I’ve begun reading the book entitled The Last Alchemist: Count Cagliostro, Master of Magic in the Age of Reason. It’s a pretty good book. I just got to the part where the Count, who’s really just a regular-ish fellow named Giuseppe Balsamo, got initiated into the secret world of Strict Observance Freemasonry this evening. The author, Ian McCalman described his entry into the society thusly:

After he’d intoned his oath of absolute secrecy and obedience, several officials dressed in caps and aprons, blindfolded his eyes, tied a rope around his waist, and hauled him on creaking pulleys to the ceiling. Suddenly the rope gave way and he crashed to the floor. His complaints of a damaged hand did nothing to mitigate the ceremony’s next phase. Colonel Cagliostro watched uneasily while a pistol was loaded with powder and ball. His eyes were once again covered. He was handed the pistol and brusquely ordered to comply with the oath of obedience by blowing out his brains all over the tavern. He hesitated; he heard yells–coward, get on with it–and pulled the trigger. There was a detonation, he felt a blow on the side of his head and smelled acrid gunsmoke. By some miracle he was still alive; and as his panic gave way to clarity, he realized it had been a ruse: the lodge officials had given him an unloaded pistol and simulated the discharge (pg 40).

This passage reminded me of another book, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manly P. Hall. Hall describes the tests a candidate had to survive in order to learn the Druidic Mysteries, to be “born again.” These folks had to get buried in a coffin and ride out to sea in an open boat. He also mentions the “strange machinery” found under a Greco-Egyptian temple of Serapis:

These machines indicate the severe tests of moral and physical courage undergone by the candidates. After passing through these torturous ways, the neophytes who survived the ordeals were ushered into the presence of Serapis, a noble and awe-inspiring figure illumined by unseen lights (pg. 25 and 27).

So. According to Manly P. Hall and other sources, there were two stories that Mystery School teachers came up with. One was simple, a moral code meant for Joe Everyman, which instructed him on the correct way to conduct himself in the world. The second story was deeper and secret, a story that had been passed down through the ages and only told to a very select few. These select were born into certain families and had passed the sorts of severe tests mentioned above. They starved themselves, broke bones jumping off cliffs, had limbs twisted into strange positions for long periods of time, etc., etc., in order to prove that they had overcome earthly limitations and were worthy of the truth (or perhaps to prove that they were willing to die in order to be included in the elite knowers of truth…)

There’s a lot of energy right now around these types of groupings, the elite v. Joe Everyman. A friend gave me a pin that says “99%” and I’ve been wearing it on my lapel. But, there’s something that’s been bugging me. What does being a part of the 99% mean, exactly? I wasn’t born into a fancy family. I have done a fast or two, but even just this morning in the shower I was vowing to never do one again. I hate being hungry. Am I a slave to my hedonistic nature? To be truthful, most of the work I’ve been doing with my counselor has been to help me feel ok with actually being who I am. Not trying to live up to some “moral code” written by some other dude who wore a wig and probably stole alms from the poor.

What does being a part of the 1% mean? Can the 1% be compared to the initiates of the past? What tests do they have to pass in order to get in? I can go to the library and read loads of words that tell me exactly what the different secrets of the ages were. It’s actually downright overwhelming all the secrets I’m privy to, and I didn’t even have to wander naked into the woods without any food or water. Does that make me a part of the 1%, now that I know the secret handshake? But then I remember that 2500 years ago Plato was splurging “secret” meeting minutes all over town after he was initiated into the elite.  Even then the secrets were available to anyone who was even slightly curious.

Do you think that God would put you on the earth without the tools possible for you to understand the secrets to sublime happiness? Are some people truly here without recourse from a life of misery, bound to the “simple moral code” of behave-now-and-you’ll-be-rewarded-later, forever doomed to 80 hours a week of assembling iPhones? Do the 1% still know some secret handshake that the 99% don’t? Is it possible that reading a book on a secret understanding won’t clue me in to the actual energy behind the words without the experience of pain and suffering that precede initiation? Why am I so lucky to be happy, when other people are suffering?  Is it because of what I’m doing? Or is it just because I’m lucky? To boil it all down, are there really secrets that you have to be born in the exact right time and place to understand? Or are these all figments, illusions, distractions?

