#2 — Cristo Redentor and the art of praying to no One.
The patchwork of our histories.
Rituals give us a sense of a belonging and for that reason can be a source of tension and existential questioning. Are we in or are we out?
When I was younger, for example, my dad used to make my brother and I recite a prayer before bed. If we wanted to accept Jesus into our hearts, we were to learn it "off by heart". I didn't know then that one day I'd experience the gravity of this on a whole other level.
After a cumulative of just shy of three months here, Marcos and I finally visited the iconic Christ the Redeemer, one of the New7Wonders of the World. Despite his monumental size (30m tall on top of an 8m pedestal) and epic digs (on top of Corcovado mountain in the heart of Rio de Janeiro), what intrigued the most was the intricacy of his exterior.
I looked at Marcos, He's a mosaic?!. I assumed he'd be straight-up concrete. But there he was, traced by a gazillion fine lines (apparently some of the women who worked on the lil' soapstone tiles wrote love notes on the back of them!).
Curiosity, a gift from the Gods?
Things ingrained in our childhoods can take a lifetime to lift. I can still rattle off the prayer without thinking about it ("off by heart"), but some 25 years later, I struggle to pray -- let alone to God or Jesus.
Am I in or am I out?
Recently, I was tasked with saying grace before dinner. I had no idea who to address, so I tried this: to the space between what we know and might not ever know. I believe in no One, but I have faith in something -- I just don't know what.
Writing on the distinction between belief and faith, Alan Watts wrote,
"Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes.
Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown.
Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception." (The Wisdom of Insecurity, p. 24).
I have faith that beyond everything we know, there's something gentle and generative. I have faith there's something beautiful. I wonder what it might be...
Until next month! Beijos from Rio,
Jodi
“Life is so continuous that we divide it into stages, and we call one of them death.”
- Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H. -
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