It's hard coming to terms with that fact that you need help. I know firsthand. The truth hurts etc. etc. But to come to terms with one possible problem only to learn that it may be something entirely different is disconcerting. I know I'm talking in annoying ambiguities here but I don't feel comfortable being completely explicit regarding my personal issues. This is something that's been on my mind all week. And I'm just having trouble comprehending what any future change could mean. It's scary this not-knowing.
So I'm going to think about something else, anything else. Here goes:
In my Cognitive Shakespeare class we've been discussing a lot of theological topics recently. I'm not a particularly religious person and I haven't been for a long time. But my religion, Roman Catholic, was very present and an important force in my childhood. Having graduated from 12 years of Catholic school, I've become my Shakespeare class's resident expert on Catholicism. It's a little odd. I haven't gone to church regularly for several years but I still remember everything. I can still discuss obscure Bible stories with my professor and pick up on the subtle theological echoes in Shakespeare's plays.
Now with Easter only a few weeks away, I feel closer to my religion than I have in several years. The topic is clogging up my brain because I've spent the evening re-reading Act 5 of King Lear (for the second time this week actually). And anyone who has read the play knows that it is perhaps the most overtly theological of Shakespeare's plays. It's final image is especially powerful - a reverse pieta. Lear holds Cordelia's dead body in his arms just as Mary held Jesus's body when he was taken down from the cross.
There's a certain nostalgia attached to Catholicism for me. Like I said, I'm not very religious but I grew up with the images and stories of my religion ever present. Catholicism and its rituals are comforting to me not because I feel particularly close to God but because they are a link to a simpler time in my life. Catholic prayers, hymns, Bible stories, and rituals are all ingrained in my mind forever because of the relentless reinforcement provided by 12 years of Catholic education and an actively Catholic family.
Since it's Lent, I am thinking specifically of Friday afternoons spent in the church with my elementary/middle school to perform* the Stations of the Cross. I can still remember those afternoons so clearly. Everyone was glad to get out of class but we sat bored and uncomfortable in the wooden pews. And it wasn't like a boring class that you could just sleep through. There was kneeling and standing and singing and reciting prayers. We went through the motions as the afternoon sunlight streamed in through the stained glass windows, casting the scene in a golden hue. Three hundred kids were squirming in the seats. The weekend, so full of the promise of sunshine and fun to be had, was so close we could see it waiting just outside the church. But first, before we went off and enjoyed our carefree spring weekends, we needed to act out Jesus's suffering and death, even though we were young children who didn't fully understand the significance of the ritual we were performing**.
*I use "perform" here because after a semester of Performance Studies I am now acutely aware of what constitutes a performance. In the Stations of the Cross, the congregation actively takes part in the ritual being performed. It is a ritualistic remembering/recreating/reproduction of Jesus's journey to crucifixion. It has a set script. It is a ritual that is meant to be repeated every Friday in Lent. Repetition. Repetition. Repitition. We're not supposed to forget the script. But we have to remember that the script was created by society. It is not a (completely) historically accurate account of the events and we have to keep that in mind. Why was this specific script produced to recreat Jesus's suffering? What does it mean that we are, in a sense, acting out the scenes and not just hearing the story?
**And what exactly does that say? What does it mean to perform a ritual without fully understanding its meaning? Is the acting of the ritual enough? Catholicism places a strong value on the performance of ritual - the physical, tangible acts. The visual imagery and the poetic words are integral to the Catholic faith. This is directly opposite of the Protestant view. In the Protestant Reformation, they got rid of all the visual and ritualistic aspects of the religion: no more body on the cross, no more stained glass windows, etc. Protestantism rejects the emphasis on the visual and bases faith on a wholly spritual realm. Catholicism places value on the tangible, the real, the substantive. Catholics believe the eucharist is Jesus's body. It is real and present, something to be physically taken into your body.
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