More to come on this illustrious topic…Feel free to answer any of the above questions.

(Mystical Seven–a secret society at Wesleyan University of Connecticut)

I was talking to my counselor the other day about the fact that sometimes I say mean jabbing things to my partner and I want to stop doing that. She asked me why I say mean jabbing things. I said that it’s because my partner sometimes says mean jabbing things to me and so I feel justified in retaliating. My counselor then told me about the “victim-perpetrator seesaw.” That sounded like a horrid funhouse ride in H-E-double hockey sticks at first, but after she explained it I understood: when one person is disempowered [by a mean jabbing remark] she feels bad and so to get out of feeling bad, she retaliates. You can picture the victim-perpetrator seesaw going back and forth, on and on, forevermore…UNTIL…you realize that it doesn’t feel good on either side. It is never balanced! It’s always one up, one down, each position maintaining it’s own particular brand of misery. After I had this conversation with my counselor, two interesting things happened to cement in my mind the theme of balance.

Interesting thing one: I read an article in the news that according to the United Nations Population Fund, the global population is going to reach 7 billion people on this Halloween. There is some nervousness about how Mother Earth will cope with these rising numbers (we’re the perp in this one by the way). After I read the article on the population, I remembered reading a different article that stated that ancient tribes practiced infanticide in order to maintain efficacious hunting/gathering. They knew that if there were too many people, they would all suffer.

Interesting thing two: I started a new block studying ancient India with my fifth grade class. Yesterday we talked about the goddess Kali. While studying up on Kali for myself, I came upon this poem by the mystic poet Ramprasad (don’t skip the poem! It’s really good!):

Mother, incomparably arrayed.

Hair flying, stripped down.

You battle-dance on Shiva’s heart,

A garland of heads that bounce off

Your heavy hips, chopped-off hands

For a belt, the bodies of infants

For earrings, and the lips,

The teeth like jasmine, the face

A lotus blossomed, the laugh.

And the dark body boiling up and out

Like a storm cloud, and those feet

Whose beauty is only deepened by blood.

So Prasad cries: My mind is dancing! Can I take much more? Can I bear An impossible beauty?

(It’s a very different kind of love story than the ones we’re used to these days) After I read the poem to my class, we drew pictures of Kali dancing on Shiva’s heart, tongue hanging out, eyes wide and white, a different weapon or a demon conk in each her many hands, skulls around her neck and severed heads around her waist…my fifth graders were aghast at the sight! (ok, they were more grossed out than aghast, but whatever, man). I explained to them that Kali is the goddess of destruction. She tears down the old in order to make way for the new. While she may be fierce and bloody, without her there could be no world.

My point may not be obvious here, so I’ll go ahead and bring it home for you: Balance is a interesting and complex maneuver. Often something needs to sacrificed in order to maintain it. The choice of what I choose to let go of in order to maintain balance is my own. Do I throw the baby out with the bathwater? Do I cut my losses? Cut the fat? Do I [fill in favorite aphorism here] in order to survive? Kali is equally happy to destroy healthy tissue or necrotic sludge. The choice of what to offer her is mine alone.

My counselor’s suggestion to the problem was to instruct me to visualize my life with my partner not as a hellish seesaw, but as a journey taken side by side, one in which we help each other over fences,  pick each other flowers and treat each other kindly, because we love and respect each other.

So that’s how I will balance my little seesaw. And who knows? If enough little seesaws get balanced…the whole globe could feel the effect.

