Shrines

I come from your typical Irish Catholic family, and I have to give them credit: they share an admirable faith--you won't catch them sending newspaper Thank-you's to St. Jude for services rendered.

Unfortunately, I am not one of the happy devout. My brother used to say "why do you want to disbelieve?" like atheism was another one of my foolish schemes like joining the International Socialists or wearing men's pyjama bottoms to university. (Don't laugh-they're comfy and come in lots of fantastic designer patterns).
Well, I would truly love to have a firm belief in a benevolent God or a happy 'haunting' ground or whatever, but this seems to be presently beyond me. But...I would have to say I have a certain "closet" spirituality that makes its presence felt periodically.
Yeah, I think about religion a lot....

As a child, I always believed that had I been born into a Protestant family things would have been very different. I figured Protestants must sleep better on Saturday nights, because oversleeping on Sunday morning wouldn't involve the damnation of their mortal souls. I also thought they played different card games, because every Catholic where I grew up on Prince Edward Island seemed to only play crib. Someone was playing bridge somewhere-- it must be the Anglicans.

Mostly, I was envious because Protestants didn't seem to have as many infuriating ideas to swallow. I read somewhere that when Mary gave birth to the Baby Jesus, well, after that, God made her a virgin again. Kind of like: "There you go! I know, I know, I took nine months of your life, made you endure gruelling labour in a barn , gave you stretchmarks, and now everybody in your hometown thinks you're a slut, but here's a new hymen. Let's call it even." But, maybe in a time when that little sheath of tissue was a woman's only true commodity, it wasn't such a bad deal.....

Yet somehow, I know somewhere in me there is a true religious fanatic waiting to emerge. I've just been looking for the right altar at which to worship. And you know, occasionally I think I've found it. When I was a young girl,my bedroom served two functions: my place to hide from my family and a golden shrine to PARKER STEVENSON.

Long before I could even spell LIBIDO, I had stripped my room of it's cutesy Bambi and flowers motif and created an erotic mecca to that late 70's hunk best remembered as "The Other Hardy Boy." Well as erotic as a twelve year old gets... Anyways, my room was plastered with pin-ups cut out of TigerBeat and Teen Beat ( I am dating myself as definately pre-Sassy now). There must have been fifty pictures of Parker---Parker on the set with Shaun Cassidy, Parker in a cardigan sweater (big that year, at least in the Sears Wishbook), Parker with his (sob) wife, Parker with his mane of chestnut hair flying in the breeze of the wind machine. And for about six months- an eternity when you are twelve--I made a ritual of planting my chaste little kisses on EACH picture before I went to sleep. I was a faithful adoring novitiate into the cult of personality... I prayed every night that Parker, who was probably thirty years old at the time, would wait for me to grow up--at least till I was old enough to drive my own getaway car. I would go to Hollywood, somehow become famous and we would be together forever. (sigh)

Well, needless to say, I have replaced my demigod many times since then. I have fallen in love with almost every actor to have played Jesus in a movie, no matter how emaciated. I have worshipped anonymous men in libraries. But I think my most beautiful, purest form of religious ecstacy can be summed up in two words: RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN. He stole my soul as that spiritual, yet oh-so-human hunk Father Ralph deBricassar in "The Thorn Birds." I used to daydream on the long bus ride to highschool: Father Ralph would drive up behind the bus in his black convertible, I would jump out through the emergency exit, while everyone stared open-mouthed, and we'd drive away at about 100 miles an hour. You know the rest of that story.

Ah, Father Ralph...Is it time to kneel and pray? Now that's my kind of religion. Amen brothers.