Forgive Me Father for I have Sinned

Written by Amelia Moore.

There is something to be said about churches being dead, in the instant that the silence has become so sandbagged it hangs round the priest’s neck. A moment in every mass when the sound of coughing quiets into an underwater sensation, and the priest lifts his hands up to the rafters to profess a few profound sacraments about the nature of faith.

I guess some would call it the moment Jesus enters his father’s house, or the instant that the external deity waiting for our tongues to love him decides to fill the room. The air thick with unsaid words and privatized Lords sinking deeper into the pit of peoples’ stomachs.

I think that’s how the deeply religious get their highs. The ones who regard the church as an essence of themselves, and not just a facade for hurtful words and horrible thoughts.

Love of life and belief in a life looking out for ours acts as its own form of ecstasy, to the ones eager to look for it.

…

I have a friend who asked me about religion the other day, or rather outright stated: “You’re pretty religious, right?”

The question caught me by surprise till he cited his evidence-- the cross necklace round my neck, the fact that I discuss religion in every other story I write, the offhand comments I make about going to church.

I guess, compared to others, he’s somewhat correct, although I would label my relationship with God as more complicated than that. Whilst I suspect His matter and mine have been friends since the Big Bang, the version of me with a consciousness has a more difficult time divining the ‘something’ out of a whole lot of apparent ‘nothing’. It’s not like I can remember myself being recycled, or trace constellations through the moles on my back all the way to when I took root alongside the angels.

I suppose faith is linear in one way or another, following its own careful set of rules, bound sternly by the role of time and its general timelessness. Eternity belly-crawling towards itself in a straight line, inextricably tied to the ages-old law of the universe.

Unless you’re God, of course, in which case you’re likely allowed to fuck around a bit more.

…

My religious upbringing was as loose a thing as my location in life. When I was a kid in North Carolina we attended a Protestant church glittering on a green hill with its rear end sinking into a marsh, where a jovial man called Pastor Ben spoke about the ties between God and human empathy, suggesting they embodied each other.

The main thing I remember is that they fed us the first Sunday of every month-- platters of pineapple pudding, vegetable trays soaked in ranch dressing, roast beef sandwiches on sweet yellow bread. I was so young that each mass took decades to finish, although not once in all that time did I give my Eternal Soul an iota of thought.

On our next few moves we drifted-- churches with Easter Egg hunts and unsmiling choirs, churches that took too much leniency with staying on tune and churches with priests in all colours of robes. When I was eleven my parents decided to up their religious fervour a bit. They converted to Catholicism and made my brother and I start attending Sunday School.

I hated it. An extra hour stolen from my weekend during which a stern man made me read from a children’s Bible and a bunch of other weird, properly-Catholic kids told long-winded stories about seeing their Guardian Angel after a tumble off playground equipment or some shit.

I thought the idea of being constantly watched was implausible and unnerving, even if it was by an angel, but the guy in charge tended to circumvent my questions with a patiently condescending smile.

Once I so loathed the idea of going that I went outside church after mass, stuck my fingers down my throat, and made myself throw up in the bushes. Then I dragged my mom out to show her the vomit and prove I was sick.

I did feel sick on the way home, but only at the knowledge that I was sinning. I remember thinking I really could feel my guardian angel that day, burning a hole into my back with the force of his glare.

When we moved to London it was to a new church that felt more like a proper one and I began to fear for my lack of religious fervor. Staring up at the ceiling, I pictured my sins trapped up there and fluttering round in the rafters, unable to break free thanks to my nature as a largely unrepentant person.

In line with that, these churches carried a common theme, one I never understood as a kid and one which I can’t pretend to understand now: that old quote,‘Forgive me Father, for I have sinned’.

It always seemed ludicrous to me to spend mass apologizing for supposed sins I couldn’t even list or that I hadn’t given thought to at the moment. And what if I hadn’t sinned at all that week, and I was apologizing for nothing? Was the sin itself to exist and to be human? Was I apologizing on behalf of my own weak-willed species?

The concept of being beholden to something divine is what scares me, I suppose. Thanking the tangibly uncertain for the fact that your heart beats every day, never owning your own secrets cause of the angels at God’s beck and call, the ‘told you so’s’ every adult seems eager to say. Hell being inextinguishable because it’s always carried inside you. Inherent evil demanding constant input to contradict what is, essentially, me.

But I do think that even with that, there’s something to be said about having a relationship with some form of otherness in the world. I’ll confess the idea of external validation, despite its alleged coupling with eternal damnation, is a comfort.

When I wear my cross necklace or talk to the clouds and pretend something is listening I don’t do so thinking about the church or any sort of religious labels. I don’t know any Bible stories, and I think Eve being shaped from Adam’s rib as proof of female inferiority is bullshit; but I still have my own form of private worship.

It’s taken time to develop a relationship with God and it’s still developing. But I think the nature of God, as something in flux and temperamental and eternal all at once, allows for such inharmonious internal quibbling.

The idea of a being out there sprinkling fairy dust into its creations and encouraging empathy in the most genuine of ways is a comfort to me, although it may not be for others. Religion takes many forms, after all; there’s no way of telling what will strike a chord or nerve depending on the person.

I suppose the purpose of this was to remind others that they’re not alone. Extend a sympathetic hand, say, ‘yeah, I don’t get this shit either’. Help remind people that ultimately, self-assurance wears whatever skin you choose, including your own, and religion is really just a way of slowing the beating-drum rhythm of your own brain through the thought that there’s something bigger than yourself out there.