With a bucket of marijuana cigarettes…(photo by Don Ryan for the Seattle Times–Associated Press)

Elvy Musikka is one of four people who have a federally granted permit for to use medical marijuana. As a child Musikka suffered from congenital cataracts, which developed into glaucoma after several surgeries. She began using marijuana to treat this condition despite the opinion of her ophthalmologist, who felt that she should have surgery instead. Musikka chose to have the surgery on one eye, while continuing to treat the glaucoma using marijuana, obtained illegally to treat her other eye. She was in constant fear of getting arrested and loosing her children, but the marijuana was working.

By 1987 the eye she was having surgery on was blind and Musikka was arrested for possession of marijuana. By this point her children had left home for college. The press was alerted to the story and followed every move from her arrest to her trial. At the trial, Dr. Palmberg, Musikka’s doctor, convinced the judge that no marijuana for Musikka would be a “life sentence to blindness.”

On August 15, 1988 Musikka was acquitted. Later that same year she was enrolled in an experimental program run by the Federal Government that allows her to fly to Florida annually and pick up a year’s worth of marijuana. She also completes a progress report every year that is never published, because, according to Musikka, the government is driven by the demands of the pharmaceutical, tobacco, alcohol and prison industries which all gain by the “hideous prohibition” of medical marijuana.

Since her acquittal, Musikka has become an activist to help others who are in the same position she was. In September 1988 Francis L Young of the DEA stated that “marijuana in natural form is a benign therapeutic substance.” He also stated that for a government to come between patient and health benefits of medical marijuana is “capricious, unreasonable and arbitrary”—Musikka adds that it is also unconstitutional and immoral. Musikka travels the country speaking with legislators to push for changes in the law regarding medical marijuana. She also speaks at educational functions in order to raise consciousness about this issue.

There are 20 million people in jail for drug possession. There are one million drug related arrests per year. The environment suffers. Elvy Mussika says (citing the source medicalcannibus.com) that our government is “arresting and robbing own citizens.” She also says that it is our own “personal responsibility to end this hideous prohibition.” If we don’t, the consequence will be on us.

May the true spirit of love be your guiding light.-Elvy Musikka

In my last post, which you can read here, I noted that it is important for me to take some quiet moments to listen to what my emotional body is telling me. If I’m able to do that I can make proactive choices about things that I’m feeling yucky about and make them better, thusly living a happier and more authentic life. Here’s an example:

I have a weird and possibly obsessive hatred of dry things touching other dry things. As a school teacher, this is an unfortunate hatred, because chalk and chalk boards are both very, very dry. Very dry. I’ve managed to survive by using this particular type of “dust free” chalk that comes in a green box. It’s denser than most chalk. I tell myself that it’s denser because it has more water in it, which allows me to use it without all of my teeth falling out. But that’s just an aside. The real story/pain comes in wiping the chalk off the board. All that bone dry power wafting into the air, dusty eraser fibers scratching along the slated board…I feel faint just thinking about it.  I try to have the students do it most of the time (even then sometimes I have to stand at the back of the room and not watch) and in the winter time, when it’s raining outside, I can handle it. But in August, hot and dry, sun burning down outside the window…oops! My bicuspid fell out! Dang.

Anyway, I’ve been cleaning my room in preparation for the first day. The boards have been on my list for days. I kept avoiding them, ignoring them, doing other jobs that don’t need to be done, without ever noticing or questioning why. Yesterday I stopped myself and said, Self, why are you avoiding the chalkboards? Then I answered Because the dryness is too much. If I have to, I will, but only with hatred in my heart. So then I asked myself, How can I make the job better for you/me? and then I answered Go and buy a giant sponge and fill up a bucket of water and use the giant sponge and the wet water on the dry, dry board.

So then that’s what I did. Well, actually I found a giant sponge and used that instead of buying one, but it came to the same end. The boards are clean and ready and I enjoyed the task.

I could have ignored myself. I could have powered through and wiped the boards with the dusty eraser and rubbed them black with the cloth that I keep for the job. But I would have had hatred in my heart, and now all I have is love. Love, moistened with the 98% water that’s in my body.

