Blog o’ Gnosis

All kids needs rite of passage ceremonies when they come of age. We planned an elaborate one for my nephew Alex, a small intimate one for my niece Rose (both of whom lived with us during their teenage years—long story), another complicated one for Bowen and a big community celebration for Lyra. The most important [...]

Several years ago I caught a segment of some TV documentary about Central American shamans. I only remember one scene, but it made a big impression on me. It was in the hut of a curandera who was doing a distance healing on someone. She went to her altar, chanted something, spoke some words, and lit a candle for the person. Then she left.

That was it. There was no checking back after five minutes to see how the candle was burning, no worrying whether she’d contacted the right spirits, no concern that maybe the ritual wasn’t going to work. She just went about the rest of her day seemingly unconcerned about both the process and the outcome. The level of trust she had was amazing to me. Oh, and incidentally, the healing worked.

I finally got around to watching Jesus Camp last night, and while I was horrified at how these kids were being brainwashed I also recognized some disturbing similarities between different brands of “spiritual” childraising. Watching Pastor Becky Fischer in action, I couldn’t decide whether she ought to go to prison or a mental health facility for how she bullied those kids into crying and being ashamed for their “sins,” then turned around and filled them full of crap about being the “chosen generation” to lead Christians through the “end times.” It’s a bi-polar emotional feast, and it left me wondering just what skeletons in her closet have caused her to be such a militant.

When I was growing up, on Easter morning we’d come out to the dining room to find lovely big baskets full of malted milk ball eggs, chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks waiting for us. Later, my mom would hide jelly beans in the green shag rug of the living room and we’d go searching for them, a little less enthusiastically. Can there be anything less exciting, really, than finding a crushed lemon jellybean full of rug hairs and dirt? Fortunately there was chocolate to eat, so none of us had to dwell on the unfortunate jellybean portion of our second favorite Christian holiday. (I dimly recall earlier Easter egg hunts out in the grass, but I think in later years she got too tired to do that and downscaled the whole outdoor component. WWJD?)