My friend Alev and I were discussing religion last night. I was saying how when I was little I used to argue with my religion teacher about original sin. Why were we all punished, born with this stain on our souls, because of Adam and Eve, an allegory written by a man about fictional people that was created to SYMBOLIZE the creation of people, not a factual bit of history? I was telling her that at some point I realized that there are people who REALLY BELIEVE that Adam and Eve existed.
She asked me if I believed that Jesus was the son of God. I do. I believe in him. I believe he was the coolest person that ever lived. My favorite quote is "I like Jesus. It's his fan club I can't stand." But I still consider myself Catholic. I like catholicism. There's a lot of blood and wine and pomp and circumstance to it -- it's ancient and archaic and mostly associated with latin-based cultures. Oh and the Irish. Who doesn't like the Irish?
I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who don't like actual CATHOLICS and for that I can't blame them. There has been some weird shit going down in the RCC in the past couple of years. Scratch that -- a lot of weird things have come to light in the last couple of years that have actually been going on for decades. And it breaks my heart. Because churches, syngagogues, mosques -- all houses of worship have the innate ability to be sanctuaries and when they stray from this purpose -- their ultimate purpose -- they fail humanity.
So last night my friend Alev (who's Turkish and whose name means "flame" -- is that not the coolest?) took me to her friend's "wedding". Her friend got married in Vegas, had a party last night in the East Village for her New York friends, and will have her actual reception in Turkey (my ideal kind of wedding, broken down in stages and involving a bar in the East Village -- more on that in another blog). Anyway, there were all these people dancing in a circle, which I loved. And they were happy -- happy for the couple, happy to be with people who have the same shared ethnic experience as themselves but happy to share it with me and others. And I noticed that the circle dancing was quite similar to Jewish weddings I've been to, not to mention Irish dancing at the many, many bars I've been to and the Italian tarantella (also often done at weddings) which proves that when it comes to celebrating we are not so different from each other, are we?
It was a lot of fun.
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