The point of this little story is to illuminate the dual nature of individual humans. How can there be a part of me that I ignore unless I have parts to me? How can I talk to myself and answer myself unless there are multiple sides to my nature? There are loads and loads of informative websites and books and research projects that have proven that the left and right hemispheres of the brain serve different functions. The left brain hemisphere controls literal language (grammar and vocabulary) while the right brain hemisphere controls the understanding of non-literal language (reading between the lines, intonation, sarcasm, contextual meanings). The left brain deals in facts–decoding the rational, linear, and objective–while the right brain deals in intuition–focusing on patterns, connections between experiences and things, and with a subjective understanding of the world. In other words, the right brain is all about feelings and the left brain is all about facts. The two hemispheres are connected by a band of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum, which allows the two sides to communicate with each other.

While we use both sides of our brain constantly throughout the day, most people tend to show a preference for one type of thinking over the other. (Here’s a fun test to see what your brain preference is.) Don’t worry, my point is still coming. Most people are left brain dominant, meaning that most people will believe facts coming from an external authority above their own feelings and intuitions, even when the facts are at odds with their own experiences. Over time, we begin to lose touch with our own feelings, choosing instead to focus on what is happening outside our actual experience. This leads to, at best, a superficial and un-authentic  life littered with depression and prescription drugs. At worst, it leads to illness and violence. Feelings that are pushed aside and ignored do not go away, they find alternate paths to the surface.

Fortunately, with a little conscious action, I can cut through that big bossy mouthed left hemisphere that always wants the facts. I can kneel down and put my ear on the track of that gentle, soft spoken feely, feely right hemisphere and give a good listen. It’s not that hard, once I remember to do it, and wow, I’m so much happier (and whole-er and more balanced) when I do.

All neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering.– Carl Jung

I passed a bumper sticker the other day. It said “Dare to Feel.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that. A few years back I went to a massage therapist who does a massage technique called Rosen bodywork. She’d be working on me and then she’d ask, often right in the middle of the massage, “How do you feel?” At first I answered, “fine” but she would continue on asking me questions. “Do you have any pain? Any anxiety anywhere? Where is it? How does it feel?” At first I found it mildly irritating, because I go to massage to relax, not to think about how I feel, but when I finally stopped to think about how I felt, really think about it, I realized how seldom I paid attention to what is really happening inside me.

Maybe I have a little stomach ache.  I can think to myself (when I remember to anyway) Why does your stomach hurt? Maybe it’s because I dread something that’s going to happen later. If I know about it, I can make a plan on how to make it better for myself. Maybe I can cancel it. Maybe I can eat some ice cream and it might be better. The point is, when I locate my feelings and put words to them, I can actually be proactive on working through the feeling, rather than ignoring it and creating an alternate and altogether unreal existence.

It’s a lot harder, for sure. But it makes me happier in the long run. Up next, what does all this have to do with the right and left brain hemispheres? (I just now thought of the connection while I was writing this…yahoo for therablogging!)

Choosing when an animal dies is so hard. There’s always that question in the back of the mind…what if it’s too soon? Who am I to decide this for her? What if she doesn’t want to go? What if this is a mistake? A great friend who also went through choosing to let go of an old, old dog friend, relayed what his vet had told him: An animal’s last day doesn’t have to be her worst day. He also told me that when we make the choice to bring animals into our lives, we also make the commitment to make the hard decisions that go along with creating both a life of quality and a death of quality. I could have probably bought another month with Bridget. But at what cost? What quality of life would my old girl have been living?

We did everything right. A kind and very compassionate end-of-life-care veterinarian (Dr. Roberta Boyden) came to our home so that we wouldn’t have to stress Bridget out by putting her in the car and driving her to a smelly office. Bridget died in my living room, after a long brushing and some delicious treats. A family owned company that does pet cremation came and picked up her body shortly after. As painful as the process was, the sweetness of these folks who came to offer not just services, but condolences as well, made it bearable.

And I say so long to a great friend–one who saw me through my first real break-up, my first real leaving home, my first real cross-country trip to a new life, my first real parenting gig, my first real job, my first real marriage…the list goes on and on. She was a really special girl and I’ll love her and miss her forever.

