Chant

I was once a ritualistic chanter of Buddhist sutra. Like meditating, chanting a familiar sutra repeatedly has an hypnotic effect. Under the influence of this hypnotic effect, I believe, it is possible to engage various parts of the brain for the concerted behavioral changes which can better your life. This is not an outrageously novel or new idea.

This morning I am listening to Gregorian chant on my favorite Amsterdam radio station, Conzertzender. It occurs to me that this chanting is not very different from the Buddhist sutra-chanting with which I am familiar. In my youth, I sang Gregorian chant in a boys' choir. I recall the rush of excitement when our choir got it just right and the echoes of our voices rebounded back to us off the stark stone walls of our church.

The Gregorian chant of Roman Catholic ritual is constructed to lull and mystify, in my opinion. It is a sound meant to echo off cloister walls. A sound to awe and entrance impressionable, illiterate peasants perhaps. The great monasteries of Tibet, perched on mountaintops, echoed similarly with the sutras, often accompanied by fierce horn blasts and choking incense.

While listening to Gregorian chant charms me and makes me nostalgic for my own blissful ignorance of youth, I also hear in it the theatrical manipulation of millions for centuries. Perhaps this will be the role of religious rituals in some enlightened future. Reminders of the blissful ignorance of humanity, before it woke up to its real place in the Universe.

Churches

I recently watched an apologist on TV excuse the papacy for its collusion in pedophile sex abuse. This man was once a mayor of a major U.S. city and ambassador to The Vatican. He also has been suspected of political corruption and has a reputation as a brazenly public alcoholic. Therefore, his moral compass apparently points South. Perhaps this is the best modern media outlets can do in the papal-apologist category after the unrelenting revelations of wretched and chronic child abuse by Catholic priests and nuns.

Why would any sane, truly moral, truly ethical person continue to identify himself as a Roman Catholic after this has come to light? I don't know.

Christ's composite biography, whether fictional or factual, describes an admirable human being. Actually, he was outstanding in his time, which was an age of brutal materialism, like today. Christ did not belong to a church. He was not Catholic. He was born an ethnic Jew, but his disdain for institutional Judaism is quite obvious in the various records. In fact, politicized, institutional Judaism colluded in his execution. Everything I have read about Jesus cries "anti-religious".

Now, if you profess to be a Christian, you are actually following the teachings of someone who would not belong to your Christian club. He would not wear funny clothes and wave around the thing they hung him on to execute him. Who would? Unless, of course, you think Jesus was a masochist. I don't see that in what I've read about him.

When I read about Jesus Christ, I see a man who loved people, despite the fact they frequently let him down. He didn't care about toys and status symbols. He didn't own a house or even rent one. He slept outside a lot. He had a real temper, and I'd love to see what he would have done to a priest who he found abusing a child. My guess is he'd have beaten the living crap out of him.

So, why is it that religious Christians don't get it? Why do they keep getting suckered into building megachurches and paying for BMWs for their pastors? Why do they listen to puffed up con-men who have absolutely no resemblance to Jesus Christ, whom they claim to emulate and represent? Are these religious Christians deaf, dumb and blind? Or are they simply lazy? Or do they accept corruption of Christ's message in their pastors to excuse it in themselves?

You do not have to belong to a church to be a Christian. Just follow what Christ taught. Read the New Testament and follow it in every situation every day. It would be very hard, but that would definitely make you a Christian more than being dunked in a river or singing hymns on Sunday. And, you'd probably be a lot happier.

You don't have to belong to a club to be a good person. I consciously choose to live an ethical life with compassion and generosity, as difficult as it can be. I call myself a humanist, but actually I am simply a human being. I associate with other humanists, but I don't pay dues or feel the need to wear a T shirt to be one.

The more we can all accept our ability to be good, non-violent and ethical human beings without picking a side, a uniform or a label to do it, the better off we will all be.