There are Times

I've been in a cardiac arrhythmia for about 12 hours. Such episodes have become less frequent and shorter in duration than some years ago but recently they seem to be experiencing a rebirth ... an unwelcome renaissance. There are times when I could scream. That's not quite true: There ARE times that I scream.

Days have been pretty good, though. This weekend, I went to hear a youngish psychologist talk lovingly, warmly and proudly about her God, her rituals and her religious patients. I was moved ... not much else to say, except via explanation.

I've worked in a field where the vast majority of leaders and workers in that field saw all religious beliefs as equivalent to the Obsessions, Compulsions and Prohibitions of the emotionally very sick and twisted. Freud, himself, denied his wife, Martha, the right to light ritual candles. Indeed, it is reported that one of the first things she did when Ole Sigismund died was to do just that. She had grown up in such a ritually-centered home but her husband offered no proffer to hocus-pocus-mumbo-jumbo ... and she would neither. Hrrrrumphhhh!

My own mentor after I'd professionally joined his ranks and in some conversation before a faculty meeting (I was by then the Director of our training facility) shared that he thought well of the progress I had made over the many years he knew me but still worried that I might "fall into the bowels of religiosity." He could've lightened the blow and talked of a newly chlorinated toilet ball ... No, no. Harold talked straight.

"Howard. Y'could still fall into the repository of shitty ritual from which you likely came."

When I'd visit Harold in his home in the mid-80's shortly before his death, he would spit if religious people walked by and Harold left instructions for there to be no fanfare over the interment of his body after he suddenly was diagnosed with Liver and Pancreas Cancer and might not make the week. 96 hours later, on All Hallows Eve, Harold was dead. We were allowed in a month to:

"gather together to ask Lord Harold's blessings"

or, at least, to share good memories as Jussi Beniamini, the Sweedish Nightingale, a great Tenor of Harold's youth, sang in Italian.

And, now some 30 years later, I was listening and this this young lady sitting next to her equally religious husband was talking about how strongly she felt about her relationship to her God. And later in the day I went riding with a 70'ish religious friend whose wife, he learned after our return, had received news of getting a pulpit job. These wonderful experiences couldn't be the bowels of religiosity of which Harold pontificated!

Alas! I grew up in a very religious home and have long valued ritual, even if my relationship to my People's God has not been active. Listening to Dr. S. talk of following "her path" ... "her way" ... I had no urge to scream but did have moments of sweet sadness and tearfulness.

What to say ... Whether in the toilet? in the bowel? or in the Shiny New Kitchens of my colleagues in this XXIst C. ...

Vocatur atque non vacatur ... 

Beckoned or not beckoned ...

Deis Aderit ...

The Supernatural calls out to us.

Don't remember which ancient it was that said that ... Likely, some 4th Quarter Latin Player!