I recently made a post about Machiavelli and quoted some folks who said that he was sort of pissed that Christianity made us into a bunch of wankers. When I say wankers, what I mean is people who feel like we should “turn the other cheek,” and feel really guilty when we don’t turn it. Which, mostly, we don’t. And when we do we usually talk a bunch of pooey about it a few hours later when we feel safe again.

So Machiavelli said that he longed for the days when the gods were courageous, brave, and a bit wild/unpredictable. In those days it was laudable to be strong and powerful. When Christianity took hold (or at least the post Nicean Council Christianity) people were rewarded for dumbing it down a bit. Don’t rock the quinquireme and you’ll get your just rewards in the afterlife…has a nice ring to it. And it really helps to keep the status quo smoothly producing ample aureus, which also have a nice (golden) ring to them t00.

Anyway, I’ve started feeling a little bit irritated at Christianity. We’re supposed to live in a free country, a land in which folks can practice whatever religion they want to without persecution. We have a melting pot of new ideas, star charts, methods, beebops, beliefs, visions, characters,  mojos, and cosmologies. We got it all.

And what is it that keeps us from recognizing our own greatness and power? Guilt and fear. The Christian gifts that just keep on giving.

Once I was going to Blockbuster to pick up a movie to numb my mind from a day of delivering joy to 5th graders. As I drove down the middle of my own lane looking for a parking spot, a youngster began to pull out of his parking spot in front of me. I swerved at the last minute seeing him out of the corner of my eye, averting a wreck. I was about to smile and wave at him, because he obviously hadn’t seen me, otherwise he wouldn’t have pulled out in front of me, the lady with the right-of-way. It was a pleasant spring eve, and our windows were down and just prior to the smile n’ wave, the youngster sneered at me through his open window and snarled “you could look where you’re going” before he drove off.  I was dumbfounded.

He was wrong! He was wrong! my mind shouted…and yet he made it appear as if I was wrong! I couldn’t believe it. I was really, really angry. So I followed him.

Now even as I write this, I’m a little ashamed, because even though I went to a “non-denominational” and “metaphysical” church (read: woo woo…sorry mom), I grew up in the United States of America, and here in the United States of America, we XX citizens are definitely NOT supposed to follow people in their cars when they almost hit us. And we are definitely not supposed to pull up to them after they’ve stopped and yell at them and call them “dickwads” in front of their friends. It says so in the Bible. But the boy did say he was sorry. And that was all that I wanted.

Despite the briefest of glimmers of ashamed-ness at the possibility of reader judgement…it felt good. It even felt good to write it in this blog. But the apocalyptic Jesus wouldn’t be happy with me. He would tap his other cheek knowingly and I would bow my head in contrition, knowing that I’d done wrong.

But guess what…Hera would’ve probably been fine with it (she actually tied a woman’s legs together to keep the woman from giving birth to Heracles, Hera’s hated stepson). Machiavelli would’ve been fine with it too.

I’m disgruntled that we have, as a nation, been traumatized with guilt mongering for profit. We are taught that our feelings are wrong and that we should feel bad for feeling them, but we aren’t given a healthy alternative (unless we’re brave enough and patient enough and wealthy enough to find a good counselor). I’m upset that (quasi)-Christian ideology has attempted to ruin our ability to think our own thoughts. Even if you’re not a Christian, it’s woven into the very fibers of our Constitution, our court system, our social networks, our schools, and our government. You can’t escape it.

I will sum up with the two quotes that inspired today’s rant:

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. ~Jesus in The (pre-Nicean Council) Gospel of Thomas

A little revenge is more human than no revenge at all. ~Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (certainly no Jesus, but an interesting quote nonetheless).

I’d like my gruntle back, please.

Jesus said to them,

When you make the two into one,

when you make the inner like the outer

and the outer like the inner,

and the upper like the lower,

when you make male and female into a

single one,

so that the male will not be male

and the female will not be female,

when you make eyes replacing an eye,

and hand replacing a hand,

a foot replacing a foot,

and an image replacing an image,

then you will enter the kingdom.

