  His own were wild.  "Have you read this?" he asked me breathlessly. "Have you read it?  It's amazing!  It changes everything!"   He so wanted it to be true.  Why?

The Jesus Papers, The Jesus Dynasty, The Gnostic Gospels, and what I learned from them.

[published on July 10, 2005]

I am not a stupid or a credulous person.  I hold certain beliefs that those (like my husband and my friend Rumcove) who are invested in their own skepticism would reject as improbable on the ground that there is no evidence for them and that they contradict experience (meaning the experience of my husband and Rumcove).

1.  Growing Up Christianish.

I studied physics in college as well as philosophy.  I understand the history of science, which had its roots in alchemy and magic. Because I had good teachers, I know that sensory perception is an exceedingly poor test for its own reality.  I have willfully made certain choices about what to believe about reality (meaning the real reality, that underlies what I perceive). 

One way in which I have deparated from my Bible Belt upbringing is in rejecting received wisdom.   When I was first told the Jesus story, I believed it.  I also believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.  Later, when I had more information about the world, I let go of these beliefs one by one, based on my assessment of their probability (which was based on my observation of the world).  Jesus was the last to go.  In one sense, this was because I didn't feel quite so directly affected by Jesus.  The gifts he would presumably provide weren't things I understood or particularly wished to procure. 

Fortunately, I was brought up Episcopalian.  In the early 1970's it was a relatively liberal church----relative to, say, Southern Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, AME, the Church of God, and Presbyterians, which were the only churches I knew of as a child.  We were taught about the Bible, but we weren't indoctrinated, and later on, we had a course in world religions.  I remember a Sunday school teacher I still remember fondly saying to me, "God takes you where he finds you."  In other words, if you're born in India, God----WE were taught that it was the same God----would be happy for you to be a Hindu.  The priest who confirmed me seemed to agree with this proposition; or at least he never contradicted it. 

In other words, I was brought up to look at Jesus differently.  He wasn't the ONLY path to God (and I was very startled when I found out that most of the people I was in school with thought differently); he was A path; and it was the path most deeply embedded in my own culture.  My priest said:  "If you've never had doubts about your faith, then you haven't thought about it."  I never forgot either of these lessons.

In the place where I lived, the various Protestant churches were tolerant (though sometimes grudgingly) of one another, though not of agnosticism.   We had regular morning prayers in school, with a reading from the Bible.  No one objected; I don't think it would have occurred to any of us to object.  To me, it didn't matter what they said, since none of it had much to do with my personal beliefs about the church.