Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus

Author:Anneli Rufus
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2008-08-08T12:27:00+00:00

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jesus, mary, and Jennifer lopez

[RELIGION

They gather together to ask the Lord's blessing. The problem with organized religion is, it's organized.

'O SEE RELIGION in action is to see mobs. Swarming. Seething. Singing. Swooning. Studying. Marching. Slaughtering, slaughtered.

Church mobs chant, lit in the spumoni hues of stained glass. Buddhist temple mobs file down mountain paths, all saffron robes and sandalwood. Mobs immerse in the Ganges; never mind the microbes and the floating ashes of the dead. Medieval mobs stampeded the unwary as they rushed to venerate the preserved flesh of saints. Other medieval mobs on horseback massacred Moors. The Moors, in turn, turned their Christian captives into slaves and sold them. Mobs in town squares watched witches burn in the name of the Inquisition. Mobs clash now, each asking its god to make it win, the blood of both mingling as it spills. Backwoods mobs. Cults. Militias. Mobs who title themselves grandly--the Salvation Army, the Moral Majority. Promise Keepers.

They want us to think faith is a collective thing.

They want us to think faith has a lot to do with fellowship. That an electrical charge links believer to believer, giving them the right to call each other brother, sister, father.

Sure, faith is a jolt. And nonloners respond to jolts with a yearning for validation. Did I feel that? Whoa, you felt it, too?! By sharing, by comparing notes, nonloners decide what is true. It is telling that in at least two major religions an important milestone in spiritual progress is called Confirmation.

Loners react differently to jolts. Since loners are often alone, jolts tend to strike when loners are alone. So there is no one near to whom one might exclaim, Did you feel that? But would we anyway? We keep things to ourselves. The most profound things we keep the most to ourselves. We nurse jolts. Saying nothing. For loners, discussing the mystical deflates it like air escaping a balloon. Faith is a private matter-at least, by loner logic it is. Praying in public, worshiping while rubbing elbows, seems uncouth, like French kissing on a commuter bus.

For some loners, the structure of mainstream religion feels like a straitjacket. Having to appear in the same crowded place at the same day and time each week in school it could barely be borne. Does the divine run on a schedule, too, with penalties for tardies? Nor can we force ourselves into feeling brotherly about a mob of strangers just because they use the same names to summon the supernatural as we do, just because they have read the same holy book, or because we light candles at the feet of the same statues.

We are chary of consensus, and spirituality is so subjective. To a loner it hardly seems possible-not even plausible-that millions could agree on what God likes and dislikes and whether pork or beef is verboten. How, we muse, can millions nod in unison approving the validity of liturgy? How can the unseen move so many strangers in exactly the same way? Those millions---nonloners, of course would say it moves them alike because it is real.

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