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Have your travels affected or shaped your religious convictions?
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I was raised Roman Catholic but needless to say my travels have indeed affected my Faith and confused the issue to the point where I don’t know what I am (much like many other aspects of my life).
This is not intended to be a debate on which religion is “Right” merely on how traveling may have affected your belief (or lack there of) in some kind of superior being.
The first country I have clear memories of living in was Niger( although this was already my third country that I’d lived in) at age 6. Niger is a predominantly Muslim country. I felt my childish understanding of faith constantly being tested by well meaning adults and fellow children desperately trying to convert me to Islam for fear of my soul. I didn’t really understand what being a Roman Catholic meant or what being a Muslim meant in any meaningful way, so I started paying more attention in church (my mom took me every sunday, jet lag or no, even if it was a service at an airport while in transit).
At that young age I convinced myself that I was going to become a priest and that I would help others but not force my faith on others rather hope that others would follow my example. The interpretation of the bible might have been different in that setting. It was not the general belief that non-believers were going to “Hell” for lack of believing in Jesus.
By age 10 it was time to move again, this time to Rome, Italy. At first I was overjoyed, I would be going to the very heart of the Catholic faith and I was convinced that my faith would grow. Mass in west africa and mass in Italy are very very different experiences. I went from mass in French, Djerma and Housa to mass in mainly Italian ( a language that I was still learning at the time) and some Latin. Instead of being joyful celebrations with dancing and singing they seemed to be full of pomp and ceremony, keeping only the basic skeleton structure the same.
Needless to say this confused me very much, how could this be the same religion that I had become so firmly entrenched in at the tender age of 7? By the time I left Italy at age 13 I was thoroughly convinced that Religion was something invented by mankind to exert control over other people, and that there was no God, or if there was one it did not intervene in the affairs of humanity.
It wasn’t until university that I really found myself second guessing this assumption. I saw some of those around me of various faiths praying before exams and other outward signs of faith.
Many of the courses I have studied (Physics) ends with and we don’t really know what happens at a smaller/larger scale then this, or before this (etc), maybe its God or maybe we’ll figure it out someday. This doesn’t just happen in Nuclear physics or Newtonian mechanics. Even when studying the motion of a toy top there are forces at work that we can’t fully describe. There are animals that defy the logic of the theory of evolution (Bombadier Beetle). As such I find myself once again questioning my “Religion” of Science and empirical data.
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April 21st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
Mairabay,
you said it much better than me “nature is my god”. I think the first time I really didn’t understand “religion” was the idea that somehow “god” is separated from existence, from nature and from all that lives. For me these are inseperable- god is existence.
Similarly though, I have no idea how I came up with this… although I think my mom had something to do with it
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August 28th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I was brought up in the Old Apostolic church, but even from the time I was at school, I would go to Hindu temples with my friends, or be part of a Zulu animal sacrifice to the ancestors. When I met my husband I began going to Catholic mass. From childhood I was fascinated by the Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods. I worshiped them all, Shiva, Jesus, Mary, Kali, Artemis, Athena, the ancestors with equal fervor. By the time I reached university I realised that I was fundamentally an animist. When I got to Japan, one of the very first places I stopped at was an Inari-sama shrine to pray. And for what it’s worth, all four of my wishes that I’ve made at this shrine over the years have come true! Coincidence? I think not.
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August 28th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Hi, Tony!
I was raised Catholic and definitely noticed along the way that my view of Catholics and Catholicism changed as a result of my CCK/TCK/DTCK experiences.
In Florida, I was baptized by a first generation Irish Catholic, Father Cunningham, and while I remember nothing of him, I very much remember the austerity of Mass in the next place we moved…Germany.
In the tiny village of Speicher, the church was freezing cold, unheated throughout the year and had the hardest kneelers in existence. It was before Vatican II, so the priest faced the altar and said Mass in Latin. It was very grim and I think my brothers and I must have fidgeted the whole time.
Then, we moved on base, Spangdahlem Air Force Base. On bases, the space used as a church serves for all religions, the pastors, rabbis, priests, etc. simply take the accoutrements of their religion out of the cupboard and use them during ‘their time’, then put them away, so the next religion or denomination can have its service. It’s all very egalitarian and showed me that, at least on base, religions were all equal.
At one point, in Kansas, I’d become friends with a girl, we’d done many things together as chums and then, one day, she could no longer be my friend. Her grandmother learned somehow that we were Catholic and her granddaughter was not allowed to have the daughter of Papists as a friend.
Then, in the 70, in Spokane, Washington, things changed again and as sign of the times, everyone sat on the floor during Mass and sort of hung out. No hymns, but acoustical guitars and folk songs. Confession was done with the priest sitting right next to me, acting congenial. Hippy Mass at Gonzaga University.
I went to St. Aloysius Gonzaga in 8th grade and we were made to go to the cathedral for Mass and it was all starchy. After that, I went to Catholic girls school and we Freshman we were terribly mean to Father McNulty, a new priest. I’m sorry to say, we terrorized him with 1969’s equivalent of Grrrrl Power.
I was a Catholic drop-out soon after that. At 16, during the time we were going to Assumption Church, I announced I wasn’t going to church anymore, that I thought it was stupid and couldn’t relate. I got in trouble because my three younger brothers said, “Well, if Jannie’s not going, we’re not going” and I started a minor revolution.
I’ve been to some Catholic churches since and have sometimes had the Eucharist, but only because it is so culturally familiar to me, the same way atheistic Jewish people follow temple traditions at times. Sometimes I go back to smell the incense and witness the pomp at Midnight Mass.
I’ve had correspondence with Andrew Greeley who told me to not let the politics or stupidity of popes, cardinals, the Vatican, or the Church itself and all its lawsuits and perversion keep me from the Eucharist, which he said is my sacramental heritage. I love Father Greeley…how he kicks butt with the Catholic Church and, as far as I can tell, he alone is its conscience.
Travel showed me the myriad flavors and colors of Catholicism. Also, my father was raised under very austere E. European Catholicism and my mother’s grandfather grew up Catholic in Ireland, which, at that time was still quite connected to paganism. So, my mother believed and still believes in fairies. I kid you not and she is an intelligent person. And that grandfather married a Protestant after he’d immigrated to the U.S. and that raised all sorts of hell.
So many stripes…and, now, I am no longer Catholic or even Christian.
I. too, traveled Science, then aboriginal ways, then Hinduism, and I can tell you only this: I am an adherent of no religion and, yet, have taken a little from many and call myself spiritual. By the way, quantum mechanics and spirituality are not divorced from the other….
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