O Me of Little Faith!

Inspired by a post (Pole-vaulting to find Faith?) and ensuing discussion on the blog of "One Female Canuck"

I'm developing this stuff for an upcoming zine called "Believing is Seeing"
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It's the end of term. We're talking on the metro, on the way back from some event. She is speaking about how difficult and stressful the last couple of weeks have been for her. I respond to this, pretty seriously I guess. She smiles.

"You know, you really shouldn't believe everything I say."

"Why not?", I say. "It's a good story. And as the Good Book (Life of Pi) teaches, one should believe in the better story. Give me a better story and I will believe that instead."

OR

It's the end of term. We're talking on the metro, on the way back from some event. She is speaking about how difficult and stressful the last couple of weeks have been for her. I respond to this, pretty seriously I guess. She smiles.

"You know, you really shouldn't believe everything I say."

"No? Uh....well, OK......maybe not everything. But what? And why?"

Which story do you believe?

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Well, I’ve always said there’s nothing an agnostic can’t do if he really doesn’t know whether he believes in anything or not" (Monty Python, "Church Bells" sketch)

I grew up a lapsed Catholic, in a very secular environment. But I’ve wanted to believe that there’s a point to things and that I have a purpose within that. I read the parts of the Bible where prophets thundered against the kings and other powers that be of the age, who were screwing the poor and bringing Israel to ruin and I thought- I should be like that. So I became an activist of sorts. I believed that if I dressed up as pernicious suited capitalists, suited axe wielding bureaucrats or as imperialist national mascots and re-enacted injustices on the street or before audiences, I would help to change the popular consciousness- I would help the world overcome the idolatry of neo-liberalism and restore a true, balanced sense of spiritual/religious transcendence that would include social justice and living in a manner that would be sustainable within our natural environment. Or words to that effect, anyway.

I still do activist theatre, but as a Catholic I seem to have become even more lapsed lately. I’ve found it difficult to take the pronouncements of popes and bishops very seriously. Out-of-touch, exclusively male hierarchies have never really appealed to me. After one recent activist theatre performance I went to a party where I witnessed an argument about gender and sexuality between an exceedingly sexually liberated (well, at least rhetorically) young woman and a young non-lapsed Catholic man. It was an interesting argument. For much of the night she was almost on top of him, continuously threatening to have sex with him to prove her points. Or so it seemed, but then I was rather drunk at the time. But even if it isn’t true, there’s a whole series of fantasies one could develop from this story idea- philosophical sex!

But, erm, anyway. What do I believe in? I believe I would like to believe in something. It’s not much, but it’ll have to do for now.