Rescue
It’s been a long day, and I’m feeling the effects of time-zone whiplash. Waking up at 5 am, wondering why you’re bolt awake, reminding your body that perhaps the sun being up is a better indicator of the start to a day than whatever screwy internal system is currently at play is pretty much the death knell to a Monday. That it was a holiday here in the US doesn’t make it much better, but coffee does ameliorate the bumps and bruises of an impromptu daylight.
I’m back in my worn chair, typing furiously at a much-delayed post for you today. I’m trying to honour my five-working-day posting schedule even if I know that the consistency is only really felt by me. But c’est la vie, for here I am, at 6:30 pm, writing a few hundred words across the ether to you all. Hopefully, the message won’t be blunted by the tiredness.
We’re back in Barcelona again, working our way through the maze of streets and alleyways, always looking for what lies around us. That environment of claustrophobic pathways that is lightened considerably by the puffy white clouds and rich hues of the blue cast over the horizon by Nature herself leads us carefully through, the distance lines broken only by steeples, naves, and the balconies with their hung laundry.
You must pause and consider when you happen upon a sight line like this: a steeple dominating the end of a narrow walkway. Should this be a road we travel down, or will there be something better, less austere, in the blocks ahead? For every ascetic stone rudiment, an equally gaudy version is playing just around the corner; this is where the Inquisition held a firm grip. Ah, but we must move beyond those tortured years of overreach, destruction, and theocratic dominion, for we’re now in a more halcyon age, enlightened by the information that falls readily to fingertip, to the mouthpieces of a Church catholic that is showing signs of age and ruination.
Perhaps that’s what draws me: this chance to see what once was. A hallowed religion that permeated the Iberian peninsula, moulded and shaped an ideology that furthered and corrupted generations of humans across oceans and land masses. Standing as it does today, this globe-conquering theocracy, holy only in its view, is now world-defining in ways that are broken and corrupted by the influence of wealth and power rather than in forging paths to the New World. Far from inviolate, their power lies in the pen and pulpit, and with each Sunday Mass, new waves of oppression come crashing in.
There’s freedom to walk by such a place and not feel the centuries of guilt and transgression upon your shoulders, to wander in the light of grace without second thoughts. But therein lies the heaviness of our humanity; not all are free, not all are loved, and not all can escape the traditions of culture and community where religion is involved. The clutches of a pervasive theocracy, albeit under the guise of social action, drive the behaviours of governments worldwide, not just in Spain.
To recognize the harmful interaction between church and state, one need only look at the clear and present danger posed in America: the overreach of the evangelical into the wombs and wherewithals of those deemed “less than” or “evil.” In our current Puritanical time, are we that much different than the violence of the Inquisition?
I’ll leave you with this single thought: we are always offered a choice, a moment to give grace and love to those we deem loveless and less-than-worthy. We are always allowed to walk away or to stay. We can choose to let the fears, failures, and fuck-ups of generations drive us away from those who quietly scream for help amidst the pews and stones of the church catholic. Or, we can step into the morass of righteous depravity and rescue those who can’t tell their asses from their elbows, their own stories from the “gospel” of enlightened approbation spun of the finest silk but leading to the spider’s maw. You get to choose who you’ll help when push comes to shove, so make it count.
May it ever be so.