Translated by Marvin W. Meyer

Oxford English Dictionary defines Machiavellianism as “the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct.” In social psychology, a Machiavellian person is one who has a high tendency to deceive and manipulate others for personal gain. In middle school Mr. Snarey told us that to be called Machiavellian means that you are cynical, immoral and mean.

This guy seems like a real jerk. (Machiavelli, not Mr. Snarey). I’ve been researching important stuff for an evil antagonist in a new fiction novel and Machiavelli kept bubbling to the surface of my mind. I went to the library to find out a little more about him. It was there that discovered (after a whole bunch of other people discovered it and wrote books about it) that poor Machiavelli has been undeservedly demonized. Well, sort of undeservedly, at least. I think. Maybe.

It is true that Niccoló Machiavelli encouraged the odd broken promise. Point in case: In the early 1500′s Cesare Borgia supported Julius II for papal election in return for appointment of the head of the papal armies. Once elected Julius II reneged on his promise because he didn’t like Borgia’s dad, Pope Alexander VI. Machiavelli, then the secretary to the committee in charge of foreign policy and military of Florence, commended Julius’s decision and denounced Borgia for being too cocky, relying on “good fortune” for success rather than good strategy. Borgia never regained power.

This is a good story to start with in an attempt to understand Machiavelli’s point of view. Born into a Florentine middle class family in 1468, Machiavelli would never be invited to rule any land. His role would forever be as an advisor and as a go-to guy, much to his bitter disappointment:

It is the duty of a good man to point out to others what is well done, even though the malignity of the times or of fortune has not permitted you to do it for yourself, so that of the many who have the capacity, some one, more beloved of heaven, may be able to do it.

And so he studied history. Machiavelli loved to pore over accounts of past military exploits and political maneuvers. He made note of what worked and of what didn’t, and painstakingly compiled them into various how-to books both for leaders and hopeful leaders–The Art of War and The Prince–as well as a book for citizens working toward a liberty filled free state–The Discourses on the First Decade of Titius Livius.

There are many quotes that one might take from Machiavelli’s work that, out of context, sound horrible:

–If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

 

–A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

 

–It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

 

–Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions. (all quotes found here)

But, what is important to remember is that Machiavelli always stated what he believed to be the truth, not what he believed would be popular.

Many writers have dreamed up ideal countries, but the gulf between them and reality is so great that to neglect what is actually done for what should be done is simply to invite self destruction.

Furthermore, Machiavelli was ultimately interested in creating a peaceful and power balanced republic. He had this to say about his work The Discourses:

First, I never urged immorality for it’s own sake, but only as necessary in the pursuit of a strong, united state. Second, the ideal form of such a state is a republic.

According to Patrick Curry in Introducing Machiavelli, Machiavelli was a “classical pagan.” He longed for the days when humanity worshipped gods and goddesses who were imbued with “vigour, prowess, bravery, pride, courage, and strength.” He called these abilities “virtú” which stand in direct opposition to Christian virtues:

If our religion [Christianity] demands that you be strong, what it asks for is strength to suffer, rather than strength to do bold things…Christianity turns people away from this world, away from the collective responsibilities of citizenship, towards individual salvation. That is the effect of its “truth.”

Machiavelli never argued that Christianity is untrue or wrong. His concern was with the effects of religion on civic spirit, the desire to work together to create a smoothly running collective body rather than an actual moral code. To him, religion was simply a good inspiration in keeping men good and shaming the wicked. To him, the public had a responsibility toward keeping those in power checked, and those in power had a responsibility to protecting and caring for their people.

Maurizio Viroli writes in Niccoló’s Smile, that late in his life Machiavelli had a dream:

In his dream, he had seen a band of poorly dressed men, ragged and miserable in appearance. He asked them who they were. They replied, “We are the saintly and the blessed; we are on our way to Heaven.” Then he saw a crowd of solemnly attired men, noble and grave in appearance, speaking seriously of important political matters. In their midst he recognized the great philosophers and historians of antiquity who had written fundamental works on politics and the state, such as Plato, Plutarch and Tacitus. Again he asked them who they were and where they were going. “We are the damed of Hell” was their answer. AFter telling his friends of his dream, Machiavelli remarked that he would be far happier in Hell, where he could discuss politics with the great men of the ancient world, than in Heaven, where he would languish in boredom among the blessed and saintly.

I’m still a little up in the air about how I feel about Machiavelli, I suppose. Was he misunderstood pragmatist telling it like it is? Or was he a manipulative mastermind, paving the way for Hilter, Mussolini, Thatcher, Saddam, Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi…the list goes on and on…

Someone once told me that the trick to winning in basketball is that you have to have more points when the buzzer goes off. That didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but since then I’ve thought about it many, many times. Now I understand that what it means is that sometimes when two things are competing and one wins out, it isn’t necessarily because it’s better than the other one, it just happened to be ahead when the time ran out.

I teach Roman history to my 6th grade class. It’s an interesting topic to teach to young people, because America, the country I live in, is so comfortable in it’s acceptance of Christianity as the dominant religion. Wikipedia tells me that 76% of Americans identify as Christian (mostly Protestant or Catholic). Interestingly, 40% of Americans claim to go to church once a week and a majority of Americans rate religion (specific brand unspecified) plays a “very important” role in their lives (based on a 2008 survey of 55,000 people, link here).

However, waaaay back in 60 AD, the Christians weren’t enjoying such monumental success. When I’m teaching Roman history we talk a lot about religion and how the early Romans were pagan and worshipped the gods of Mount Olympus. Whenever I utter the word pagan for the first time, there is always this little ripple that rides around the room, for that word has such a strongly negative connotation. (Perhaps it’s because the Christians did such a bang up job obliterating paganism once the buzzer rang.) Often children don’t even know why a word is so charged, they just know that it is, and it’s palpable in the room.

Back when the Romans worshipped Aries and Apollo and Demeter and Athena, the Christians were struggling. At one point, they were hated by most Roman citizens for various reasons. I read an excellent article online by a man named C.J. Lyes (find it here). Lyes says that there isn’t any “real” evidence that the Christians were slaughtered by Roman leaders, such as the infamous Christian hating Nero, but that they were certainly despised. (I have my doubts that any minority group of people who are despised by a powerful and militarily trained majority could find themselves safe within that culture. There are certainly many, many historical stories that corroborate violence. But, being not an expert, I’ll not force it…much)

(A Christian Dirce, by Henryk Siemiradzki)

One reason for Roman hatred of Christians was that Christian monotheistic views threatened the polytheistic beliefs of the day. It is easy to make the mistake of thinking of this as a political threat, when, for the everyday lower classes in Rome, it was a threat to their very well-being, for if the pantheon of gods was angered, to them it spelled certain death. Christians were blamed for drought. They were blamed for floods. They were blamed for locusts, etc., etc. They fit the bill for both black sheep and scape goats, those unfortunate Bovidae…

Another possible reason for Roman animosity toward Christians, according to Lyons, is that the Christian practice of Eucharist was translated by some into cannibalism. This, mixed with the fact that the persecuted Christians held secret, hidden meetings deep underground in the catacombs of Rome, led some to wild allegations of “incest and child murder and group sex.”

(Roman catacomb–photo from www.traditioninaction.org)

Lastly (in this blog post anyway, Lyes has more to say), the teaching of Christianity appealed strongly to women of the day and led many to renounce their religion and join Christianity. Roman social order was built on the foundation of patriarchal rule. Giving women something to believe in, something to think about, something to be a powerful part of, was very threatening to Roman culture.

So. I just thought all of this was pretty interesting, considering the incredible evolution of Christianity through the ages. It all has such a familiar, horrible ring to it, doesn’t it?

It makes me wonder when the next playoff begins.